Auction Results

Howdy!

Last night I went to the Iegor auction of Gaby Photographs. There are a couple of ways of looking at it.

I estimate that Iegor sold about $50,000 worth of photographs last night. I wasn't there for all the lots (I saw 206 out of 261), and what I saw realized a total of $35,212, so it isn't a far reach for the other $15,000.

The most expensive items of the evening that I saw were photographs of Guido Molinari, and Jean Cocteau


Jean Cocteau


Guido Molinari

Both of which were reprints from 1990, which surprised the heck out of me. I, personally think that the bargain of the evening was the portrait of Mistinguette, because not only was it signed, but it was one of the few photographs that were actually numbered, and it was a relatively low number as well (5/50).

Or it is possible to look at the auction like this:

Of the 206 lots that I saw sell, only 20 went for as much as the low estimate (less than 10%). Only 11 matched or beat the high estimate (Jean Marais, lot #57; Hans Hartung, lot #65; Guido Molinari, lot #84; Josh White, lot #104; Glenn Gould, lot #107; Eric Hawkins, lot #125; Robert Openheimer, lot #145; Felix Leclerc, lot #161; Maurice Richard, lot #165; Pierre Mendes France, lot #186; Prince Albert and Paula of Belgium, lot #193; and Princess Grace, lot #205) so I'm not certain where the high and low estimates that were published came from. And I would guess that Iegor's 15% was about $5,000 - not bad until you consider that at most he does 20 auctions each year. Auction houses are notoriously difficult to run on gross revenues of $100,000. I can only hope that this was an anomaly, and not the norm.

I don't know if there was a reserve on any of the photographs, and as I was hastily jotting down the numbers I heard, there are numerous places where I could be wrong, very wrong, these are not to be confused in any way with the official auction results.