According to artprice.com annual report, the growth of the public auction art market is unprecedented. Artprice has compiled a hotly disputed TOP 10 based on price inflation and sales volumes. At the heart of this dossier, Artprice offers an exclusive ranking of artistic movements based on recorded price progressions.
According to artprice.com, art prices continued their ascension in 2006 with sharp acce-lerations observed on most major markets. At a worldwide level, Artprice’s global price index was up a further +25.4% over the year, to just 5% below its peak level in 1990. In the United States, however, prices are now 32% higher than the speculative bubble peak in 1990.
Driven by galloping prices and a whole new generation of rich art collectors, the number of over-a-million-dollar sales has taken off. Today’s prices are in effect without precedent. In 2006 no less than 810 works sold for over a million dollars, generating total auc-tion revenue of $ 2.7 billion. In 2005, 487 Fine Art sales generated fi gures above a million and total auction revenue of $ 1.4 billion. Until the end of the 1990s only 100 to 200 auctions per year broke through the million-dollar threshold. In total, the global public auction Fine Art market generated a total revenue of $ 6.4 billion which represents double the amounts regularly posted during the 1999 - 2003 period and an increase of 52% compared with 2005.
In 2006, there were 9,200 auctions of Fine Art worldwide compared with 9,600 in 2005 and more than 15,000 in 2000. However, while the number of catalogued sales appears to be diminishing, the volume of works on offer at each sale is growing sharply: more that 400,000 lots were offered for sale in 2006. For the third year running the bought-in rate has remained stable at around 34%. This level, still high considering market conditions, has less to do with buyer indifference towards the less interesting pieces and more to do with sellers asking very high reserve prices. Indeed we are seeing a number of collectors taking advantage of the current climate to sell off works they acquired expensively in 1989-1991.
William Verdult artwork:
We are finding the same upward trend for "cash prices" for William Verdult artwork as can be found in the art market in general. Recent record "cash" sales have been recorded for Verdult artwork.
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