Rock, Paper, Scissors!
Hey guys! Sorry to be out of the blogging loop the last few weeks. November is such a wham-bam, one-after-another auction month, and there are so many sales to catch up on. When the deadlines for my monthly newsletter, the Forbes Collector, bear down, it’s tough to break focus for other endeavors, like blogging. So you may notice an ebb and flow of posting. But keep checking back!
Now, before I get into the latest auction action, I wanted to share an entertaining story I read in the Wall Street Journal recently. The article was actually written last spring, but I just ran across it while researching my most recent newsletter. It seems the president of a Japanese corporation called Maspro Denkoh was getting ready to sell the firm’s impressionist and modern pictures–including works by Cezanne, Picasso and van Gogh. Not too shabby. As you know, the two big auction houses, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, vie fiercely for blue-chip material, especially fine impressionist work, which is getting scarce on the market.
So, as per usual, each house assembled an extravagant marketing proposal, complete with financial incentives, in order to win the consignment. But the Maspro president couldn’t decide. So he instructed the two competitors to settle it with a good old-fashioned game of rock-paper-scissors. You know the game, right? On the count of three, each competitor holds out their hand in the shape of one of the three items, agreeing to abide by the age-old law: rock smashes scissors, scissors cut paper, and paper covers rock.
Each firm had to submit its choice in writing (in Japanese). And the winner was……?
Christie’s took scissors. Sotheby’s, paper. Better luck next time, Sotheby’s.
Well, that’s one way to choose where to sell. Many people do ask me that question—where should I consign?—and it’s tempting to say that it’s six of one, half dozen of the other. But the fact is, you should look closely at the specific market you’re selling in. Who are the specialists in that department? How long have they been there? What’s the trend line of their overall sales? What’s their recent track record with material like yours? What kind of financial deal are they offering? How will they market your piece or collection? Different markets often seesaw between the two houses, depending on who’s at the helm of a particular department. It pays to do your own homework, and not just rely on the marketing package the houses provide. Sometimes there are regional or specialty houses that focus on specific types of material, and they can really know their markets, like the Coeur d’Alene Western Art Auction, Rago’s Arts & Crafts Auctions and Guyette & Schmidt’s wildfowl decoy auctions, among others.
Then again, if you really can’t decide, rock-paper-scissors might not be a bad way to go! —M.S.
