Private sale
Jeff Koon’s Balloon Dog
Reported price: $17 million
Above: Balloon Dog belonging to the Eli Broad Foundation
Right now it’s just a rumor. But if it’s true, Steven Cohen is at it again, doing what he seems to do best: overpaying for another trophy artwork.
According to a mention in today’s Baer Faxt newsletter, several sources have […]

Sotheby’s London
Andreas Gursky, 99 Cent II, diptych
Estimate: $1.8 million–$2.4 million
Price fetched: $3.3 million
Warning to readers: I feel a rant coming on. As you may have read in an earlier post, I was incredulous when Andreas Gursky’s mural-sized 1999 photo 99 Cent sold for $2.2 million last May at Sotheby’s, nearly four times Gursky’s previous record. […]

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Swann Galleries
African-American Fine Art Sale
Feb 6, 2007
Above: Romare Bearden color screenprint Martin Luther King, Jr.—Mountain Top, 1968
I don’t know why no one thought of it before. The market for African-American art has been on a quiet, steady rise for the last decade or so. But not until last month did any auction house think to […]

Sotheby’s London
Peter Doig, White Canoe, 1990-91
Estimate: $1.5 million–$2.3 million
Price Fetched: $11 million
At left: Sotheby’s Tobias Meyer orchestrating the bidding on Doig’s White Canoe
Call it contemporary impressionism, at vintage impressionist prices. Or call it uninformed buyers with too much money. But will someone please tell me what inspired bidders at Sotheby’s London to drive a 1990-91 […]

Private Sale
Honus Wagner near-mint T206 tobacco card
Reported price: $2.35 million
To most people, it’s just a little piece of cardboard, only 1-1/8 x 2-5/8 inches, encased in an ugly plastic slab. A little piece of 98-year-old cardboard with a colorful picture of an old-timey baseball player.
But to serious baseball card collectors, it’s an icon worthy […]

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Rago Arts and Auction Center
March 10, 2007
Frederick Rhead ceramic Arts & Crafts vase
Estimate: $40,000–$50,000
Price fetched: $516,000
Quick. Name the father of Fiesta ware.
Yeah, ok. Neither could I.
Well, his name is Frederick Rhead and one of his rare, earlier (non-Fiesta) vases just broke the world record for American art pottery at the Rago Arts and […]

Greetings and salutations! I wish I could say that I haven’t been posting for the past few months because I was enjoying a palm-shaded idyll on a Caribbean island, sipping umbrella drinks, practicing my back stroke and reading chick-lit. In reality, I have been laid up after major surgery, resting, reading and plowing gleefully through […]