Auction Results December 2012

1. Sothebys had another strong tribal sale today with lots with the buyers premium bringing a total of  7,268,875 euros or $9,994,178.57. 34 out of 119 lots were bought in failing to sell.It is interesting to note that you can have almost 30% of your lots failing to make reserve and still do almost 10 million dollars. The Biwat spirit figure in lot 17 from the Speyer and Lemaire collections sold for  1,408,750  euros ($1,936,932).
http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/results.sale.pdf/2012/art-dafrique-et-docanie-pf1218.pdf

2. The Christies Paris  was held December 11, 2012 and grossed 6,022,975 euros ($8,251,475.75) with 91 lots of which 28 lots failed to sell giving a buy in rate of almost 31%. The star of the show was Willy Mestach's 100" Nkundu reliquary which sold for 2,697,000 euros or $3,506,100. So this one object was almost half the the total results of the sale which most would describe as uneven. Other notables were the Baga snake which is 76" in height and sold for 313,000 euros ($428,810). There actually were some interesting objects in the sale; however, in some lots the reserves just made no sense. The Twa neckrest in lot 63 was bought in with an estimate of $14,000 - $27,000. The quality was not there to justify this range. The sale points out that the competition for good material is strong and the auction houses are going out on limb to compete. Make your sale with three or four big lots and then hope that these objects will bring up the others. Both Sothebys and Christies had relatively small sales for this active .