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2023 Auction Summary

The Running of the Bulls has reached Vero Beach !

This review covers the auction results of the leading 4 auction houses dealing in Highwaymen art. (Manor Auctions, Rennick Auctions, Vero Beach Auction, and Florida Art Auction). While there are other auction houses that sell Highwaymen art, they typically have no more than a few paintings offered as part of a larger auction selling a variety of items.

The auction results discussed in this review cover only paintings by the 26 Highwaymen. It does not cover the occasional print offered, giclee’s, other Highwaymen items such as signed books, nor does it include the painted violins that were offered earlier this year as I do not feel they are representative of the Highwaymen painting market. The review does not include paintings by Backus, or other legacy or Florida artists. In other words, it is a review of Highwaymen paintings only. If the auction houses named above had additional paintings by legacy artists in the sale, they have been removed from the statistics below.

As I have personally done business with several auction houses in the past, I know that the key issue for success for an auction house is not what would be assumed or expected – the sales results. In fact – the key issue for success at an auction house is the sourcing of the products to sell. The view in the auction business is that if you have the quality products being offered, the buyers will find them. It’s particularly easy to do so now that most auctions are also listed on one of the on-line platforms, making it easy for buyers to search items. (Note: the only auction house of the 4 named above that does utilize on-line sales is Rennick).

In looking at the 4 main auction houses, each conducted a different number of auctions during 2023.

Auction House No. Auctions No. Of Paintings Offered
Manor 12 auctions 860
Vero Beach 6 auctions 264
Florida Art 5 auctions 164
Rennick 3 auctions 301

The following chart summarizes the total of target estimated prices for all paintings being offered, as well as the total $ value of auction results.

auction-volume-2023

Clearly, it is obvious that with 860 Highwaymen paintings offered, and a total hammer price value of $2,866,300, Manor has come to dominate the market.

Note 1: Hammer prices are used in this analysis because each auction house has a different policy regarding buyers fees. Excluding buyers fees in this report enable a more consistent analysis.

Note 2: The target (estimate) prices on the Rennick website are removed following their sales, so the target prices are not reflected above. The orange bar represents the total sold prices for the 301 paintings which were sold).

Note 3: Also of note is the fact that the performance of the Manor auctions could be called the best, as the sales results had the largest percentage gap between the target prices (blue bar), and the sold prices (orange bar).

Note 4: Florida Art auction is a new auction house beginning in 2023, and their first auction took place in April. As such, they effectively had a late start in 2023 compared to the other 3 auction houses.

Looking at the volume, target price totals, and sold totals for each of the auction houses auctions, also presents an interesting view of seasonality, and success in sales in the individual auctions.

manor-florida-auction-graph
vero-rennick-graph

Surprisingly, all 3 auction houses (except Rennick), saw their volumes decline as we came into the higher season of November/December. Rennick, not having an auction since the previous March, had 8 months to accumulate paintings for their November sale, which proved to be their biggest of the year.

Target prices, Estimates, and Hammer prices:

One could argue that sold, or “hammer” prices reflect the market, and are not affected by estimates (or target prices, which I have defined as the “low” estimate). Estimates are utilized to give bidders who may be less experienced in the market, an idea of value before bidding. They are also often used to establish a baseline for reserve prices – prices which are a minimum the auction house will let the painting sell for. Rennick is the only “reserve free” auction, meaning every painting will sell for whatever the bid is with no minimums.

When hammer prices do not reach target prices, it can only mean one of two things. Either,

  • The estimates were too high, and the hammer prices reflect that, or
  • The auction house does not have enough visibility to attract enough bidders to reach the true painting values.

Looking at the average hammer price of paintings at each auction house also provides an indication of the quality paintings being offered. Clearly, the higher the average hammer price, the higher the quality of the paintings. To calculate this, I have used the number of paintings sold – not the number of paintings offered. For example, Manor had 860 paintings offered during 2023, but 29 paintings “Passed”, meaning they did not reach their reserve and did not sell. Thus, the average hammer prices are calculated based on sold paintings – not all paintings offered.

TOTAL TARGET PRICES TOTAL HAMMER PRICES NO. LOTS OFFERED NO. LOTS SOLD AVG HAMMER PER LOT SOLD
MANOR AUCTIONS $2,492,40 $2,866,30 860 831 $3,449
RENNICK AUCTIONS NA $855,550 301 301 $2,842
FLORIDA ART AUCTION $367,250 $350,001 164 154 $2,273
VERO BEACH AUCTION $511,375 $536,150 264 258 $2,078

Thus, not only is Manor driving the market with much greater volume than the other auction houses, they are also selling the best quality, with average hammer prices the highest by a solid margin.

This of course does not mean that a high quality painting will necessarily bring more value at Manor, as compared with any of the auction houses. Each auction house had their own share of some very high quality, and expensive paintings. It just means that Manor is selling more of them than the other auction houses.

Trends in Highwaymen Artist Prices !!!

Clearly, I have assembled all of the auction records at each of the auction houses. I have also done this for 2022, so I can analyze the data not just by auction house, but also by each individual artist – spread across all of the auction houses. Doing this for 2022 and 2023, I can determine which artists have seen the fastest, and slowest, growth in pricing.

My blog on artist pricing trends will be published next week ! Have a good week ahead ….

www.TheHighwaymenCollector.com
Buying and selling Highwaymen art of exceptional quality, unusual scenes, and rare paintings by the Buckners.