Bidding higher
The trend in wine auctions is up, way up. Last year, I speculated that the estimated $100 million of wine destroyed in a warehouse fire in Napa was about the size of one year in the wine auction market. That was so 2004 of me.
Last year wine auction houses saw $166 million of wine come under the hammer Decanter reports. That is an increase of 28% over the $129 million of wine sold at auction in 2004.
Howard Goldberg, the author of the story, produces annual sales figures for each auction house. He doesn’t cite his source for the data and only on one house does he mention that the sales include the house’s commissions, which can represent a premium of 15% to the buyer and seller.
Of note, Zachy’s of Scarsdale, NY, only its third year of auctions, further solidified its lead as North America’s largest auction house. Winebid.com, which holds its auctions online, finished with the third highest US gross.
Paddles ready! Here are the 2005 sales figures (number of auctions in parentheses):
Christie’s: (43) $42,158,972 worldwide. US: (10) $15,628,592
Zachy’s (10) $33,835,286
Sotheby’s, (16) $29,141,728 worldwide. US: (6) $18,597,374
Acker Merrall & Condit (22) $20,881,008
WineBid.com, (NA) $20 million
Hart Davis Hart (4) $9,503,414
Bonhams & Butterfields (6) $5,592,253
Morrell & Company’s (4) $3,902,990
Edward Roberts International (5) $1,563,322
Technorati tags: wine | wine auctions
On January 11th, 2006 at 11:14 pm ,allan wrote:
I am a big fan of winebid and have managed to pick up some really unique bottles from them. The only thing I hate is the long lag times from auction end to delivery.
On January 12th, 2006 at 5:20 pm ,Dr. Vino wrote:
Interesting, thanks Allan.
The story didn’t include person-to-person auctions, such as winecommune.com, which are also popular with internet wine geeks.