Performance of Artprice’s standardised art market place

By 31 July 2005, just five months after its launch, Artprice’s standardised marketplace had hosted a total of 26,701 works of art offered for sale. Their value, excluding a very large number of major pieces offered by sellers at undisclosed prices, totalled EUR 521,754,069. That is 6.3 times the volume generated by fine art auctions in France during the first seven months of the year, and means that the Artprice marketplace is now the biggest in the world, accounting for 32.8% of global fine art sales (source: A.M.I.).

Responding to very strong demand, the marketplace’s sales growth has been impressive. Traditionally, the art market is virtually inactive between July and September, but the number of works offered for sale by Artprice continued to grow by 9% in July. On some days, more than 700 new pieces went on offer within a 24-hour period. On 31 July, Artprice was running 13,021 real-time ads.

Since the June 2005 launch of My Artprice Store®, the professional version of Artprice’s Classified Ads by annual subscription, more and more art market players have been taking advantage of the standardised marketplace, which offers continuous trading and imposes no limits on the number of ads placed. Almost 450 additional Artprice Stores were opened in July, which is the time of the year when galleries and auction houses close shop for one or two months.

Thanks to My Artprice Store, which guarantees greater visibility, the quality of works offered for sale has risen steadily. Of the new pieces put up for sale with Artprice between 24 and 30 July, 18 were by Pablo PICASSO (including 2 pieces of historic and academic importance completed in 1896, with price tags of EUR 650,000 and EUR 350,000 respectively), 36 by Salvador DALI, 10 by Marc CHAGALL (including 2 major canvasses), 7 by Andy WARHOL and 10 by Joan MIRO. As with traditional auctions, these were the five most traded artists on our standardised marketplace, accounting for almost 3% of the works on sale.

The average price tag was EUR 15,749, although this does not take into account the many high-quality works – by, for example, Renoir, Léger, Chagall and Manet – that were sold at undisclosed prices.

Over the coming weeks, Artprice is expecting the rate at which new ads are posted to exceed 1,000 on some days. At such a high growth rate, therefore, its forecast of 72,000 works per year should be exceeded. This figure compares with the annual volume of fine art works at the top five auction houses (Christie’s, Sotheby’s, Bonhams, Dorotheum and Tajan) of 74,289, as calculated by Artprice’s econometrics department in its 2004 market report.