Skate’s, the business news outlet of New York-based visual arts magazine Art News and the world’s leading art business intelligence company, has finally done what many art dealers and auctioneers around the world have been urging it to do for some time - expanded its coverage to include fine watches and other high-end timepieces.
Demand for business coverage of watches and timepieces from art advisory companies and global auctions, who want up-to-the-moment data and analytics on art and collectibles, has been growing. Skate’s is now far and away the world’s primary provider of both, so the decision to include watches and timepieces will be warmly welcomed. It’s certainly a development Unbolted welcomes, as fine watches are among the valuables we accept from customers for secured asset loans, so our team of experts will use Skate’s coverage to help inform their valuations.
The early coverage has been very interesting. Skate’s first ranking of the top auction houses in the world (as monitored from Thursday the 1st January 2015 and Wednesday the 16th September 2015) revealed some important figures. The 40 auction houses that regularly trade watches monitored by Skate’s generated watch sales of $178million (£115million) between them over this period - that’s about the same amount a reasonably successful night in the fine arts category at Christie’s or Sotheby’s would generate.
Christie’s emerged as the market leader in sales of fine watches - and by a wide margin. Between January and September it saw total watch sales hit $45.3million (£29.4million), giving it a market share of 25.7 per cent in the year-to-date (YTD). Arch rival Sotheby’s captured a market share of 22.1 per cent.
A closer look at the data reveals an interesting trend - while Christie’s wins on volume by a long chalk, Sotheby’s wins hands down on average value per lot - $52,181 (£33,826) versus Christie’s $38,126 (£24,715). Sotheby’s value per lot, however, was dwarfed by Phillips, which at $147,149 per lot emerged as the undisputed leader, clearly providing the best price discovery for significant watches so far this year.
The market leader in online watch sales was without undoubtedly Auctionata, which stands head and shoulders above its peers and, in terms of gross merchandise vale, claimed an impressive fifth place.
Dutch ecommerce platform Catawiki led on volume, selling 11,000 watches in the YTD. The vast majority of its products would not make the grade for any significant auction sale, though; Auctionata’s average lot value, for example, is nearly 10 times greater than Catawiki’s.
Patek Philippe was the manufacturer of the most valuable watches. Of the 100 most valuable watches sold in 2015, based on auction prices, 62 per cent were timepieces made by Patek Philippe; based on market value, that proportion rises to 69 per cent.
That’s not too surprising, as since being founded in Geneva in 1851, Patek Philippe has established itself manufacturer of ultra-luxury Swiss watches, creating some of the most complicated mechanical watches and timepieces in the world.
