Sothebys and Christies increase buyers premium
Published September 4th, 2007
The increase in charge’s at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, will add millions of pounds to the auctioneers’ bank balance in the next 12 months, has met with widespread protest and even talk of litigation.
From last Sunday, the two salerooms raised what is known as the “buyer’s premium” – a levy charged to the buyer in addition to the hammer price – from 20 per cent to 25 per cent on the first £10,000 bid at auction.
A spokesman for Christie’s justifies the premium, saying that buyers are paying extra for Christie’s “bringing a work of art to market and making it available. They benefit from us sourcing things globally and offering them in appropriate places; from our cataloguing, research, and condition reports and from access to our specialists.” Sotheby’s justifies the premium on much the same grounds.
Sotheby’s and Christie’s currently sell close to 200,000 lots a year between them. With the new premium rate, if £500 is added to each lot (ie, that extra five per cent up to £10,000), that would amount to an extra £10 million for the auctioneers
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