Evelyn Clothier heads list for September Important Jewelry at Skinner Auctions

It’s that time again! In a previous post I mention some of auction houses having only online fine jewelry this month. Skinner Auctions in Boston will be having their auction and preview of Important Jewelry this month. Looking through the lots online before going to the preview, I noticed quite a few by Evelyn Clothier. It felt like she was the most listed designer in the 355 lots from this auction. Being an analyst, I had to see if that was right. I did not go through counting all the designers by myself, I used a little help from excel to get a tally. The list below of designers with 2 or more items in the auction:

Looks like … Read the rest

Depending on the Kindness of Strangers Pays Off for Vivien Leigh Auction

It’s been too long since my last post, but I have a lot of exciting things planned for this blog! First though I want to finish my analysis of the auctions I had in my last post. First is the Vivien Leigh auction held at the end of September at Sotheby’s in London.

It was an interesting auction to follow due to the star having passed away about 50 years ago and her last movie was over 52 years ago. Even though Ms. Leigh did not have as many films to her credit as other stars of her generation, the films she did were outstanding. I have not seen all her films but of the ones I have she … Read the rest

Bonhams 2017 Fall Jewelry Analysis: The $8 Brooch Sells

A busy weekend for me. Lots of auctions coming up but let’s finish our look at the auctions last week. I plan to make this a shorter analysis. I am not including a past auction of Bonhams to compare. Bonhams removes the unsold items from its list after the auction so if you do not gather your data before that then it is harder to get. My plan then is to focus on this auction only. I will look at the stats and percentage of sold versus unsold lots. Next, we will look at the top performing items and then look at the highlights from the post last week.

Sold versus Unsold

Note my results do not include buyer’s … Read the rest

Skinner Fall 2017 Fine Jewelry Analysis: The Emerald Outlier

Skinner Fall 2017 Fine Jewelry Analysis: The Emerald Outlier

Week one is done of my auctions schedule. I know I was excited to see the results from the week. There were plenty of ways to look at the data from the Skinner Auction and I confess I took a bit longer trying to see what the best story to tell would be. So, after different ways of dissecting the results I am structuring the article to focus first on the mean (average), median (the middle value of the data) and the mode (the number that is repeated most often) with the % breakdown of the types of items sold vs unsold. Then look at our predictions from the last article and finally the stand out piece in the auction.… Read the rest

What to look for at the Auctions: September 18th 2017

Well the fall auction season has begun! I spent my Sunday checking out the Skinner lots in Boston. If you were in New York you could head over to Bonhams to look what they were offering. For this post, I am highlighting a few pieces to watch for the auction tomorrow. Then later in the week I will do a more in-depth analysis of how the auction did overall. I will start with Skinner since I got to see the pieces first hand.

Skinner Auction

There were plenty of opals, diamonds and colored gems to grab your attention but for me I am interested in the less flashy items. I am going to be watching the Georg Jensen items like … Read the rest