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Whenever we post a story about a luxury item, car or house being sold at eye-watering prices, you can bet that Sotheby’s will be mentioned. The auction house has become synonymous with uber-luxury sales, and looking at their sales for 2023, it is clear that they have captured the high-end auction market.

Sotheby’s decision to broaden its reach into luxury fashion items also seems to have paid off after the auction house posted sales of $7.9 billion (R161 billion) for 2023.

Thanks to Gen X and Millennial bidders entering the luxury market, one of the world’s largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectables is now expanding their offering to even more markets, including The Sotheby’s Salon, its first ultra-luxury retail destination, located in Zurich.

Gen X accounted for more than 40% of sales in the $1 million-plus market in 2023. According to Sotheby’s global head of high-end luxury, Josh Pullan, “The launch of new collecting categories, combined with digital and on-the-ground experiences have dramatically expanded Sotheby’s audience to a new and younger demographic of collectors.”

2023 saw Sotheby’s host 515 auctions from 55 departments in 10 locations around the world, with Asia still being their biggest market at over $1 billion (R19 billion) in sales to buyers from the East.

Sotheby’s is a British-founded multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It was established in 1744 in London by Samuel Baker, a bookseller. Following Baker’s death in 1778, the business was passed down to his nephew John Sotheby, who transformed it into a well-known book auction house.

Under the Sotheby family, the auction house expanded its offerings to include prints, medals, and coins. When the last member of the Sotheby family died in 1861, John Wilkinson, Sotheby’s senior accountant, became the company’s new head. In 2019 Sotheby’s was purchased by Patrick Drahi for $3.7 billion (R77 billion).

Announcing its 2023 sales, the company also launched Sotheby’s Sealed, a digital platform for luxury products, which will mix ‘the discretion of a private sale with auction-style bidding’. Adding to their past track record of selling sports memorabilia, they also signed a multi-year deal with the National Basketball Association, which would allow fans to bid on a variety of game-worn NBA items.

 

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We will probably never be able to buy something from these guys, so we’ll stick to Gumtree for our second-hand purchases for now. Maybe one day…

[source:robbreport]