Monday 24 October 2016

The Price of a Museum Piece?

My previous post here, Small is Beautiful, April 2016, and my articles in Clocks Magazine, April and May 2016, referred to the beautiful small gold chronometer made by Alexander Watkins for the Great Exhibition of 1851.  Given the unique nature of this timepiece, I’m surprised to see today that it is up for sale at an auction-estimated price which I would consider to be very modest. 

The auctioneers are VAN HAM Kunstauktionen, and the sale dates are 17th and 18th November.  An estimate of 25,000 EUR - 30,000 EUR has been posted.  When last subject to public sale, at Sotheby’s in 2004, it made £51,000.  It will be interesting to see the hammer price achieved next month, and, if this is close to the current estimate, I will be trying to understand what has caused such an apparently high degree of devaluation.
 

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