Companies publishing auctions results

Generally, one can obtain results in two ways:

1. Either from the auction houses themselves.

Most serious auction houses publish on their website either immediately or after a short delay, the results obtained for the works presented at a given auction. Access to results is free. Careful attention should be placed at the following:

• Are the unsold lots ("Bought-in") clearly identified?
• Is the mentioned price the adjudication price ("Hammer Price") or the price plus commission ("Buyer's Premium")?

2. Either by consulting aggregators websites

Several internet-based companies have taken over traditional print tools who, for over a hundred years for some, have monopolized most of the information in the visual arts and specifically on the art market.  At the international level, think of Gordon's, Davenport's and Hislop's Art Sales Index (Blouin Art Sales Index since 2007).  Bénézit (published for the first time in 1911) was the main source for artist's biographies. Closer to home, the Canadian Art Sales Index is published by Westbridge since 1977!

Since 1995 however, online sites have experienced significant growth.

The sites listed here are among the best known. Most are the product of major organizations on the art market and most require mandatory registration and charge a fee to access their database of results of auctions. Some of these companies produce artist analysis of market rating in addition to many details of these (copies of signatures, detailed biographies, etc.).

Remember:

• In Canada, two titles to remember: Heffel and Canadian Art Sales Index.
• The "New York Public Library" has published an excellent chart of the sales index available to the collector.
• Some companies of which ArtRank offer now tools to help you, they say, to assess the potential future rating of emerging artists.
• A new application, Magnus, downloadable on your smartphone, promise the optical identification of an artwork.   An OCR (Optical Character Recognition) application, Magnus allows you to identify a work (artist, title, selling prices at comparable gallery or auction, etc.) from a photo taken of your smartphone. Photo IDs can then be shared on social networks or sent by email. Warning: the application currently only covers the New York City galleries.
• Mearto is both a company offering published auctions results and an interface with auctioneers for pre-evaluation of potential auction results for a given item.
• Artory, founded in 2016, is the first company to use Blockchain technology to record transactions associated with a work.   Currently (April 2019), the content is limited.   However, the recent acquisition of Auction Club and the integration of its data (6,000,000 entries) should eventually (June 2019) provide a solid and extensive base for consultation.