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This page considers prices for old master paintings, sculpture,
manuscripts, prints, antiquities and other collectibles.
It covers -
It
supplements discussion elsewhere on this site regarding
Droit de Suite, the Dot-com
Bubble and Forgery.
appreciation and investment
The following pages indicate that some lucky or sagacious
people have enjoyed substantial gains through appreciation
in the market value of art works over the past century.
The same figures, however, also illustrate declines in
value - whether in nominal or real terms. Some belle epoque
masters have yet to regain the prices achieved during
the 1880s; paintings by Alma-Tadema and his contemporaries
for many years were an embarassment rather an embodiment
of a million dollars.
William Baumol's landmark 1986 'Unnatural Value: Or Art
as a Floating Crap Game' in the American Economic
Review compared the prices of 500 paintings sold
more than once over a 410 year period (1652 to 1961),
concluding that when inflation is considered fine art
returned a mere 0.55% per annum.
Subsequent research by Mei & Moses indicated that
over the past 50 years fine art provided an average annual
return after inflation of 8.2%, somewhat less than the
8.9% annualised return of the Standard & Poor's 500
Stock Index. A Guercino, Klimt, Kokoschka or even a Warhol
is of course a much more pleasing wall decoration than
a share of IBM, Bond Corporation or BHP.
John Picard Stein's 1977 'The Monetary Appreciation of
Paintings' in the Journal of Political Economy
offered an even bleaker view for economic rationalists,
arguing that on average, fine art provides a net return
for durable services (less insurance and maintenance costs,
adjusted for tax and liquidity considerations) of 1.6%.
Limited supply (eg as Old Masters increasingly migrate
from private hands to institutional collections) and the
canonical status of particular artists/schools means that
some works have exprerienced less volatility than others.
William Goetzmann thus demonstrated that during the post-1990
art market slump Old Masters suffered less (down by 16%)
than contemporary (down 40%) and Impressionist (down 51%)
works.
how much was it worth?
What do the figures mean?
Determining past purchasing values is notoriously difficult.
Points of entry into literature on prices, incomes and
purchasing power include John McCusker's How much
is that in real money?: a historical price index for use
as a deflator of money values in the economy of the United
States (Worcester: American Antiquarian Society 2001)
and Brian Mitchell's European historical statistics,
1750-1975 (London: Macmillan 1980). EH.Net offers
indicators
of the comparative value of US money - Purchasing
Power of the Dollar, 1665 - Present and What
is the Relative Value? Five Ways to Compare the Worth
of a United States Dollar, 1789 - Present - along
with indicators of the purchasing power of the UK pound
1264-2002, UK average earnings and prices 1264-2002 and
the annual real and nominal GDP for the UK 1086-2000.
For a European converter prior to 1700 see the Marteau
project's Early 18th-Century Currency Converter.
The UC Davis Agricultural History Center site
features data for several foodstuffs and non-foodstuffs
for Istanbul 1469-1914, prices in Paris 1500-1870 and
some prices and wages in Spain 1500-1800. There is no
online value converter for Australia and New Zealand.
More vivid illustrations of value are provided by some
micro-histories
Fran
Beauman in The Pineapple, King of Fruits (London:
Chatto & Windus 2005) for example notes that once
all the expenses of a glasshouse, a stove (and associated
garden boy to tend it full-time) and a stock of costly
pineapple plants are considered the cost of a single English-raised
pineapple in the second half of the eighteenth century
was about £80 (perhaps £5,000 in today's money).
For the same money an art lover could buy a Canaletto,
with change left over for a Vermeer or two.
Shopping in the Renaissance (New Haven: Yale
Uni Press 2005) by Evelyn Welch. At a more elevated level
insights are offered by Mary Hollingsworth's analysis
in The Cardinal’s Hat: Money, Ambition and Housekeeping
in a Renaissance Court (London: Profile 2004) of
the account books of Renaissance grandee Ippolito d'Este,
party animal and second son of Lucretia Borgia.
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