- Alts & Ends by Altan Insights
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- Yo, Adrian! I flipped it!
Yo, Adrian! I flipped it!
Sylvester Stallone might be on Patek's naughty list.
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Welcome to Alts & Ends, your lively guide to collectible market happenings. In this action-packed edition, we examine the first half of the year in watch auctions, updates on the markets for “liquid” assets, and the latest chess moves from Fanatics.
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If We Could Turn Back Time
Well-heeled horological buffs cast their bids for treasured timepieces over the last week in New York, doing battle for the finest craftsmanship from Patek Philippe, Rolex, Audemars Piguet, and Richard Mille, among others. Across the three major auction houses, New York sales totaled $58.5, with one event at Christie’s to follow on Friday. Through nearly the first half of the year, the houses have combined to sell $269 million in watches globally.
Despite the time’s persistent and unjudging presence at the top of our screens as we scroll, collectors still covet the most prestigious and complex tools utilized in its measurement.
Volumes are large but falling. That $269 million total in watch-specific events across houses is down 11% from the same period last year.
Sotheby’s delivered the lowest total volume at $71 million but also the only year-over-year gain (2%). It was also the only house to deliver an increase in average price.
Christie’s experienced a 12% drop in sales, but the house generated the highest volume ($106 million) by a comfortable margin, with one June event still to come.
Phillips has seen the largest decline in volume, falling 20%. Average prices at the house dropped 30%, slumping like Kyrie Irving against the Celtics since he stomped on Lucky the Leprechaun.
Key stat: Six-figure auction sales (in USD terms) across houses are down 20% from the same period last year, while seven-figure sales are down 32%.
Phillips flailing but still formidable? Though Phillips may play third wheel to Sotheby’s and Christie’s persistent dance for art market dominance, its status in the watch market commands the spotlight like Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze in the last dance of the season at Kellerman’s.
But do 2024’s challenges signal a return to the background? Are we putting baby back in a corner? Perhaps not. The house continues to command high-end consignment.
Phillips has recorded 11 seven-figure sales to date in 2024, just one off its pace from 2023 and one higher than Christie’s. Its six-figure sale tally is similarly 82% higher than Sotheby’s and 18% higher than Christie’s, despite selling 52% and 13% fewer lots respectively. Despite the high-end composition of Phillips auctions, the house’s total volume and average sale price were both down more than competitors, while six-figure and seven-figure sales were also down modestly from the first half of 2023.
High end falls hardest. While the watch market has broadly floundered over the last two years, the high end of the market has experienced the greatest suffering over the last 12 months.
A WatchCharts index tracking watches priced between $50,001 and $100,000 is down 9.6%. Every other price-based index, each representing a lower value range, is down by less.
The Bloomberg x Subdial Watch Index, which generally skews toward blue-chip, flagship models, is down 10.8% over the last year. Meanwhile, Subdial’s Entry Level 100 is down just 2.7%.
Watches in those higher-end indices, while not the seven-figure auction fare, do comprise the core of auction events.
Not so Sly. Items from Sylvester Stallone’s collection highlighted last week’s Sotheby’s event, with a Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime selling for $5,400,000 against a $2,500,000 to $5,000,000 estimate. The watch was never worn and remained in its original packaging, which is a choice generally more emblematic of a flipper than a pure collector. It’s believed Stallone owned the watch for about two years.
Oh, Rocky. Tsk, tsk.
Loyal customers wait ages for the opportunity to purchase such rarities from Patek Philippe. Patek President Thierry Stern expressed his displeasure with the sale, telling WatchPro, “It’s not fair for a client that may have been waiting for the piece for many years and then sees it being sold.”
Are the Italian Stallion’s days of receiving retail access to Pateks numbered? It’s not so much the selling itself, it’s the flagrant lack of discretion and the heavily touted nature of the sale. Put differently: an Ivan Drago punch to the kidney would land with more subtlety than Stallone’s sale of the Grandmaster Chime.
Yo, Adrian! I flipped it!
Bearish Bottles
It’s been tough sledding for the wine and spirits market over the last twelve months as the bullish momentum that propelled growth throughout 2021 and 2022 has diminished, giving way to the bears. The shift comes at a turbulent time for the once-thriving market as a complex landscape marked by declining prices and changing customer preferences has forced a rotation into new corners of the industry.
Sour grapes. Liv-Ex tracks 12 fine wine indices, and through May, every single index is in the red year-to-date. In the case of the Liv-Ex 50, the gains earned between the second half of 2020 through late 2022 have been given back as the index is now down more than -18% over the past two years.
The regional indices are also feeling pain. The Bordeaux 40 is down -5% YTD while the Burgundy 150 has slipped -7.5%. In 2024, the average price of 2010 Lafite Rothschild, which closed 2023 among the top ten most-traded wines on Liv-Ex, has fallen below $800. In 2022, the average price at auction for the 2010 vintage reached $930/bottle and closed in 2023 with an average of $843.
The bargain barrel. Despite index returns that portray a market on ice, there are signs of a rotation into more affordable investment options. Produced in the scenic Italian countryside, Sassicaia has risen to Super Tuscan status and inserted itself into the mix of investment-grade vino. While by no means a “cheap” wine when compared to the retail industry, Sassicaia is a budget-friendly option relative to the prices realized by wines of similar stature. It’s also one of the most-traded wines on Liv-Ex and a staple on the auction block. The 2019 vintage, considered one of the strongest to come out of the 2010s, has experienced an increase in its average sale price. In 2023, more than 160 bottles were sold at public auction for an average price per bottle of $272. Through the first five months of 2024, that average has climbed to $280 while volume has dropped to less than 40 bottles sold.
The Liv-Ex Power 100 is an annual ranking of the most powerful brands in the fine wine market, based on criteria such as trading performance and market presence. Between 2022 and 2023, Opus One climbed more than 80 spots in the ranking, closing the year as the fourth most powerful wine and the highest-ranked wine produced in the United States. The 2019 vintage from the Napa Valley estate was one of two California wines to close 2023 among the top ten most-traded wines by value on Liv-Ex. Through the first 70 bottles sold at auction in 2024, prices are up 4% over their 2023 average. The other Cali vino that made the top ten in 2023 was Screaming Eagle’s 2020 vintage. The Napa cult favorite has experienced a significant decline in price through the first five months of 2024, with the average price-per-bottle down -17% YoY.
Keep the spirit. The overall market performance for whisky has followed a similar trajectory to wine. Through Q1, the Rare Whisky 101 Macallan Index is down -7% YTD while Karuizawa and Bowmore have tumbled -9% and -6% respectively.
Despite declining price performance, there are signs that the market still has confidence in these ‘liquid’ assets. In 2022, the wine investment platform Vinovest announced the creation of Whiskeyvest, which allowed investors to buy, sell, and store investment-grade whiskey casks through their site. Their whiskey business has since merged under the Vinovest umbrella, but the growth has been noteworthy. Per Vinovest co-founder Anthony Zhang, the company’s whiskey sales have increased from $0 to $15 million over the last 12 months. In November 2022, Vinovest offered an investment opportunity in a cask of high-rye bourbon priced at $1,415 per barrel. The investment was sold a mere seven months later for $1,850/barrel, delivering a 30.7% return to investors.
There’s still money to be made in wine and spirits. It’s just a little more challenging to make that money in 2024, as is common in theme across nearly all collectible categories.
Photo: Fanatics Collect and Sotheby’s
PWC-See You Later
A little more than a year after acquiring PWCC, Fanatics is set to introduce major changes to the platform, while also reshaping its competitive position in the secondary card market for the future.
What’s happening? The PWCC brand will soon cease to exist. The platform will be rebranded and relaunched as Fanatics Collect, offering the same services as PWCC (with a reimagined fixed-price marketplace), folding in auction offerings from Fanatics Auctions, and eventually offering new services like peer-to-peer trading.
No surprise. The PWCC acquisition felt like an opportunistic play that would provide both infrastructure and an existing audience of collectors and consignors for Fanatics’ entry into the secondary card markets. It was unlikely, though, that Fanatics would eschew the power of its own brand for long. The rebrand offers a fresh start to a PWCC platform that has effectively been in limbo a year.
But that’s not all. The more surprising news was the announcement of a partnership between Fanatics Collect and Sotheby’s to bring high-end cards to auction at the latter.
PWCC’s Premier Auction business had faded significantly in 2023, both due to the retreat of modern cards and share loss; six-figure sales declined 66% at PWCC last year. The new partnership will offer high-end sports cards to the existing clientele at Sotheby’s, leveraging the house’s prestige and its expertise in conferring that prestige to the assets it sells. The move should also create synergies with the house’s game-worn offerings.
For Fanatics, the company can now offer a differentiated approach in recapturing high-end market share, rather than simply trying to reignite the PWCC Premier machine.
Not so fast. Sotheby’s has delivered many of the top game-worn results on record, but it won’t elevate the card market on name alone with so many established and accomplished existing players in the space. Elevation of results will require expansion of audience through first-class marketing and cross-category promotion.
Results Round-Up
Grey Flannel closed its Summer Games auction, led by a $393,354 Wilt Chamberlain Lakers jersey from the 1968-69 season and a pair of Air Jordan 1 Prototypes which sold for $325,085. The prototypes had no known game-use, but their style was the same seen in an iconic Jordan photograph.
Goldin sold a pair of photomatched Nike Kobe 1 sneakers for $81,740. A Bills jersey of the late O.J. Simpson matched to three games sold for $74,420.
The last sneaker auction from the Dare to Dream Collection at RM Sotheby’s totaled $577,860, bringing the sneaker total across events to over $1.8 million. The top sale last week was a pair of “What The Doernbecher” Air Jordan 1s, which sold for $67,200. Each year, children at the OHSU Doernbecher Children’s Hospital design Nike sneakers that are released to the public to raise funds. The “What The” Jordan 1s combined some of the program’s most memorable designs.
The original auction of 17 pairs grossed $565k for an average price of $33k, making the result last week a significant increase in value.
The Crosby-Schøyen Codex, one of the earliest known books in existence, sold for £3,065,000, hammering within its £2,000,000 - £3,000,000 estimate before fees.
Photo: Goldin
Nobody looks back fondly on the Jordan Wizards era. If the ‘98 Bulls Championship was The Last Dance, the Wizards era felt like the club after the lights turn on. Still, Jordan memorabilia of all kinds is coveted to some degree, and Wizards jerseys are no different.
At Goldin last weekend, a Jordan Wizards jersey from December of 2002 sold for $80,520. The authentication was quintuple-bagged, with photomatches from both MeiGray and Resolution, autograph authentication from JSA and PSA/DNA, and an Upper Deck hologram. Why not add Sports Investors and Beckett to that Infinity Gauntlet of authenticity?
The jersey previously sold at Goldin in 2018 (with all of the same authentication) for $46,800, appreciating at a rate of 9% annually gross of buyer’s premium, but only 6% net of BP. One year earlier, in 2017, the jersey sold for $24,900 at Heritage.
 Photo: Julien’s | 6/12 - 6/14 - Julien’s Hollywood Legends: Danger, Disaster & Disco
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 Photo: Sotheby’s | 6/13 - Sotheby’s Whisky & Whiskey | Rare Scotch, Bourbon & Rye
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 Photo: Golden Age | 6/16 - Golden Age Scotty Cameron Only
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Also on the slate:
Closing 6/12- RR Auction Fine Autograph & Artifacts
Closing 6/12 - Sotheby’s Handbags & Accessories
Closing 6/13 - Heritage Icons Photography Auction
Closing 6/13 - Christie’s Handbags Online: The New York Edit
Closing 6/13 - 6/16 - Heritage Long Beach Expo US Coins Signature Auction
Closing 6/14 - Christie’s Watches Online: The New York Edit
Closing 6/14 - Sotheby’s Finest & Rarest Wines Featuring The Robert Bookman Collection and Legends from a Long-Time Oenophile
Closing 6/14 - 6/15 - Heritage Space Exploration Signature Auction
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