The world may be in a state of Covid-19 chaos, with growing unemployment, a spiraling death rate, and no vaccine on the immediate horizon, but someone just paid $3.6 million for a pre-owned wristwatch, $9.2 million for a fancy blue diamond ring, $84.6 million for a painting, and $795,000 for a rare bottle of whiskey.
And $615,000 for a pair of used Nike sneakers worn by Michael Jordan in 1984.
While retailers across America shutter their doors or open them only to serve a disappointing trickle of customers, auction houses have become virtual one-stop shopping destinations for people buying luxury goods across all categories, thanks to Zoom previews, online video condition reports, and easy online bidding.
One particularly hot category is watches.
Last week, Sotheby’s reported an increase of 30% in new bidders and buyers across all sales categories so far this year, saying that 30% of all bidders are now under 40. The company’s online auctions for 2020 have exceeded $285 million, three times its full-year online results for 2019. Its live, streaming auctions in June and July achieved $1.2 billion in sales, and the category attracting the highest number of new clients, at 42%, has been wristwatches.
In July alone, Sotheby’s sold a Rolex Daytona “John Player Special” Ref. 6264 for more than $1.5 million, a record price for that model, and Christie’s sold a rare Patek Philippe Ref. 5033 minute repeater for $1,95 million. In June, Phillips, in association with Bacs & Russo, drew $3.6 million for a Patek Ref. 1518 from the collection of watch industry titan, Jean-Claude Biver.
At that sale, a live auction held in Geneva, seven watches sold for more than $1 million, including another John Player Special, for $1.1 million. (A John Player Special is a rare Rolex Daytona in yellow gold with a black dial, made by Rolex from the 1960s to the ’80s to commemorate John Player & Sons’ sponsorship of the Lotus F1 racing team.) The record price for a watch sold at auction is $31 million.
“In general, prices all over are strong—but watches in particular,” says Sotheby’s Geneva head of watches Mikael Wallhagen. “We have reached a lot of new clients with our smaller online sales and made our sales more accessible. And,” he concludes, “to be honest, bidding in auctions can be an addiction.”
Especially in a time of pandemic. Participating in a virtual auction is a way of relieving the boredom brought on by social isolation, and it’s a chance to catch up on retail therapy. “Under the global lockdown situation, people have had more time to explore new fields of interest and spend more time behind the screen to bid in auctions,” says Wallhagen.
Also driving the boom is a rising level of enticing inventory, as enthusiasts cull their collections, resulting in the availability of long-sought-after pieces that, despite the times, are coveted by collectors at any cost. (The industry calls these “grail” watches.) All this dovetails with the growing number of younger auction clients, who are quite comfortable bidding online, even for high-ticket items.