How to read this. Every figure compares the hammer price with the
middle of the published estimate range, as a ratio. A median of
1.20x means the typical lot sold twenty percent above the midpoint
of its guide. Ratios are used rather than differences so a lot at
$10,000 and one at $1,000,000 count equally, and the median is used
rather than the average so a single runaway lot cannot move a house's
headline number.
Selling above estimate is not a mistake. Houses set estimates
deliberately low to draw bidders in, so a high ratio describes a
commercial choice rather than a valuation failure. What it tells you as
a bidder is how much of a premium over the guide you should expect to
pay, which is the number the catalogue never gives you.
What is excluded. Buyer's premium, because estimates are quoted
against the hammer, and lots that did not sell, because there is no
price to compare. No currency conversion is applied anywhere: estimate
and hammer are quoted in the same currency on the same lot, so the
ratio is already free of exchange rates.
Year by year
How far above the guide the typical lot has settled, season by season.
This tracks the market, not the cataloguing: a falling ratio means
bidding cooled relative to where the houses set their guides.
Coverage, stated plainly. A house appears only where we hold at
least thirty lots carrying both a published estimate and a hammer price.
Two houses in our archive publish results without estimates and so
cannot be measured here at all, and two record only the lots that sold,
which is why their unsold rate reads as not held rather than as zero.
Percentages are of measured lots, not of everything the house has ever
offered.
Last rebuilt 25 Aug 2026.