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Your daily brief on the auction and collectibles market. Today: a record-breaking weekend for watches, a $20M Christie's Design sale, the South Asian art market still smashing records, a question mark over luxury handbags, and luxury stocks ripping on a US–Iran deal.
Good morning. It's Monday, June 15. I'm Sharon, and this is Open Bid from ALT/FNDATA.
We start with watches, where the weekend delivered a remarkable string of auction records. Phillips held the highest-grossing watch auction in US history. Its New York sale pulled in 75.8 million dollars across two days, and every single lot sold.
The standout was an F.P. Journe Chronomètre à Résonance, which sold for 13.9 million dollars. That is now the highest price ever paid at auction for a watch by an independent watchmaker. And it caps a fast climb for the brand. In the ALT/FNDATA database, the previous high for an F.P. Journe was 10.8 million dollars, at Phillips last December.
And the records were not only at Phillips. Christie's Important Watches in New York totaled 17.1 million dollars and was 99% sold by lot. It was led by an ultra-rare Patek Philippe, the reference 3448G known as the "Red Dot," which sold for 2.76 million dollars.
Strong results in design, too. Christie's Design sale in New York totaled 20.2 million dollars, 89% sold by lot, and 140% of its low estimate. The house pointed to sustained momentum in the global market for collectible design.
The South Asian art market keeps setting records. At Christie's in London, the collection of the tea company Goodricke was led by a 3.8 million pound painting by Ganesh Pyne, and works by Abanindranath Tagore and Kattingeri Krishna Hebbar also set new auction highs. It is the latest South Asian sale to smash through expectations.
One for the car collectors. A class-winning 1954 Maserati A6GCS race car, campaigned throughout the 1954 racing season, is heading to auction through Broad Arrow during Monterey Car Week in August, with an estimate of nearly 3 million dollars. For context, the last 1954 A6GCS in the ALT/FNDATA database sold for 2.3 million dollars at RM Sotheby's, so this estimate marks a step up.
A cooler note from the luxury market. The Wall Street Journal asks whether the luxury handbag's heyday is ending. It points to an 8 billion dollar slide in sales, a sign that attitudes toward designer bags are shifting. But our own data shows the split clearly. The single highest handbag result in the ALT/FNDATA database over the past year is a rare Hermès Birkin 20, in matte alligator, that sold at Christie's for nearly 490,000 dollars. The middle of the market may be cooling, but the trophy end is as strong as ever.
Two quick moves in the business of luxury. A new fund backed by LVMH and a group of professional athletes, including Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott and the Pacers' Tyrese Haliburton, is putting nearly 50 million dollars into the activewear label Rhoback. It is a sign of luxury money pushing deeper into performance and athleisure wear. And in fashion, sources tell WWD that the French designer Bruno Sialelli, who made his name at Lanvin, has joined Balenciaga's studio, just ahead of the debut of its new creative director, Pierpaolo Piccioli. It is an early look at the team Piccioli is assembling as he takes over one of Kering's flagship houses.
To the markets, where one story is driving everything. US stock futures jumped after the United States and Iran reached an interim deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the shipping route the war had threatened. That deal is the engine behind a powerful luxury rally.
Here is where the European luxury names opened this morning, against Friday's close. They opened sharply higher, then gave back some of it. LVMH, ticker MC on Euronext Paris, opened at 535 EUR, up almost 5%, though it has since eased to about a 1% gain. Kering opened up about 4.3%, and Hermès up about 4%. In Zurich, Richemont and Swatch each opened up about 2%. In London, Burberry and Watches of Switzerland opened up 1 to 2%.
One footnote from Friday's SpaceX listing: its blockbuster debut is already rippling out. South Korea's financial watchdog has widened a review of the broker Mirae Asset Securities over a failed allocation of SpaceX shares.
And the art world is still mourning David Hockney, who died last week at 88. Tributes have poured in from across the field, from the artist Tracey Emin to the former Tate director Nicholas Serota.
On the calendar, Sotheby's Important Watches caps a remarkable run of watch sales this week. And the RM Sotheby's Sealed auction, featuring a 1969 Lamborghini Miura, closes on June 17.
That's it on Open Bid for today, Monday, June 15. Closing Price publishes this evening at 5 PM Eastern, and our weekly Art Market show publishes tomorrow.
For more insights on the top stories in today's Open Bid, check out the ALT/FNDATA market index and datasets, which cover the secondary-market signals behind the luxury names we follow. You can start for free in our data sandbox. To get started, reach us on our website, or by email at info@altfndata.com.
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I'm Sharon, from ALT/FNDATA. I'll talk with you in the next episode.
