# The Estimate Is the Newest Part of an Auction Record > Of 214 auction results in this archive, 52 carry a published pre-sale estimate. None of the 29 dated before 1900 do, and the estimate began life as a loose sheet that was never meant to survive. > The Study - 2026-09-12 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/the-estimate-is-the-newest-part-of-an-auction-record/ ## Key points - Across 214 auction results in 130 published records, 52 carry a pre-sale estimate that was actually published. Not one of the 29 results dated before 1900 carries one. - Of the 48 dated results before 1970, exactly one records a figure, and reading it shows it is not a house estimate at all. It is what Aurel Stein privately decided he was willing to pay. - The survival rate climbs from 12 per cent for results dated in the 1970s and 1980s to 67 per cent from 1990 and 72 per cent since 2010. The change is in the catalogue, not in the market. - The University of Pennsylvania, describing its own run of more than a thousand Sotheby's catalogues, records that catalogues before the late 1980s generally do not print estimates in the body, and that estimates were printed separately and inserted loose. A loose sheet is the part of a catalogue that does not survive. - This archive records a missing estimate in four different ways, and they are four different facts. Only one of them means that no estimate ever existed. ## A price and the estimate beside it are not the same age ## When the estimate appears in the record, by the date of the sale ## The single figure in this archive before 1970 turns out not to be an estimate ## The buyer's premium of 1975 changed what a catalogue had to disclose ## The estimate began as a loose sheet, which is why it is missing ## Four ways of saying there was no estimate, and only one of them means it ## What to do with a price that has no estimate beside it ## Why this archive is free to read Treat the estimate as a document with a date of its own. It entered the printed record in the same decade as the buyer's premium, it was carried on a sheet that was never meant to last, and for most of the sales in this archive it was never there to be lost. A price with no estimate beside it is not an incomplete record. It is a record from before the estimate was something anyone wrote down for the public, and the honest thing to write in the field is which of those two situations you are in. ## Questions **When did auction houses start publishing pre-sale estimates?** Printed estimates became normal in the body of a catalogue only in the late 1980s. The University of Pennsylvania's finding aid for its Sotheby's catalogue collection records that earlier catalogues generally do not print estimates in the body, and that estimates were printed separately and inserted loose. In this archive the share of auction results carrying a published estimate goes from 12 per cent for sales in the 1970s and 1980s to 67 per cent from 1990. **Why do so many old auction records have no estimate?** Because the estimate was usually a separate sheet rather than part of the printed catalogue. Loose inserts fall out, get discarded at binding and are rarely digitised, so the figure does not survive alongside the lot description. In this archive not one of the 29 auction results dated before 1900 carries a published estimate. **When was the buyer's premium introduced?** In 1975, by Sotheby's and Christie's in London, at 10 per cent, in addition to the existing 10 per cent seller's commission. The figure and the date were stated in the House of Commons on 8 March 1983 during a debate on abolishing the premium. **What is the difference between a reserve and an estimate?** A reserve is the confidential minimum the seller will accept and is agreed between seller and auctioneer. An estimate is a published range that the house circulates before the sale. The reserve is older than the printed estimate by centuries, which is why early records can show evidence of a floor price with no estimate anywhere. **Does a missing estimate mean there was no estimate?** Not necessarily, and the wording matters. This archive distinguishes not applicable, meaning there was no sale or no estimate to record, from not published in the sources consulted, meaning a figure may have existed and could not be reached, from estimate upon request, meaning a figure existed and was deliberately withheld from the catalogue. ## Sources - [1] University of Pennsylvania, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, finding aid for Sotheby's auction catalogs, 1931-2025, Print Collection 42. Biography/History note, read in full 12 September 2026: 'Catalogs before the late 1980s generally do not include printed price estimates in the body of the catalog. These were often printed separately and inserted in the catalogue.' - [2] Buyers' Premium (Abolition), HC Deb 8 March 1983, Hansard, historic Hansard text at parliament.uk. Andrew Faulds on the 1975 introduction of a 10 per cent buyer's premium by Sotheby's and Christie's in addition to the 10 per cent seller's commission. - [3] Robin Halwas Limited, bibliographical descriptions of art auction sale catalogues, including Sotheby's London sales of 23 and 26 June 1978 ('List of estimates loosely inserted') and Christie, Manson and Woods, London, 12 December 1980 ('Estimate list loosely inserted'). A trade bibliographical source, cited for the physical description of individual copies. - [4] National Museum of Ireland, Collections Online, object entry for the Fonthill Vase, registration DC:1882.3941, and the Museum's own account of the 1882 purchase. - [5] Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, 'Messiah Violin, by Stradivari', museum page for the 1716 instrument. - [6] Frances Wood and Mark Barnard, The Diamond Sutra: The Story of the World's Earliest Dated Printed Book (London: British Library, 2010), for the 1907 acquisition at Mogao and the terms Stein recorded.