# The Last Price Is the Oldest Thing in the Record
> Objects here that sit in museums carry a last recorded sale a median 26 years old and a mean of 57. Objects in private hands carry one 8 years old. A price stops the day an object stops being for sale, and the best objects stopped earliest.
> The Study - 2026-09-06
> Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/the-last-price-is-the-oldest-thing-in-the-record/
## Key points
- Across the 88 records in this archive that carry a dated sale, the ones now held by an institution have a last recorded price a median 26 years old and a mean of 57 years. The ones in private hands have a last price a median 8 years old and a mean of 14. It is the same market and the same research standard; the difference is what happened to the object afterwards.
- Twenty-six of the 64 institutionally held records here have not had a price tested in fifty years. Among the 24 privately held ones, one has, and it is an object that no longer exists as a single thing.
- Girl with a Pearl Earring last changed hands in 1881 at the Braams sale in The Hague, bought by Arnoldus Andries des Tombe for two guilders plus a thirty cent commission after Victor de Stuers agreed not to bid against him. The Mauritshuis prints the figure as f2,30. Accounts that quote a single number for that sale are running the hammer and the commission together.
- Bruegel's The Harvesters was sold in Paris on 11 March 1816 for ninety francs and eleven centimes, catalogued as a landscape by a master of the old German school and dated 1546. The painter was Netherlandish, the picture is signed and dated 1565, and it is now one of the best-known paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- A theft freezes a price rather than raising it. The Concert last sold at the Hotel Drouot on 5 December 1892 for 29,000 francs, to an agent bidding for Isabella Stewart Gardner. It was stolen on 18 March 1990 and has not been recovered, so the only price it has ever carried is 134 years old and attaches to an object nobody can produce.
## A price records the last time somebody had to decide what an object was worth
## The two halves of the archive are six decades apart
## Two guilders and thirty cents, in 1881
## Ninety francs and eleven centimes, for a Bruegel catalogued as German
## A theft freezes the price instead of raising it
## One price in three hundred years, and objects that can never have another
## How to read a price with a date on it
## Why this archive is free to read
The market sees an object clearly only while it is moving, and the objects this archive holds have mostly stopped. That is why the price line on a great picture is so often the least current thing on its page, and why the honest thing to print is the sum in the currency of the day with the date beside it. A number from 1881 is not a valuation of Girl with a Pearl Earring. It is a record of the last afternoon on which anyone was obliged to name one, and the reason no one has been obliged since is the whole point.
## Questions
**How much did Girl with a Pearl Earring sell for?**
Two guilders plus a thirty cent commission, at the Braams sale in The Hague in 1881, printed by the Mauritshuis as f2,30. The buyer was Arnoldus Andries des Tombe, who bequeathed it to the Mauritshuis in 1903. There has been no sale since, so that remains the only figure the painting has ever carried.
**Why do museum-held objects have such old prices?**
Because a price is produced by a sale and public collections rarely sell. Of the 88 records here with a dated sale, the 64 in institutions carry a last price a median 26 years old against 8 years for the 24 in private hands, and 26 of those 64 have not been priced in fifty years.
**Is the figure quoted for a famous stolen painting a price?**
No. The Concert is frequently described as the most valuable stolen painting in the world, but no transaction has tested any of the figures attached to it and the object cannot be delivered. Its only recorded price is 29,000 francs at the Hotel Drouot on 5 December 1892.
**Can an old price be converted into a modern equivalent?**
It can be indexed, but the result answers a different question from the one most readers are asking. This archive records the sum in the currency of the sale and declines to publish a conversion, because the conversion depends on the date and index chosen, and because what a work would fetch today is not a function of what it fetched in 1881.
## Sources
- [1] Mauritshuis, The Hague, collection entry for Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring, inv. 670. Source for the 1881 Braams sale, the total printed as f2,30, the purchase by Arnoldus Andries des Tombe and the 1903 bequest to the museum.
- [2] Abbie Vandivere, 'The technical (re-)examination of Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring', Heritage Science 8, art. 26 (2020). Independent second source for the 1881 sale figure, given by the head researcher of the 2018 technical project as two guilders plus a thirty cent commission.
- [3] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection entry for Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Harvesters, accession 19.164. Source for the 1565 signature and date, the 1919 acquisition from Paul Jean Cels through the Rogers Fund, and the museum's description of the 1919 price as extraordinarily low without publishing it.
- [4] Essential Vermeer 5.0, interactive catalogue entry for The Concert. Source for the sale at the Hotel Drouot on 5 December 1892 at 29,000 francs to the agent Fernand Robert bidding for Isabella Stewart Gardner, for the Louvre and National Gallery agents as underbidders, and for the earlier auctions between 1696 and 1892 that carry no recorded price.
- [5] Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, Messiah Violin, by Stradivari, WA1940.112. Source for the 1890 sale by Delphin Alard's heirs through W. E. Hill and Sons to Robert Crawford for 2,600 pounds, and for the violin's status as a collector's instrument rather than a market object.
- [6] The Wellington Collection, object entry for Napoleon as Mars the Peacekeeper, Apsley House. Source for the sequence from the French imperial state through the British government purchase of 1816 and the Prince Regent's gift to the Duke of Wellington, to the transfer of the Wellington Collection to the nation by statute in 1947.