# The Object With No Price > Of 204 published records in this archive, 85 state that no price for the object exists. A sale that failed is the rarest of the reasons. > The Study - 2026-08-29 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/the-object-with-no-price/ ## Key points - Of the 204 published records in this archive, 85 contain an explicit statement that no price for the object exists. That is 42 per cent, and it is a fact about the objects rather than a gap in the research. - A sale that failed is the rarest of the reasons. Far more often the object was never offered at all, because it is inalienable state property, because it has moved only by inheritance, or because it changed hands by private treaty, where no hammer falls and nothing has to be published. - The Diana and Minerva Commode has carried exactly one price in 253 years, and Thomas Chippendale wrote it. He invoiced Harewood 86 pounds on delivery in 1773, and the object has passed by inheritance ever since. - A withdrawal destroys a price that was about to exist. The Nero and Augustus tazza was catalogued at Christie's in New York on 6 February 2025 at an estimate of 2 to 3 million dollars, then withdrawn and sold privately. No hammer, premium or buyer is public. - Of 194 recorded transactions across the archive, 112 carry a hammer figure. The remaining 82 record a change of hands that happened at a price nobody printed. ## Forty-two per cent of this archive reports no price ## A sale that failed is the rarest reason, not the commonest ## Withdrawal removes a price that was about to exist ## Seven ways an object ends up with no price ## The commode that has only ever had an invoice ## What the absence is actually evidence of ## How to read a record that reports no price ## Why this archive is free to read A number is the easiest thing in a catalogue to repeat and the hardest to verify, which is why an archive that reports prices has to be willing to report their absence with the same precision. Eighty-five of our published records say that no price exists, and each of those sentences cost more work than a plausible figure would have. The discipline is worth it, because the alternative is a corpus in which the objects that never came to market quietly acquire prices anyway, invented by repetition and impossible to trace back to anyone who paid them. ## Questions **Why do so many art objects have no recorded price?** Because most transfers of ownership in this field are not auctions. Objects move by inheritance, gift, bequest, private treaty sale, tax settlement and state vesting, and none of those mechanisms is obliged to publish a figure. In this archive, 85 of 204 published records state explicitly that no price exists. **What does it mean when an auction lot is withdrawn?** It means the seller or the auction house has removed the lot before it is sold. Under the Uniform Commercial Code an auction is presumed to be with reserve, and in a sale with reserve the goods may be withdrawn at any time until the auctioneer announces completion. Christie's conditions reserve the same right, before or during the sale. A withdrawn lot leaves its published estimate behind but produces no result. **What is the difference between a bought-in lot and a withdrawn lot?** A withdrawn lot is removed before it is offered, so no bidding takes place. A bought-in lot is offered, fails to reach its reserve, and goes unsold back to the seller. Both end with no sale price, but a bought-in lot at least records that the market was asked and declined, which is information a withdrawal does not give you. **Can an inflation-adjusted figure be used as a price?** Not as a historical fact. An inflation adjustment is a derived number produced now, not a sum anyone paid then, and it should be labelled that way. The same applies to insurance valuations and to estimates, which are opinions formed before a sale rather than records of one. **Does having no price mean an object has no value?** No. An absent price is evidence about ownership structure rather than about value. Objects with no price cluster among state property, long-held family and institutional collections, and objects whose transfers were all private. The Hope Diamond has never been sold at public auction, and that tells you about the Smithsonian rather than about the stone. ## Sources - [1] Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, Uniform Commercial Code section 2-328, Sale by Auction. Read for the presumption that an auction is with reserve, the auctioneer's power to withdraw the goods at any time until completion of the sale is announced, and the completion of a sale by the fall of the hammer. - [2] Harewood House Trust, object page for the Diana and Minerva Commode. The holding institution's own record, giving Thomas Chippendale as maker, 1773 as the date of delivery, the State Dressing Room as the room it was made for, and 86 pounds as the cost at delivery. - [3] Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection API record for object 199659, the Vitellius Tazza, accession 45.60.58a-h. The holding museum's structured record for the tazza illustrated here. - [4] Christie's, 'Inside the silver collection of Selim and Mary Zilkha', specialist feature for the sale of 6 February 2025 at which the Nero and Augustus tazza was catalogued as the top lot before being withdrawn. - [5] Christie's Hong Kong Limited, Conditions of Sale, English text of 8 February 2022, read as the source PDF. Paragraph 2(a) reserves to Christie's the absolute discretion to withdraw or divide any lot, and the glossary defines a reserve as the confidential amount below which the house will not sell a lot. - [6] Milo Keynes, 'The Portland Vase: Sir William Hamilton, Josiah Wedgwood and the Darwins', Notes and Records of the Royal Society, for the vase's ownership under the Dukes of Portland, the loan to the British Museum and the Museum's eventual purchase.