# What a Repeat Sale Actually Measures > When the same object returns to a saleroom the price series looks like an index of the object. In this archive it is an index of the catalogue attribution, and twice it is not a series at all. > The Study - 2026-08-24 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/what-a-repeat-sale-actually-measures/ ## Key points - Of 198 records here, 133 carry an auction result and 57 carry two or more; across 40 records with at least two dated appearances, the median interval between consecutive sales is 12 years. - The Taking of Christ sold twice at Dowell's in Edinburgh eleven months apart, for 8 guineas in June 1921 and 5 guineas in May 1922. The object did not change. It was catalogued as a Honthorst both times, and the price fell. - The Turner sold at Dreweatts in April 2024 as a follower of Julius Caesar Ibbetson for GBP 524.80 with fees, and at Sotheby's fifteen months later for a GBP 1.5m hammer against a GBP 200,000 to 300,000 estimate. A cleaning had revealed the signature. - In 13 of the 40 multi-sale records the rows explicitly record a change of attribution, condition or physical state between appearances, which means a third of the series in this corpus are not comparing like with like. - The Aldobrandini tazze are the case that breaks the method outright: between the 1861 sale of the intact set and the modern sales of single dishes, the set was gilded, six feet were replaced by a forger and the emperors were shuffled on to the wrong dishes. ## The number everyone wants from a repeat sale ## The same object, the same name, a lower price ## The same object, a new name, a different market ## The longest version of the same story ## How often the object is not the constant ## What the object was called when nobody was looking ## How to use a repeat sale without being fooled by it A repeat sale looks like the one clean measurement in a market with almost no clean measurements, which is exactly why it is trusted more than it deserves. In this corpus the object is rarely the constant. The Taking of Christ fell from 8 guineas to 5 in eleven months while remaining, unknown to everyone in the room, a Caravaggio. The Turner rose from GBP 524.80 to a GBP 1.5m hammer in fifteen months because someone cleaned it and found a signature. Between those two sits every price series that gets quoted as evidence of what art returns. Establish the catalogue name and the physical extent at each appearance before you subtract one figure from the other, or the number you produce is the price of a piece of scholarship wearing the costume of a rate of return. ## Questions **Does a repeat sale show how much an artwork has appreciated?** Only if the object and its attribution were the same at both sales. In this archive 13 of the 40 multi-sale records document a change of attribution, condition or physical extent between appearances, so roughly a third of the available series are not comparing like with like. The Aldobrandini tazze are the clearest failure: the 1861 figure is for the intact set of twelve, every later figure is for a single dish. **How often does an object come back to auction?** Across the 40 records here with two or more dated auction appearances, the median interval between consecutive sales is 12 years and the mean is 35. The distribution has a very long tail. The Canaletto Bucintoro ran 242 years between Langford's in June 1751, where it made GBP 34 13s, and Ader Tajan in December 1993. The Frans Post ran 216 years, from 160 francs at Paillet and Delaroche in 1809 to 6m dollars at Sotheby's in May 2025. Velazquez's Juan de Pareja ran 169 years between two Christie's sales, 39 guineas in March 1801 and GBP 2,310,000 in November 1970. **Why was the Salvator Mundi sold in a contemporary art sale?** Christie's placed it as lot 9B in the Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale, sale 14995, on 15 November 2017. That is a decision about which buyers would be in the room rather than a statement about the picture, and it is a good illustration of how much of a reported price is produced by the sale's construction rather than by the object. **Is a private sale figure comparable to an auction result?** No, and this archive keeps them apart. A private treaty sale carries no buyer's premium, so there is no hammer and premium to separate, and the price is disclosed only if the parties choose. The 33m dollars attached to the Third Imperial Easter Egg comes from press reporting of a Wartski transaction that no party disclosed, and it is recorded here to prevent it being read as a result. ## Sources - [1] National Gallery of Ireland, online collection, object 2882, 'The Taking of Christ'. Institutional provenance entry giving Dowell's, Edinburgh, 25 June 1921, lot 30, 8 guineas to John Kent Richardson, and Dowell's, Edinburgh, 3 May 1922, lot 480, 5 guineas to the Hon. Major Charles Noel. - [2] National Gallery of Ireland, 'How did a masterpiece by Caravaggio end up in a Dublin dining room?'. Source for the Honthorst misattribution and the misspelling in the Mattei archives repeated on every successive document. - [3] Sotheby's, lot 28, 'The Rising Squall, Hot Wells, from St Vincent's Rock, Bristol', Old Master and 19th Century Paintings Evening Auction, London, 2 July 2025, L25033. Catalogue provenance printing the Dreweatts sale of 4 April 2024, lot 23, as follower of Julius Caesar Ibbetson, and the estimate of GBP 200,000 to 300,000. - [4] The Art Newspaper, 4 July 2025, 'GBP 500 Turner painting sells for almost GBP 2m in Sotheby's Old Master sale'. Source for the GBP 1.5m hammer, the figure of about GBP 1.9m with fees, and the GBP 524.80 with fees paid at Dreweatts in 2024. - [5] Dianne Dwyer Modestini, 'History of the Salvator Mundi', Salvator Mundi Revisited. The restorer's own account, giving the 1958 Cook Collection sale at 45 pounds, about 120 dollars, and the 2005 New Orleans catalogue entry as lot 664, After Leonardo da Vinci, estimate 1,200 to 1,800 dollars. - [6] Scott Reyburn, 'Five years since the $450m Salvator Mundi sale: a first-hand account of the nonsensical auction', The Art Newspaper, 15 November 2022. Source for the 400m hammer, the 450.3m total with premium, the estimate in the region of 100m and the eighteen minutes of bidding. - [7] Christie's, lot 9B, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Salvator Mundi, Live Auction 14995, Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale, New York, 15 November 2017. Source for the lot number and the sale in which the picture was placed. The page is bot-walled to fetchers and was read in a browser. - [8] Iconotheca, records.json, the published corpus of 198 researched object records with hammer and premium separated on every auction row. All counts and intervals in this article are computed from the published auction results of that corpus.