(Photo credit: Sotheby’s)
The latest auction results show provenance is adding value to a point dumbfounding even auction houses.
Elton John's 18-karat gold Daytona with a leopard-print dial, a discontinued model first released at Basel Fair in 2014, fetched $176,400 last week. Sotheby's had the top estimate pegged at $60,000.
Over two and a half weeks, Sir John and his husband are offloading around 900 items they collected over the decades. So far, the sales have outperformed high estimates by over 1 million dollars.
The disparity between estimates and what collectors are willing to pay is the latest sign of the growing demand for items with provenance, including watches. Last year, Sotheby’s sale of Freddie Mercury’s belongings tripled expectations, delivering a total of $50.4 million. A plastic quartz Seiko sold for $45,000.