Yesterday, when we published our latest issue of Skate’s Market Notes, we stated that a variety of exchange rates led to mixed reporting on the final sales price of Giacometti’s Walking Man I. These variations have resulted in confusion on whether Giacometti has topped Picasso as the artist with the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction.
In its press release, Sotheby’s states that it “uses HSBC Bank Mid-Market Exchange Rate against Sterling which for today was 1 GBP = 1.6050 USD.” Under this rate, the total sales price for Walking Man I was USD 104,327,006 – clearly ahead of the 2004 sale of Pablo Picasso’s Garçon à la pipe.
Yesterday, we speculated that the mixed reporting could have been a case of journalists inadvertently transposing the digits from Bloomberg’s early report (USD 103.4 million). The Sotheby’s statement makes clear that this was not the case. Given the lack of precedent for using the HSBC Bank Mid-Market Exchange Rate for auction prices at Sotheby’s or elsewhere, we will continue to use the average Interbank exchange rates for this sale and non-USD sales in the future. Just as Bloomberg remained consistent with its figure of USD 103.4 million in a follow-up article, so too will we remain consistent with our figure of USD 103,689,994.
We will refrain from any additional speculation, although one can only wonder whether the unnamed buyer aimed for a pound sterling price just high enough to make headlines proclaiming broken records. If so, he or she certainly achieved the desired effect.
