Sotheby’s and the price of wanting it.

In November 2024, Sotheby’s sold Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian, the banana taped to a wall, for $6.2 million including fees. The obvious question was what made a banana worth that much. A more useful question was what made Sotheby’s the place where someone would pay it. Fruit is easy to find. A setting in which fruit becomes a contested cultural possession takes considerably more work.

First, find someone who cares

That work began with books. On 11 March 1744, London bookseller Samuel Baker auctioned Sir John Stanley’s library for £826. He advertised the sale and produced an authoritative catalogue. The eventual company name came through his nephew, John Sotheby. The founder’s name disappeared; his commercial problem survived. An unusual possession is only valuable to a seller if somebody who understands it can be found.

Today, Sotheby’s applies that logic to paintings, Chinese ceramics, diamonds, watches, wine and collectibles. Its network spans 40 countries and 70 categories. Its customers include collectors acquiring objects, owners parting with them and estates confronting a practical question: what should happen to all this stuff? The business connects specialist judgment with an international audience that a lone seller would struggle to assemble.

The catalogue is part scholarship, part sales instrument. Ownership history, condition and comparisons help a buyer decide what an object means and what to offer. Those details do not eliminate uncertainty. They make it possible to discuss uncertainty precisely. That is useful whether the object hangs on a museum wall or spent its working life on a basketball court.

The auction is only one door

The familiar door is an auction. Buyers can participate in person, by telephone, online or through an absentee bid. Sellers get a scheduled moment when competing interest can become a price. The auction house earns through buyer’s premiums and seller commissions. A spectacular hammer price attracts attention, although the amount announced after a sale generally includes the buyer’s premium.

Other customers would rather skip the public contest. Private sales offer year-round transactions, discreet sourcing and an agreed fee. Buy Now and retail offer fixed-price purchasing. Sotheby’s Financial Services lends against eligible collections, allowing owners to raise money while retaining ownership. A collector can therefore buy, borrow and eventually sell within the same commercial relationship.

Christie’s is the closest broad international alternative; Phillips, Bonhams, dealers and specialist platforms compete for particular objects and collectors. Sotheby’s pitch rests on the combination of expertise, distribution and services. None is exclusive by itself. Together, they give the company several ways to serve a customer whose needs change between acquisitions.

The fee cut that sellers didn’t want

In 2024, Sotheby’s tried to simplify its auction economics. It lowered the buyer’s premium to 20% on most lots, with a lower rate at the expensive end, and introduced more standardized seller terms. The apparent logic was attractive: less intimidating fees might encourage bidding. But experienced sellers were accustomed to negotiating their arrangements. A tidier system could feel like a worse deal.

The difficulty appeared on the supply side. Sotheby’s announced a reversal in December, restoring bespoke seller terms and a more familiar tiered buyer schedule from February 2025. Chief executive Charles Stewart described a market with reluctant sellers and acknowledged the need to respond. “We’ve tried, we’ve learnt and we’ve listened,” he said.

“We’ve tried, we’ve learnt and we’ve listened.”Charles Stewart · December 2024

The transferable lesson is to test pricing with the people supplying your inventory as carefully as with those buying it. Lower buyer charges cannot produce a lively auction if desirable objects go elsewhere. The experiment is particularly difficult when supply is scarce and sellers can take competing offers. A marketplace can make its rules simpler and still make participation less appealing.

A shop between the spectacles

There is another way to make a marketplace easier to enter: give people more occasions to visit. Sotheby’s Hong Kong Maison opened in July 2024, with 24,000 square feet across two floors at LANDMARK CHATER. Alongside exhibitions, its retail offering makes objects available for instant purchase. Collecting becomes something a visitor can encounter between headline auctions.

The NBA partnership, announced in 2023, makes a similar move through a different entrance. Game-worn jerseys bring sporting history into the collecting business. For a fan, the attraction is already intelligible: this particular player wore this particular object. Sotheby’s supplies a place to compete for it. The collecting category changes; the need for a meaningful connection remains.

Count the money correctly

Scale brings its own arithmetic. Sotheby’s preliminary, unaudited 2025 results reported $7.1 billion in consolidated sales and $1.4 billion in revenue. Confusing those figures would be like treating every object’s entire selling price as the auctioneer’s income. They measure different things. The company also reported a $1.8 billion-plus lending portfolio, showing how much business now happens beyond the saleroom.

Expansion also needs capital. Approximately $1 billion of equity investment arrived in 2024, following the announced ADQ and Patrick Drahi transaction. In November 2025, the company opened its global headquarters in New York’s Breuer building, formerly home to the Whitney Museum. Its galleries are free to visit. Looking remains a much cheaper habit than collecting.

Learn before lifting the paddle

For a newcomer, Sotheby’s is useful before any purchase: browse catalogues, visit exhibitions and ask specialists about an object. Before bidding, read the condition report and calculate the premium, taxes and shipping. For a seller, compare the likely net proceeds and the proposed route to market. Expertise and access have value, but an auction needs willing competitors. One enthusiastic admirer cannot conduct a bidding war alone.