Assuming the reserve for these pieces was the bottom end estimate, both the pejac and scooter appear to have passed. But I guess time will tell...

Letting a Scooter pass for 1600. How much is the commission?

What were the results for Harland Millers "Heroin, it's what your right arm's for" and Banksy's "Toxic Mary"?
Can't find the results (either on the-salesroom nor directly on CHISWICK).

Heroin sold for 1800 before the premium and Toxic Mary went unsold. Think it was offered in the room @ 7,500 with no bids. 

Pejac £4.5k

Pejac went for £4.5k hammer in the room I had a bidder on the phone who would have paid the same couldn’t quite squeeze to 5k hammer.

The total sales are currently 208k hopefully aftersales will add to that, the sell through rate is correct roughly 50%. I’m choosing to view it as glass half full as opposed to glass half empty. I’m confident I looked after 100 percent of consigners. Hopefully they feel the same too.

With all due respect who exactly do you think I’ve failed? Every consigner was given the chance to value the work themselves I then advised where I thought things were different to where the consigners saw them. We then mutually agreed reserves that protected them from giving work away. With regard to buyers I worked to provide as much help and information as I could. Unsold lots attract a £15 fee.

Why not be open about your obvious involvement in Forum Auctions? I went to see what kind of buzz was in the room on the 21st I met 2 friends here that brought the grand total to 5 in the room including us! Tonight we had around 30/40 people in the room. We sold roughly 25 percent of our lots to artsy bidders against the last Philips sale at 50 percent. This tells me our work on personal relationships paid dividends.

I’m completely happy to take suggestions on ways to improve the service should anyone feel there are things I’m missing.

I didn't say you failed clients, I said I hope those who didn't sell works don't get hit with BI fees. Which I think is a fair statement as there are quite a lot of unsold lots. 

As for rooms being full or not I couldn't say as I wasn't there, but I can say that rooms being full in general are no longer the mark of a successful auction. I sat through a Phillips sale recently 90% of the sale went on the phone or the net, there were 15 people in the room.

As for Forum yes I have a good connection there, also in Phillips, my old room mate is a VP in one of the departments at Sotheby's and a few of my college friends work for major departments in Christie's. However, I wouldn't recommend Forum or indeed anyone else if they didn't get results to match - but they do.  

I applaud what you did, as you say 50% is a glass half full situation, but clearly the house, i.e. Chiswick just isn't set up to sell this material effectively. The auctioneer starting at the bottom of the estimate didn't help matters at all, again not your fault at all. 

Dan

Congratulations on the effort you and your team put in to the auction. 

Maybe in some eyes things werent that great, in others the auction did well.

Id say well done for setting it up and following it through.. and hopefully there are lessons to learn if you plan to do another similar auction

G

With Banksy being the big pull for most urban art auctions, to me the number of his works being sold is the yardstick in which to measure the success or failure of any auction house.

Perhaps in this instance there were too many Banksy works and perhaps (playing devils advocate in saying perhaps) it was too focussed on the buying and selling trends of this forum and not of the actual art market

The auction looked as smooth and well planned as every other. All this about the wrong audience as if those interested did not know about this auction, yet other auctions most sales are online of phone....come on are those same buyers morons, they need these auction houses to wipe their arses for them telling them when and where to be.

People just have these ridiculous expectations values will continue to sky rocket or never decrease for some artist, or there is an unlimited supply of wall space at certain prices. I enjoyed it and almost bid on that Pejac... but it was not worth that to me.

I thought the auction was good artist wise. In no way am I slagging it , as I can understand how much time must have been spent cataloguing it and meeting with vendors etc.. so these are just observations..... I think it may have been better if the auctioneer started the bidding under the low estimate? Is that not the done thing? also no video or audio on the saleroom or invaluable seemed a real shame. I hope you do more auctions and this one worked out ok for you

Gonefellow