Four routes lead to a sale, and none is fundamentally the best. What decides is value, urgency and how much publicity you want.
The auction is the most visible route. An international house reaches a worldwide audience, and for sought-after works competition in the room can produce prices no negotiation would have reached.
The price for that is the cost structure. A vendor's commission is charged on the seller's side, plus catalogue, photography, transport and insurance costs depending on the house. The buyer's side additionally pays a premium which at the major houses can amount to around a quarter of the hammer price – money the buyer raises, but which in the bidder's calculation depresses your hammer price.
The greater risk is the bought-in lot. If a lot stays below the reserve it counts as «burnt» in the market: hammer data are publicly accessible, and a work visibly unsold is hard to place in the following years. Auctions are also tied to dates – miss the deadline for the spring sale and you wait months.
In brokerage the work is shown deliberately to people known to collect in that field. None of it is public: no catalogue, no database, no result anyone can look up afterwards. If no sale comes about, the work has taken no damage and can be offered again later.
The price is negotiated rather than bid up. That is a disadvantage where two bidders would spur each other on in the room – and an advantage where the work is special and few people qualify. In specialised fields with a small but solvent audience, direct approach regularly achieves more than an auction in which the same two interested parties would have been the only bidders anyway.
The cost structure is simpler: a fee on success, no upfront costs. The open question is duration. It may take three weeks or a year, and anyone promising you otherwise is not estimating but selling.
A dealer who buys on his own account pays immediately and assumes every risk – authenticity, storage, resale. In return he buys below the later selling price; the difference is his earnings and must also cover his mistakes. As a rule of thumb, a purchase offer sits well below what the work achieves in the end sale.
That is not an unfair transaction but a different one: you are buying certainty and speed. It makes sense when money has to move quickly – an estate division under time pressure, for instance – or when the value is modest enough that effort is not warranted.
Pay attention to whom you are speaking with: anyone who buys on his own account and gives you an estimate at the same time sits on both sides of the table. That need not be wrong, but you should be aware of it.
For decorative works up to the low four figures this is a viable route. Above that it becomes difficult: serious collectors rarely buy works over a few thousand francs from private individuals without evidence of provenance, and the share of dubious enquiries rises with the price tag.
Reckon with the effort too: photographs, description, queries, viewings, negotiation, packing, shipping – and, in a dispute, the warranty that can fall on you as the seller.
How much time do you have? If the money must be there within weeks, practically only the direct sale remains. With a year, auction and brokerage are both open.
How special is the work? A sought-after name with many interested parties benefits from the auction. A work for a narrow circle of collectors benefits from the targeted approach.
How much publicity can you bear? If nobody is to learn that a sale is taking place – for family or business reasons – the auction is ruled out. The catalogue is public, and it stays public.
Send us two or three photographs and the dimensions. Within a few days you receive an honest first assessment – free of charge, without obligation, and also when we decline.
Show us the work