A Quote by Nathan Myhrvold

We're more familiar with what economists call an English auction - prices start low and rise as people bid. However, there is also the Dutch auction, where prices start high and go lower until somebody bites. Movies are sold to the audience via a very slow Dutch auction, where each phase between price drops can last weeks or months.
Auctions create greater price discovery and liquidity, resulting in a very meaningful final auction price. If you were building a securities exchange today, an auction would be a core feature.
There were a lot of publishers that I loved, so the book went to auction. An auction is where you sit nervously by your phone and eat potato chips for two days waiting for your agent to text you numbers of the highest bid for each round. I ultimately went with Dervla Kelly at Rodale Books.
So, you're seeing the Rolls-Royces and the Bentley's still selling for big prices. You're seeing jewelry still selling, art works at auction. There was a diamond that sold for I think 38 million, 48 million, something like that just a week ago. So prices are back up to their highs, getting stronger and more and more people seem to have more and more money to spend.
In April 2007 I learned that Yves Saint Laurent had a brain tumor, and he died on June 1, 2008. During those 14 months I had plenty of time to think about what would happen. There was only one solution: the auction. An auction establishes memory. That's what I want to do.
One of the reasons why we can make a lot of money in equity markets is because they're auction-driven, and auction-driven markets are very different from almost any other kind of market.
The lesson here, and my advice for other developers, is to find a way that you can quantify for people what your product is worth. We were leery to do it ourselves, but being near Vetro when they did, the auction was a good technique for that. No one wants to be first, and the auction proved to people that others were buying and gave them that boost of confidence they needed.
I try to avoid the 'art world' as much as possible. It's too much about fads and fashions - who's getting the best prices at auction and things like that.
The best works do not necessarily get to auction. I like to draw, so maybe I give you a little drawing. And then eventually it ends up at auction. And then critics say, 'Oh, that's a bad drawing!' Well, I didn't say it was so wonderful.
I don't pay attention to auction prices. Nothing interests me less. One of the benefits of not being an artist is I don't have to navigate the social hierarchies of the art world as a person of desire. I don't need anything. I live in a different way.
There is no such thing as agflation. Rising commodity prices, or increases in any prices, do not cause inflation. Inflation is what causes prices to rise. Of course, in market economies, prices for individual goods and services rise and fall based on changes in supply and demand, but it is only through inflation that prices rise in aggregate.
Lower oil prices won't, by themselves, topple the mullahs in Iran. But it's significant that, historically, when oil prices have been low, Iranian reformers have been ascendant and radicals relatively subdued, and vice versa when prices have been high.
I think what happened in the last 10 or 15 years in the art market is that all the players - and that includes artists, dealers, art advisors, everyone - basically became dealers. We've had old-school collectors morph into speculators, flipping works. We've seen auction houses buying works directly from artists or from sleazy middlemen. The last step before the crash was the artists themselves supplying the auction houses. Dealing themselves, you know? The art world is as unregulated as any financial market there is.
The current climate doesn't represent a threat to the production of art but to the market. I think it's time for artists to get over auction houses, galleries, and high-production-value exhibitions and start using our voices again.
I was driving by an auto auction one day, and they were auctioning off a beautiful Hispano-Suiza. I started bidding even though I hadn't even signed up with the officials. The last bid was $50,000, and it was mine. And I thought, 'My God, what have I done? I've never spent more than $500 in my life.' That was the first one.
My first crime novel, "Wild Horses," sold at auction, and that changed my life at an ideal time.
Sultan Beyazid considered his father's art collection decadent and ordered it sold at auction.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!