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It’s a word that wafts through the air with sophistication: provenance. Fancy though it may seem, the definition is fairly simple. Provenance refers to the chronology of ownership or custody of an item. Ideally, collectors can understand an item’s provenance dating all the way back to its genesis, whether that’s to an artist’s gallery, to the moment a jersey was on a player’s back, or to an entertainer or their estate. Clarity on an item’s full chain of ownership provides greater confidence in its authenticity, and missing links in that chain can create uncertainty.
In some cases, provenance is detailed by an auction house when selling an item. More recently, digital provenance tracking has become more prevalent with the rise of digital ledgers and blockchain technologies.
While the first link in the chain is most important as it pertains to authenticity and therefore value, it’s not the only link that can be additive from a value perspective. More on that in a moment.
Provenance to the Source
Most important in provenance is a chain of ownership that credibly begins directly at an item’s source. For different categories, the beginning of that chain can mean different things:
Perhaps the most recent and salient example of provenance to the source is the sale of Freddie Mercury’s estate at Sotheby’s. The multi-part auction generated over $41 million in total sales volume across a variety of memorabilia categories. The clamor for items directly from the source was so intense that an ordinary item like a comb sold for £152,400.
Fourteen handwritten lyric lots reached six-figure territory in USD terms. That’s more than triple the number of lyric lots from any artist that reached six-figures across auction houses in 2021, 2022, and 2023 combined. Similarly, fifteen Mercury-worn items reached six-figure USD prices; the most expensive Mercury-worn piece not sold in the Sotheby’s estate sale over the last three years was a Yankees jacket worn at MSG that sold for $57,600. A healthy result, but heartily outpaced by the contents of the Sotheby’s event. The volume of massive auction results at the estate sale is demonstrative not only of global appreciation for the artist but of the power of provenance.
It’s not just Mercury, or even entertainment memorabilia. The tech memorabilia market is dominated by collectibles from Apple’s earliest days, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has supported that legacy by sharing memorabilia with the world. The original hand-drawn Apple II Schematics sold in 2020 for $630,273 with provenance from “Woz”. Additionally, Wozniak’s willingness to authenticate and validate pieces of Apple tech has helped to create and maintain a vibrant market for the modern artifacts, ensuring that the first link in the chain of provenance - dating back to an item’s time at the company - is credible.
Now, the initial sale of an item from the source is one thing, but does that provenance still matter when items from that initial sale come up for auction again in the future?
We can look to recent examples to confirm that this is indeed the case. Take Princess Diana’s charity auction of her collection of dresses at Christie’s in the late 1990s. The auction was a success at the time, grossing over $3.3 million for 80 dresses. Today, dresses that appeared in that event are a phenomenon when they come to the block. Julien’s recently held a sale of royal memorabilia, led by items of Princess Diana’s, and the top three lots were all dresses from the 1997 Christie’s sale. Each sold for more than $500,000, including one that reached $910,000, and each appreciated at a rate of more than 11% annually. It’s those items known to be directly from the late Princess’s collection - explicitly because they were in that sale - that command the highest prices.
Provenance to a Related Party
In the absence of direct provenance to the source - or in addition as a later link in the chain - provenance might trace directly to someone close to the subject of an item. For example, it‘s not uncommon to see the below parties consigning items and signing LOAs attesting to the subject’s use or ownership of it:
The further removed from the subject itself, the less valuable the provenance. For instance, items coming from someone who worked on an entertainer’s tour or as a ball boy at a basketball game may lack the same level of credibility as items that come directly from the entertainer or athlete. That’s not to say this level of provenance has no merit, and it trumps unclear, murky, or nonexistent provenance in almost all cases, but it is generally inferior to the provenance described above.
It’s also worth noting that an item can have provenance to both the source and a related party, with the latter simply serving as an intermediate link in the chain. The two are not mutually exclusive, and in some of the healthiest cases, the chain of ownership will often include both. In fact, even in the case of the Mercury sale, the provenance traces directly to Mercury via his estate, but between his passing and the ultimate sale, the contents were left to his longtime friend and former fiancee, Mary Austin, who consigned the items to Sotheby’s.
Similarly, in the world of gems and jewels, no collection has attracted attention quite like the one tied to the late Elizabeth Taylor. While Taylor passed away in 2011, the liquidation of her estate would span more than a decade across multiple auction houses. Analysis of condition reports from the sale of Taylor’s premier items displayed a recurring theme within the provenance descriptions. Various jewels and dresses were directly attributed to Tim Mendelson, Taylor’s longtime personal assistant and co-trustee of her $100+ million estate.
Additionally, the dress worn by the acclaimed actress at the 1961 Oscar award ceremony, which sold for £200,000 in December, was presented with provenance from another of Taylor’s assistants. In the early 1970s, Taylor gifted the gown, among other dresses by Dior and Karl Lagerfield, to her assistant Anne Sanz, who was married to Taylor’s chauffeur Gaston Sanz. While Gaston died in 2003, Anne helped bring the dresses back into the limelight after sitting in storage for half a century. Provenance to this credible, related party aided in a strong result.
Returning to the Apple example, various letters, business cards, photographs, and documents signed by Jobs have surfaced by way of Wozniak, with the affable engineer offering related-party provenance to items owned or used by his late, former colleague.
Provenance to a Collector or Institution
As alluded to previously, there are links in the middle of the chain of provenance that can be additive to an object’s value. Ownership that adds value generally falls into one of these three categories:
Observers should be aware of an item’s provenance when understanding auction results. A work of art or memorabilia item deaccessioned by a museum or sold from a renowned collector or celebrity may generate a sale value well in excess of what that item would achieve without the provenance. Observers must be careful, then, not to ascribe the value realized with exceptional provenance to the entire category of similar items. In that regard, results from items with exceptional provenance can distort our understanding of a market.
In the fine art market, provenance can deliver premiums and perfect sell-through rates. Take for example the liquidation of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s acclaimed art collection. Sold through Christie’s in 2022, the collection not only established multiple artist records, but became the most expensive single-owner sale in art history. The two-day event saw a 100% sell-through rate across 155 lots totaling $1.6 billion in sales.
Prior to the Allen auction, no more than two paintings had ever exceeded $100 million in a single sale. Five different works closed for at least $104 million each at the opening night of the Allen sale. The top lot, Georges Seurat's Les Poseuses, Ensemble (Petite version) achieved the highest result; the painting sold for $149 million, setting a new Seurat auction record and exceeding any previous Seurat sale by more than $100 million.
Astonishingly, 24 different artists achieved record sales in the Allen sale evening event, many by resounding margins. For instance:
Whether in fine art or more nuanced classes of collectibles, sales originating from esteemed sources frequently establish new records. In 2010, Sotheby’s sold 1,200 photos from the Polaroid Collection. The sale was a forced liquidation ordered by a bankruptcy court when controlling partners of the Polaroid Corporation were convicted in a Ponzi scheme. Its results were unprecedented for the collectible photography market.
With a sell-through rate of nearly 90%, the collection brought in $12.5 million and set multiple photographer records for the likes of Andy Warhol, Chuck Close, and David Hockney among others.
The importance of collector provenance within the wine market has commanded the spotlight over the past year. The prestigious French wine collection assembled by Taiwanese businessman Pierre Chen has been liquidating through a series of auctions hosted by Sotheby’s. The first sale took place in November 2023 and tallied $16.8 million with records established for Vosne Romanée, Cros Parantoux 1999 Henri Jayer, Chevalier Montrachet 2007 Domaine d’Auvenay, and 1971 La Tâche.
In June, Sotheby’s held their first ever auction dedicated entirely to champagne with every lot contributed by Chen’s cellar. The auction saw a consistent premium applied as more than half of all lots exceeded their pre-sale high estimates while records were established for magnum lots of 1966 Dom Perignon, 1985 Krug, and 1990 Salon Le Mesnil.
With more than 25,000 bottles scheduled to hit the market, the sales have spilled over into 2024 as a July event based in France saw another $2 million in wine sold and another eight records broken, no doubt propelled by the power of Chen’s curation and the prestige of the collection.
How can provenance be confirmed?
The challenge with provenance - as with authentication - is the question of how a collector can verify that the item is what it’s advertised to be. In memorabilia, authentication answers the question of how we know an item was used by a certain person. But we also need to be able to ascertain that the item before us was the very same one that was owned by a certain collector or appeared at a certain sale. For instance, how can we prove that a Princess Diana dress offered at auction now is the very same one that appeared in the 1997 Christie’s event?
This is a question that often lacked a precise, formal, and concrete answer previously. But with new technologies, answers are crystallizing. For instance, through the use of holographic technologies and even invisible diamond dust, items can be tagged in tamper proof manners, and those tags can be used to digitally verify the authenticity of the item. Similarly, blockchain technologies can be integrated with those tags to enable provenance tracking.
As a result, the days of paper letters and informal confirmation of an item’s provenance are numbered.
As prices rise and pop culture memorabilia becomes a mainstream market, the importance of provenance in establishing the authenticity of items cannot be overstated. Historically, the auction industry has been tasked with confirming authenticity through provenance research. Today, companies like The Realest are changing the process and streamlining the required analysis by establishing direct relationships with artists and athletes, while also leveraging the above technologies to sustain the power of that direct provenance into the future.
How does the Realest strive to achieve a higher degree of credibility in provenance for items it authenticates and sells?
Direct connection and sourcing from the heavy metal band Megadeth led to an auction filled with merchandise, setlists, and stage-used materials. The top lot, an autographed Dave Mustaine Gibson Guitar, sold for $14,600, nearly 3x the going rate for a similar set of strings available on the public market. Then, earlier this summer, The Realest conducted an exclusive auction of Snoop Dogg memorabilia which featured a Death Row Records chain, Wrestlemania-worn outfit, and a partially smoked blunt. The auction exceeded six figures in total sales, reflecting the appetite for memorabilia directly sourced from the original owner.
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