Auction buy-ins (lots that fail to sell) are often used as convenient yardsticks for measuring market health (or lack thereof). While this metric has certain utility, buy-ins must be understood in their specific context.

For example, Matthew Wong’s “Shangri-La” failed to sell at Christie’s, Hong Kong in the May 2024 Evening Sale, when offered with an estimate of of HKD 42,000,000 - 62,000,000 ($5,376,798 - $7,937,178). This low estimate was higher than all but one hammer prices ever realized for Wong.

Perhaps even more notable was the fact that the low estimate was nearly $1 million (US) higher than the realized price (with buyer’s premium) of $4,470,000 for this painting at Christie’s, New York, just three and a half years earlier; that price was over six times its high estimate of $700,000.

Repeat sales in short succession typically carry more cautious estimates than this — even in robust markets. The wisdom of such a practice may be all the more apparent when a successive offering follows meteoric growth, as was the case for Wong.

“Shangri-La” is a visually distinctive, yet stylistically highly characteristic, and undoubtedly attractive painting. It was simply not fresh to the eyes of prospective collectors. Perhaps a more timid estimate would have been irresistible to some, and this might have ultimately proved to yield a sale.

My takeaway is that one might not extrapolate too much about larger trends from certain examples without analyzing the specificities of the sale.