The Market’s Love Affair with Great Collections

Single-collection sales generated nearly $1.6 billion for Sotheby’s and Christie’s in 2025, setting the stage for even fiercer competition for major consignments in 2026.

The sales of art amassed by the likes of Leonard Lauder, the Riggios, Pritzkers and Weises rebounded to a B+ on the HENI Auction Index after two years of C- performance.

Single-collection sales also generated 26% of the rival auction houses’ $6.1 billion in fine art sales in 2025—underscoring their outsized impact on revenue and prestige.

This is almost twice their typical annual turnover and marked a sharp rebound from 2024, despite the 14% decline in the number of lots offered.

The HENI Auction Index is based on more than ten metrics, including the percentages of lots that hammered above their pre-sale low and high estimates. In 2025, these were 82% and 62% respectively, which is almost 10 percentage points above average over the past decade.

The average hammer to mid estimate ratio rebounded from 1.6 in 2024 to 2.6 in 2025, a third above the average 2 over the past decade.

According to HENI News data, the share of lots backed by “strong” guarantees and irrevocable bids, which sold for more than their high estimate, reached a record high. “Weak” guarantees also increased, however, rising well above their 2% historical average.

The average number of bidders per lot rebounded from 2.7 in 2024 to 3.1 in 2025, back in line with the average over the past decade.

Meanwhile, the percentages of lots bought-in and withdrawn stayed around the levels reached in the past three years, below average for lots bought-in but above average for lots withdrawn.

New York is the setting for the most prestigious single-collection sales, defined by auctions that total more than $10 million, but London played a leading role in 2025.

In mid September, Sotheby’s held three sales in London of surrealist art and design consigned by notable collector Pauline Karpidas, who is the widow of a Greek shipping tycoon. The sales totaled $137m and punched above their weight, scoring an A+ on the HENI Auction Index.

The Karpidas sales were led by her Magritte painting, La Statue volante (1958).

Surrealist art from another major collection proved a hit in New York in November, also at Sotheby's. Title Exquisite Corpus, the pieces reportedly collected by the late music mogul and Atlantic Records’ co-founder Nesuhi Ertegun and his wife Selma Ertegun, and totaled $103m. It was led by a record sale of a painting by Frida Kahlo, the surrealist refusnik, and was another A+ event.

Methodology: for how the HENI Auction Index classifies sales, see here