The Roundness of Antiquity Valuations from Auction Houses and Sales

Auction houses employ in-house art experts to assess the value of objects. Items that will be placed on the auction block are first published in catalogs with the experts' upper- and lower-bound estimates of each object's market value. This paper examines whether the roundness of those estimates is related to the likelihood that items sell and their eventual hammer price. We find that rounder lower estimates reduce the eventual hammer price and perhaps also the likelihood that the item sells. The roundness of the upper estimate seems to have no clear impact on the auction outcome.