Under-40s a growth market for online auctions of art, jewellery and wine
Recent auctions have revealed a shift towards younger buyers with money to spend
Young cashed-up shoppers are spending big at online art auctions, as the generation of millennials embraces long-distance bidding and is prepared to buy expensive items without first inspecting them in a showroom.
Bonhams Australia director Merryn Schriever has noticed a growing proportion of younger bidders at some of the international auction house’s recent sales, including of Asian art and fine wine.
This year, as more auctions were moved online due to the lockdown, the age of bidders had skewed 10-15 per cent younger, she said, with a growing proportion of millennials — aged from 26 to 40 — making bids.
At Bonhams’s sale of Asian art in May, 38 per cent of registered bidders were from the under-40s group, representing a significant shift towards younger buyers.
And young buyers internationally were not shy of bidding thousands of dollars for collectables such as heritage jewellery and wine, spending an average $12,000 per transaction, Ms Schriever said.
“They have money to spend and, when they do, they’re having a really good time,” she said. “We have had a lot of positive feedback about how much they are enjoying this process of participating and collecting.”
Rachel Pool, 29, from Sydney, is in the market for a pair of diamond earrings as a 30th birthday present to herself. She has previously bought jewellery at auction with the advice of a friend who is a gemmologist.
Bidding at auction was a thrilling experience, she said — both as a personal reward for having worked hard and an opportunity to buy something special of value.
“I used to think it was quite intimidating,” she said. “But at almost every auction house, they are welcoming. There are no wrong questions.”
Bonhams conducts auctions of fine art, decorative art, furniture, jewellery and other categories. It has recently consigned a collection of Aboriginal art, for sale this month, from the collection of Spanish sculptor Eudald Serra.
A report on the art market published by Art Basel and UBS found that online sales worldwide were worth $US5.9bn last year, a third of them to bidders who had not bought at auction before. It said young collectors were “more comfortable buying online”.
Ms Schriever said auction houses were aware of bidders’ ages because they were required to provide identification in line with anti-money-laundering regulations. Bonhams’s online auctions are streamed live as a “performance” and tend to be shorter than in-house auctions in order to hold people’s interest.
“It’s actually quite fun; better than Netflix,” Ms Schriever said.
