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Re: A complete success !

In Response To: A complete success ! ()

I enjoyed the auction immensely and think it is good for the brand.

I'm no conspiracy theorist, but a couple of things. By the way, I'm a forensic accountant, so I'm used to following the money.

Less than half the lots were from collectors (147), ten were from the Omega Museum and the rest -- owned by Omega? So Omega pocketed most of the auction proceeds -- AND got the publicity. [I was wrong about this point -- items not attributed to an owner are simply owned by dealers]

I ran some numbers and if the auction had brought the estimate and Antiquorum spent $50,000 at each of 12 world tour locations ($600,000), they would have lost money.

AQ got about $1.5 million (18% buyers premium + 15% sellers commission or 33% of $5.4 million/118% or $4.6 million * 33%) and the auction brought 3 times what was expected. One third of $1.5 million is less than $600,000.

Omega had to cover AQ's costs to make this work, which is easy to do if you already own the watches you are going to auction off, and will make a huge profit -- which they obviously did.

A grand event, and one I don't think we will see the like of again.

Why did any of the lots go so high? Why did Lot 128 go so high?

Well, you either believe the auction was manipulated or you believe at least two people wanted that watch badly. The latter is the more simple answer and more likely to be true.

Can't you see a guy saying, "I'm going to own that fake and tell everybody its the watch that fooled Omega and Antiquorum"? And he has money? It's not hard to imagine two such guys . . .

"Why did you pay that much for that watch?"

"Because that's what it took to win it!"