941 Warhols have sold more than once
Arthur uses Post War repeat sales to compare market depth with annual price growth.
The hard question in this market isn't what a work is worth. It's whether someone will buy it when you decide to sell.
Repeat sales answer that. A repeat sale is the same work crossing the block more than once: not an estimate, not a comparable. Proof that a market for that artist exists, and keeps showing up.
Filter Arthur to Post War, born between 1911 and 1945, and sort by repeat sales. The deepest markets in the period, with the annual price growth of those works alongside:
- Andy Warhol — 941 repeat sales, 6.1% a year
- Sam Francis — 387, 4.1%
- Yayoi Kusama — 381, 18.1%
- Gerhard Richter — 318, 9.0%
- Zao Wou Ki — 283, 12.5%
- Bernard Buffet — 265, 4.7%
- Tom Wesselmann — 234, 5.0%
Warhol's market is more than twice as deep as anyone else's here. It also grows at 6.1% a year. Kusama has 560 fewer repeat sales and compounds at three times the rate.
That is the whole lesson. Depth and appreciation are two different questions, and the artist who leads on one rarely leads on the other. Buffet is easy to sell and slow to grow. Kusama grows fast in a thinner market. Zao Wou Ki sits closest to both: 283 sales at 12.5%.
Which one you want depends on whether you are building a position or planning an exit. Most people only think about the second one when it is already too late.
A record tells you what one buyer paid once. Repeat sales tell you what the market keeps paying.
