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For decades the Meiyintang collection had been a source of mystery. Widely believed to be the finest trove of imperial Chinese treasures still in private hands in the West, it had rarely ever been seen in full. Little was known about the two brothers who had built it up—ultra-discreet Swiss businessmen with long-standing interests in the pharmaceutical industry in the Philippines and the Asian hinterland. They were, says Roger Keverne, a London dealer who occasionally sold to them, “interested, knowledgeable, passionate and possessed of impeccable taste and the utmost discretion.”
 
So when an initial selection of Meiyintang porcelain was put up for auction at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong last week, it was billed as the sale of the century—an opportunity to acquire works that might never find their way onto the market again. Even in the current overheated market for imperial Chinese wares, the Meiyintang sale was widely expected to achieve new records.
 
The reality, though, turned out to be quite different.
 
Of the 77 lots offered at the April 7th sale, 23 failed to reach the reserve price and did not sell. Half the “premium” lots—those with estimates of at least HK$6m—were also bought in, including the two most important pieces. An auction that had been expected to raise as much as HK$1 billion ($128.6m) fetched barely a third of that. So what happened?
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Events in London last week proved that competition can be good for business, at least in the art world. The three leading auction houses—Sotheby’s, Bonhams and Christie’s—were full of Islamic and Indian art. Some rarities, some masterpieces; most of it a treat to see. Sotheby’s announcement late last year that it was going to sell a chunk of the late Stuart Cary Welch’s famous collection (written about in this week’s Economist) must have prodded the others to get moving. After all, few collectors, curators and dealers were likely to miss the Welch sale. An active collector for over 70 years, Welch’s eye was good, his approach bold, his judgments acute. Last week Sotheby’s auctioned off his Islamic pieces, saving his Hindu material for another splash in May. 
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Can an auction house successfully manage a living artist’s primary market? Perhaps not, on the evidence of the latest split between Christie's and Haunch of Venison, a contemporary art gallery it acquired in 2007.

As the article in The Economist reports, the rise in the value of work by living artists has put auction houses in a tricky position. When your job is to sell the previously owned work of the freshly dead or newly insolvent, you may lack the gifts to discern the work that will be important the first time around. Auction traders certainly don't busy themselves flattering artists in their studios—not when there are freshly widowed biddies to woo. As Damien Hirst said to the journalist of The Economist piece, "Auction houses have been around for a long time, but it seems like they are struggling to know exactly what their role should be.”