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Prices on the market have gone up steadily during the past three years but some works offered for sale in London tend to suggest that their owners are ready to incur losses in comparison with the money they spent less than a decade ago.

For example a sculpture by Daumier has been estimated by Sotheby's at £ 90,000 whereas it was sold for £ 88,000 in 1990. Meanwhile, the same year Christie's did not manage to sell Picasso's 1901 painting “La Ronde des Fillettes” at between £ 6 and 8 million. This painting which only fetched $ 3,4 million in Paris in 1994 and is now offred at £ 4 million (some $ 5,8 million). A Van Dongen 1911 work, “Femme au Jabot” fetched £ 825,000 at Christie's in 1990 and is now offred with a similar estimate.

Monet's “Plage in Trouville”, which was sold for $ 10,78 million in 1988, might now found a buyer for less at Christie's while a version of “Petite Danseuse”, a bronze sculpture after Degas, which fetched 10,175 million in 1988, is only estimated at between £ 7 to 9 million. A 10% progression in twelve years apparently does not seem quite interesting for a collector. Still there have been 30 casts of this sculpture and three models have been sold between $ 10,1 and 12,3 million between 1988 and 1999.

It seems that those collectors who have entrusted Sotheby's and Christie's to sell their pieces are quite ready not to recover what they spent and even to incur some losses for some works, such as a painting by Pissaro, “Sunset and mist in Eragny”, sold for some $ 1 million by Sotheby's in 1989 and now estimated at $ 900,000. A portrait of Metzinger by Robert Delaunay, sold in Paris for 5,7 million (almost $ 1 million) however carries a £ 1 to 1,4 million estimate at Christie's but this is one of the few good prospects in view especially as a Picasso painting of 1960 “A landscape, Cannes at dawn” sold for £ 2,4 million in 1990 only carries a £ 2,5-3 million for next week's sale.