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It has also been kept alive thanks to the rush on Chinese ceramics made by several Asian millionaires and to several crazy Russian tycoons who did not bother to restrain their expenses  when they have been coveting prestigious artworks.

So there would be no reason to worry in view of so many good results achieved most of the time at auction but seldom by galleries which have had yet to recover from the effects of the 2009 financial crisis notwithstanding the fact that their numbers have been dwindling constantly.

Moreover, many small antique businesses have disappeared partly as a result of that crisis and mainly because middle class people have become poorer and also less receptive to art.

Rather than to resort to statistics to support such evidence, a simple overview of the situation of the Paris flea market, the biggest in the world, will suffice since the contingent of small antique dealers there has been shrinking year after year during the last decade with those leaving the place being replaced by specialists selling fashion and design pieces of furniture and artefacts dating from the 1940's to the 1990's.

The Paris flea-market has thus been dying slowly whereas auction houses have helped keep the world market afloat thanks again to important art pieces sold at impressive price levels. Still, works of art of average quality have sold badly because middle class customers have had difficulties to make ends meet while showing less inclination towards art.

Pieces of average quality however seem to sell well on the Internet, notably on E-Bay but a close examination of results achieved for these will generally show how bad they were for sellers who would have been better off if their pieces had been sold at a classical auction.

In the long run, important auction sales will finally prove to be like big healthy trees masking a dying forest and little can be done to help change that situation unless the world economy gets back on its feet.