As the global pandemic forced the auction houses to close their doors and cancel all Live sales, Christie's, Sotheby's and Phillips were left with only one option: arrange pure online sales.  

So they did, and in April 2020, 100% of the auctions arranged by the top 3 auction houses were purely online.

Their efforts resulted in over US$44m of revenue in April 2020.  This was by far the largest ever revenue generated by pure online sales in a month.

This was however also the smallest ever revenue generated in the past 14 years by the auction houses during the month of April.

For more insights on auctions and revenue at Christie's, Sotheby's and Phillips before and during the global pandemic, discover Pi-eX MACRO Monthly reports.