As you may know, one
of the “Haystack” series of Claude Monet sold this week at Sotheby's for $110
million. This is the highest price to date for a Monet. Cool price, huh?
I decided to estimate
the total value of Monet’s corpus of work. Here's how. First, there
are about 2500 paintings and drawings out there. (Greater numbers are estimated
and some are certainly lost.) The cheapest one I could find was sold recently
for $10,000. I used two mathematical models for the total cost, one
an exponential model, and the other a power model.
Anyway, for these
models, I estimate the total value of Monet’s work to be between $530 and $540 million. Both models exhibit a very high drop off rate in
pricing. For example, the fourth most expensive Monet is estimated
to cost about $25 million, with the estimated average cost of the four to be
about $45 million. This has much to do with the model, but probably
as much due to the available clientele with such deep pockets.
If we had more data, we could apply standard nonlinear regression methods. But it is interesting to note the value of Monet’s output, and that of many other great artists exceed by far the values of fairly substantial corporations.
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