Hammer price, realised price and buyer's premium

Ask what an antique is worth and the honest answer is a question back: worth to whom, on what day, sold how? The nearest thing to a real answer is what objects like it have recently sold for at auction — a completed transaction between a willing buyer and a willing seller, in public, with a date on it.

That is genuinely good evidence. It is also routinely misread, because a single lot generates three numbers and they are not interchangeable.

The three numbers an auction lot produces

Number	What it is	Is it evidence?
Estimate	A range printed before the sale	No — nobody has paid it
Hammer price	The winning bid	Yes — what the market paid for the object
Price realised	Hammer plus the buyer’s premium	Yes — what left the buyer’s account

What price realised actually means

Price realised is the figure an auction house publishes as the outcome of a lot, and at the major houses it is the hammer price plus the buyer’s premium — the total the buyer actually handed over.

This is the single most misquoted number in the trade, for a simple reason: it is the one the houses put on their own results pages, so it is the one a search finds first. Somebody comparing a shop’s ticket against a realised price is comparing a price before commission with a price after it, and concluding the shop is expensive when the two figures were never the same kind of thing.

Two cautions. Houses differ in whether tax is included in the published figure, and a minority publish the hammer price instead. The terms of sale say which, and they are worth two minutes before you build an opinion on a number.

The hammer price is what the bidding reached

The hammer price is the winning bid — the moment the auctioneer stops and the lot is sold.

This is the number that most closely represents what the object was worth to the market on that day, because it is the amount two or more people were competing over. Everything after it is commission.

It is also the figure that answers the question most people are actually asking, which is what would I get if I sold one — and even then it is an overstatement, because the seller pays their own commission out of it.

The buyer’s premium is added on top

The buyer’s premium is a commission the house charges the buyer, calculated on the hammer price and added to it. It is commonly 25% or more at the major houses, often on a sliding scale that falls for expensive lots, and tax may be charged on the premium as well.

So a lot that hammers at £2,600 may be reported by the house as “Sold for £3,328 inc. premium”. Both figures are correct. They describe different events — one is what the bidding reached, the other is what the buyer paid — and the gap between them is not small.

Patine shows hammer prices in its comparables and says so on the row, which is why a lot may read lower here than on the auction house’s own page. The link goes to that page, so the difference is visible rather than hidden.

Estimate is not value, and bought in is not worthless

Two related traps, both common in descriptions written by sellers.

An estimate quoted as a valuation is a claim nobody has tested. “One sold at Christie’s with an estimate of £5,000” has told you nothing about what anyone paid — and estimates are deliberately pitched to attract bidding, which often means pitched low.

A bought-in lot — one that failed to reach its reserve — is not proof the object is worthless. It may have been badly catalogued, wrongly estimated, or in the wrong sale on the wrong day. It is evidence of one failed attempt, no more. The reserve price is a figure agreed between the house and the seller in advance, and it reflects the seller’s expectations as much as the market’s.

Why an asking price is a different category

A live listing is not a sale. It is one seller’s opinion, and it can sit at that price indefinitely without anyone agreeing to it. Aggregating asking prices produces a number that looks like a market and is not one.

This matters more than it used to, because sold-price data is getting harder to reach. eBay closed its sold-item API to new applicants years ago and has since put sold listings behind a login; the large commercial archives have no public interface at all. The result is that a great deal of what is presented online as “what it sold for” is in fact what somebody is asking.

The practical defence is to ask of any figure you are shown three questions:

Who paid this? When? And where can I see it?

If all three have answers, it is evidence. If they do not, it is an opinion — it may be a good one, and it should not be doing the work of a fact.

Reading a result without being misled by it

When you find a comparable sale, check four things before you trust it as a guide to your own piece.

1. Which number is published — hammer or realised. The terms of sale say.
2. The date. A 2019 result is a different market from a 2026 one, and some categories have moved a long way in that time.
3. Whether it is really comparable. Same maker, same period, same condition, same completeness. A pair sells for more than twice a single, and a set of four for more than twice a pair.
4. Whether it sold at all. A catalogue entry is not a result.

The marks on your piece will tell you what it is — how to read a British silver hallmark covers that. Only the sold lots will tell you what it is worth, and only if you read the right number.