"Contrary to what you might expect, press accounts, relying on the information released by the auction houses, don't normally measure a sale's success by comparing an object's hammer price -- the last amount announced by the auctioneer -- with the presale estimate of hammer price. Instead, they almost invariably compare the estimate of hammer price to a figure arrived at by adding hammer price to the commission that the auction house charges the buyer. The result is an apples-to-oranges comparison that makes the sale results look better than they actually are, because they've been inflated by the commission. This approach serves their interest in reporting a successful sale by producing higher totals and reducing the number of works that appear to have sold below their estimate. Yet it doesn't serve the interest of the public in getting an accurate understanding of what really took place."
Making Sales Look Stronger
by Lee Rosenbaum
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122670620372529693.html
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