In 2022, a baseball card sold for twelve and a half million dollars: a printed cardboard card of Mickey Mantle from 1952 in near-perfect condition. In 2023, trainers worn by Michael Jordan in the NBA Finals reached over two million. And in that same season, a print by Philip Guston, a painter with over one hundred works in the MoMA, was liquidated for just under three thousand dollars: three thousand, not three million. Placed together, these figures reveal that the price of an object and its value as art are two distinct measures and that they sometimes coincide and often do not.
That which is expensive but not art—or not primarily so—is self-explanatory. The Mantle card does not command twelve million due to its graphic beauty, but rather its rarity: very few examples remain in that condition, a significant portion of the print run was destroyed, and an identical card in poorer condition is worth a fraction of the price. The same applies to the trainers: their design was mass-produced, so the two million is paid because those specific trainers were worn by Jordan in a particular match, and this can be proven. An identical pair fresh from the box does not approach that figure by a wide margin. One pays for the authenticated connection to a history, not the object. These are collectors' items; their price measures scarcity and the desire to possess something unique, not artistic quality.
These are, of course, objects of interest. A watch may be a marvel of engineering and design, and a trainer may encapsulate an era. The market that appraises them explains their prices through rarity, condition, and provenance, not through an evaluation of their artistic value. They belong to a different category and operate under different rules.
On the opposite side, we find recognised art that holds little price. The Guston print is not worth three thousand dollars because the market doubts Guston, who is represented in the permanent galleries of the MoMA. It is worth that amount because it is an edition, a multiple: several examples exist, so it is not scarce. The same applies to a print by John Baldessari, a central figure of conceptual art, which sold for little more than three thousand. The artistic recognition of these authors is immense, and yet these specific works are inexpensive, because price does not measure their importance; it measures how many copies exist. Art that can be reproduced, however significant, costs little. Furthermore, there is art that possesses no market price at all because it is not for sale: the unrepeatable performance, the ephemeral intervention, the gesture that occurred once and left no object to be auctioned. Its absence of price is not an absence of value and, indeed, it could reach an exorbitant price if its owner were the subject of fetishism, simply for having made use of it.
There is another evident case. In 2021, an Amsterdam auction house offered a 17th-century painting as a work from the 'circle of Rembrandt', with an estimate of around twelve thousand dollars. Some buyers suspected it might be by Rembrandt himself, and the bidding soared to nearly one million. After eight months of study, X-rays, infrared imaging, and provenance research, another house attributed it to Rembrandt and sold it for nearly fourteen million dollars. Between one sale and the other, the painting did not change: not a single stroke, the same scene, the same panel, the same hand that painted it four centuries ago. The only thing that changed was the name we placed before it and, with that, the price multiplied by one thousand.
One might argue that the market pays for the signature rather than the work, but that would be inaccurate. What changed with the attribution was what the work represented in the eyes of the buyer. It shifted from being an anonymous workshop painting to a unique object with a verified history, emerging from a specific and unrepeatable hand. The market does not pay for three letters: it pays for an authenticated historical identity, a biography of the object. The name is the operator of that biography, the key that unlocks it. And that biography is a real value, not a mirage, yet it is a value distinct from that which the painting possesses as a painting, through what it produces in the observer. Those fourteen million do not purchase a superior experience before the canvas: the experience was identical when it cost twelve thousand.
When we observe a work, two questions intersect within it that are not the same and which we constantly confuse. One is how much it costs, and the market answers this by measuring rarity, provenance, authenticity, trends, and the desire to possess it. The other is what it does to the person observing it, and that is not answered by any price. Sometimes the two coincide and a great work reaches a great price, and this appears natural to us. But they coincide by chance, not by necessity, and one need only look at a twelve-million-dollar card and a brilliant print for three thousand to see it. Confusing the two questions leads us to believe that the expensive is good and the cheap is lesser, when the only thing price measures with certainty is how much someone desires to possess that which almost no one else can have. The value of a work before the eyes is not quoted in any auction house. It never has been.
On the open conversation
This text draws upon verified auction cases to distinguish two measures we confuse: the price of a work and its worth as art. I maintain that these are independent axes, which sometimes coincide and sometimes do not, and I avoid two exaggerations: neither is everything expensive an imposture, nor is the market incapable of perceiving quality. Price measures scarcity, provenance, authenticity, and the desire for possession, not a substance called artistic value. I distinguish the fact (the figures and their explanation) from my interpretation. If anyone wishes to intervene from the perspective of the economics of culture, collecting, or art history, this notebook remains open.
Sources
1952 Mickey Mantle card ($12.6 million, 2022) and condition contrast in cards: Sotheby’s, 'The Trading Card Hall of Fame' and valuation guide (2024).
1998 Finals Air Jordan XIII ($2,238,000, 11 April 2023): Sotheby’s, official lot description.
Patek Philippe 1518 'pink on pink' ($9,570,900, December 2021): Sotheby’s.
Editions by Philip Guston ($2,794) and John Baldessari ($3,302), Marian Goodman collection, Christie’s (22 May 2026); institutional recognition at the MoMA.
The Adoration of the Kings: from 'circle of Rembrandt' (Christie’s Amsterdam, 2021) to Rembrandt (Sotheby’s London, £10.9 million, 6 December 2023). On the instability of authorship in Rembrandt: National Gallery of Art and Rembrandt Database.
Olav Velthuis, Talking Prices: Symbolic Meanings of Prices on the Market for Contemporary Art (Princeton University Press, 2005).