It started with the art auctions a week ago in Manhattan. Apparently bids for many of the modern and Impressionist works fell short of the estimates made before the auctions at Christie's and Sotheby's.
As a result, sellers putting top-end jewelry, jewels and watches on the block next week in Geneva (Switzerland --not New York) are being advised to drop the figure they'll settle for, known as the reserve.
A Christie's expert told Reuters that reserve prices have come down 20 to 30 percent. "We are very cautious," said Francois Curiel, international director of Christie's worldwide jewelry department. "There is a lot of demand for diamonds, which is a sign of a certain insecurity."
Christie's catalog shows a large blue sapphire that weighs 42.28 carats and has an estimated sale price of $2.8 million to $3.8 million.
On the block at rival Sotheby's, where reduced expectation are also the rule, is Lesotho I, a very light brown diamond weighing 71.73 carats mounted on a ring. A pre-sale estimate is between $3 million and $5 million, which was discovered by a miner's wife in Lesotho in 1967.
Liisa M. May