Tarisio auction prices

Edited: November 9, 2025, 1:37 PM · I've purchased violins from Tarisio and Amati; I think overall when you add in the hammer price fee, they run maybe 30% less than what you'd see at a violin shop. Of course there is a wide range of variance there; I just bought a 140-year-old Stradivarius copy at auction for less than $200; no one bid because it just didn't look nice, needed a cleaning badly and sagging bridge. After a cleaning and setup, it projects like you wouldn't believe and has a nice resonant sound.

Also, it's quite common to see a variance in price from the same maker; this can be due to the location of the shop (higher prices in California than Missouri for example), or due to repairs to the instrument, or the time in the makers career when it was made, or other factors.

Edited: November 9, 2025, 1:50 PM · To give you an idea of the impossibility of attributing an "actual value" to many of the violins sold at auction, one of my most recent purchases (unseen in the flesh) was an instrument of about 1900 bearing the label of a well-respected maker who worked for one of the established London workshops. The hammer price of £350 was certainly influenced by the quite severe damage evinced on the front. On subsequent inspection the repair is somewhat unsightly but perfectly sound, the condition is otherwise good and the playing fine. I see similar instruments by the same maker currently advertised by dealers on the web for £10K and £12K.

November 9, 2025, 2:49 PM · Humm...mind sharing the makers?
Some makers just may be more prolific, are better known, or have more resale data.

My modern Italian was 2x the price of highest resale value at auction... luckily it was an upgrade situation at a shop, so the purchase wasn't as painful to the pocketbook all at once.

November 9, 2025, 3:41 PM · It used to be fairly common that auction price was around wholesale, typically about 50% of retail. In more recent years, and especially with the growth in popularity of online auctions, things have started to change. Now that speculative buyers who aren’t dealers make up the majority of the auction clientele, prices are much higher because those buyers view auctions as a way to pay less than they would at a shop for what they believe to be the same thing.

Auction pricing is typically different because auctions are final sales that don’t come with trial periods (although some still allow potential buyers to inspect the lots in person before the auction) and they don’t come with the customer service of a shop. Prices are not in line with the retail market because of the nature of auctions, where eagerness to win and fear of missing out on a hidden gem can drive prices beyond what’s typical.

While auction prices used to be kept low to allow dealers to buy and resell instruments, they have risen so much in some areas that auction prices have hit records that have in turn caused the shops to raise prices to match. It only took one Roth auctioned at $20k to drive retail prices up overnight.

When I was young, people used to buy copies of the Red Book, which was a compilation of auction results for various makers, and take that and Henley’s dictionary along with them when they went to loon at violins. If they felt confident of an attribution, they would look the maker up to see what a reasonable price ought to be at auction and would expect the retail to be double unless there was damage, in which case the auction price would be lower.

I hate to say it, but I don’t think there’s really any rule of thumb anymore. To know what retail prices really are you have to know what people are paying. You can look at violins advertised on websites to see what’s being asked, but you don’t know the actual price paid unless you’ve seen the receipt. Obviously shops and buyers aren’t eager to publish their information, so the uncertainty grows as the distinction between wholesale and retail is blurred.

Auction houses like to advertise it when their lots reach new records, so there’s an emphasis on raising prices to promote an investment vehicle for the speculative buyer and increase the amount paid out in buyer and seller premiums. I think the trend is moving toward establishing parity between auction and retail prices so that buyers can just look up auction results when walking into shops for comparison shopping. I don’t think there’s market has quite reached that point yet.

When it comes to pricing violins, so much comes down to talking with colleagues and experts and comparing prices of violins being offered and prices paid. Price comparison is difficult to begin with because in order for it to be at all useful, you really need to have a lot of detailed information on each violin (provenance, age, condition, school, certificates, etc.). Just pulling up a spreadsheet of prices won’t tell you that one violin was pristine but another had a soundpost crack or was revarnished. Taking a mathematical average of prices won’t necessarily be accurate, either.

November 9, 2025, 4:16 PM · Long ago, auctions were for dealers and prices tended to be wholesale. Multiply by 2 or so to get retail.

Now individuals often participate, although dealers don’t like it. That raises the auction price. It also takes a lot of customers away from shops who carry the inventory, since the keenest buyers may now already own an instrument.

Edited: November 9, 2025, 4:38 PM · Auction houses don't offer the opportunity to take an instrument out for a couple of weeks or so to try it in familiar environments or actual performing situations, so that presents a higher risk than if one had a thorough chance to put the instruments through its paces. One also doesn't have a chance to take the instrument to their favorite luthier to get a second opinion on condition, or to find out how much money might be needed to put in decent playing shape. So due to those higher elements of risk, auction prices can be much lower than what is asked from a retail shop.

One more factor can be how many people are in the market for an instrument by a certain maker during the very short time period that it is offered by an auction house. One needs at least two people bidding against each other to push the price up.

Auction prices can also be manipulated to be much higher than normal.
I know of one maker whose instrument set a record price for a new instrument at auction (easily done if one knows how to play that game), but when people who already owned one tried to sell at a similar price to ostensibly make a big profit, the instruments did not sell.