Bargain hunt

Paintings appreciate in value over time. An example is abstract pioneer Wassily Kandinsky’s “Betonte Ecken,” which was bought from the Guggenheim Foundation by a New York art dealer for £22,000 at an auction in London in 1964.

The current owner expects a windfall from the artwork when it is auctioned off by Christie’s in London on 17 November. The auctioneer says “Betonte Ecken” can fetch $60 million to $80 million, CNN reported.

Currently, the highest price paid for a Kandinsky work was £37.2 million ($44.55 million) for his painting “Murnau mit Kirche II,” which was auctioned off in 2023. This makes a Kandinsky painting even more expensive than a residential property in China.

In the Jiangsu-Zhejiang region in eastern China, an anonymous shopper beat 1,676 other bidders for a condominium unit during Double 11, a monthlong shopping spree that ran through mid-November.

The flat is a two-bedroom, 68-square-meter unit on the seventh floor that was sold through Alibaba Auction, South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported.

The bidding for the flat in Heilongjiang province opened at a starting price of one yuan and ended on 5 November with the last bid of 11 yuan, which was the price cap, according to SCMP.

While the winning bidder paid platform transaction fees and a 2,000-yuan deed tax, the 11-yuan condo unit was still a super bargain, as local property apps estimate the secondhand flat’s market value at about 40,000 yuan, SCMP reported.

A manager at the auction agency told Fengmian News the deal was part of an Alibaba Auction Double 11 promotion, with the platform subsidizing the price difference.