Huge auction results for rca secret cards

Two Gerhard Richter RCA Secret cards from the 2009 show today sold at Sothebys for £42,000 and £40,000 respectively, excluding commission. 

A Peter Doig card from the 1998 sale made £30,000. 

Incredible results for something that cost £40 originally!

Sotheby's sells RCA Secret Cards by Richter and Doig

Sotheby's contemporary act auction this month will be selling two RCA secret cards from the 2009 sale by Gerhard Richter and 1 card from the 1998 sale by Peter Doig.

The 2 Richter cards were part of the 6 cards that Richter donated to the 2009 sale.  That year was the only year Richter had donated to the sale, the college had apparently been chasing him to contribute since 2007.

The estimate for these cards is £10,000 to £15,000.  A lot of money for a work which originally cost £40 but not much for a work by Richter.  Comparable pieces of similar sizes have sold for much much more than this in the last year.

The Doig card is from the 1998 sale.  This is incorrectly catalogued by Sotheby's as coming from the New York version of RCA secret.  Although there was an absolut secret sale in New York in the late 90's I'm pretty sure this card came from the London version of it.  The estimate for this is £8,000 to £12,000.  Again pretty low given that the last two doig RCA Secret cards to be sold at auction have gone for £42,000 and £16,250.

Good luck to the seller of these three cards who is a queue regular and top bloke.  Are we likely to see an auction record for an RCA Secret card.  It's possible!