Life of Guangzhou - Macau Auction Wants to be on Par with International Standards

The first art auction for the year ended on Saturday where Lee Tung, the CEO of Chongyuan International Auctions (Macau) Limited Company said that art auctions in Macau were beginign to enter the mature stage.

Lee said at the auction fair that ancient art, especially the bronze art auctions in Macau, were approaching the mature stage to the point where it was enough to attract buyers from all around the world.

However, he said that there were no regulations on the art auctions in Macau and that they could only follow the product tender process. It meant that the buyers had to pay a five percent stamp tax for the successful bidding of an art product.

He said that such acts were confusing international buyers and so hoped that the government would follow the international standards of auctioning and make some amendments on the process.

The law on art auctions in Macau was in fact still a “blank” page, therefore the government should only follow with the ordinary production bidding process, which was actually quite commonly done on the international scene, according to a local Chinese newspaper.

Lee also said that art auctions had been held by them for the past three years and confirmed that Macau had turned out to be one of the important art auction venues, especially for bronze art pieces.

At the auction, Lee said that the market in Macau was very different from Hong Kong, since the market in Macau was aimed at bronze art pieces, which was quite a new market, the target buyers would also be very different.

Finally, the auction yesterday saw 153 pieces from 165 of art get auctioned off which totalled 92.73 percent of the closing rate and earned approximately HKD 122 million, whereby a beast head pot from the post-Shang dynasty recorded the highest bidding at HKD 32.2 million.

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