In the 19th century were paintings and collectibles worth, inflation adjusted, anything like today's prices?
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No, prices paid for luxury collector items into the early 20th century were nothing like what we've seen in more recent decades, even adjusting for inflation.
In their book The Development of the Art Market in England: Money as Muse, 1730β1900, Thomas Bayer and John Page analyze a database of paintings auctioned in England between 1709 and 1913. The highest price they found for any such transaction was Β£24,250. I'm not able to determine the year but if we assume it's a very early one from c. 1710 or c. 1750 (unlikely), that wasn't much more than Β£4-5 million in today's money. This is a full order of magnitude below record-breaking transactions regularly seen since at least the 1980s.
This should not be surprising. As the overall wealth in society increases over time, naturally luxury markets have as well. This is not just at the high end. The middle classes have grown from near-nothing before the Industrial Revolution, and so new markets for an ever-more diverse range of collectible itemse continue to emerge.
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