Neither Incarnation nor Giacometti

To convince them in the importance of managing well with the numbers, he was saying on Tuesday to the pupils, in the first meeting of a course on press and statistics, that this one is excellent for each and everyone of the sections of the newspapers, including that of culture.
And we had only to wait until Thursday to see a round example of which also to write in this section is necessary to know something about numbers. All the means told us that a Giacometti sculpture, The man who walks, had beaten a record to the being the piece of art for which more it had been paid in an art auction: 104,327 million dollars, which were overcoming the previous record of the picture of Picasso, Boy with a pip, which was from 2004 in 104,168 million dollars.
The problem, of course, is that we are not comparing dollars with the same purchasing power. The dollars of 2010 cost less than those than 2004, as everybody knows, for this thing called inflation. That's why, almost every year (less the past, which has been very rare in everything), all the prices rise and we do not proclaim, whenever they do it, that beat historical records. We do not also allow ourselves to cheat because our salary rises every year, nominally, because we know that as the inflation goes, our power adquisito real can have risen, or not (and in any case, it will have done it less than the nominal increase). The increases that attract attention of us are those who separate clearly of the inflation: that of the fuels in the last years, that of the housing during the bubble, that of the bonometro in Madrid...
Imagine this situation: someone tells them that he bought a picture for 104,1 dollars in 2004 and now it has sold it for 104,3 dollars. What would they say to him?
a) What luck, you have received more for your picture that the price for which you bought it!
b) I'm sorry a few times it is gained and others it gets lost.
If they answer a) I do not recommend to them to devote themselves to the business. If they answer b), you will be with me in whom the Giacometti record is a bluff.
This way, then, let's take of The Country the list of 10 works for which more it has been paid (nominally) in auctions, and let's rearrange the values in accordance with the price in constant dollars of 2010 (I use as a deflator, for lack of a world IPC, that I believe that it does not exist, the IPC of the United States, which is after all who expresses the reference currency; since we are in February newly begun, and with inflation almost to zero, it seems acceptable to me, like approach, to compare the current price with those of other years expressed in dollars of 2009).

Work

Date of sale

Nominal price

$ 2009

Ranking The Country

1. Van Gogh Retrato del Dr. Gachet

1990

82,5

135,4

6

2. Renoir Au Moulin of the Gallette

1990

78,1

128,2

7

3. Picasso Boy with pip

2004

104,1

118,2

2

4. Giacometti L'homme qui goes

2010

104,3

104,3

1

5. Picasso Dora Maar au chat

2006

95,2

101,3

3

6. Klimt Retrato of Adele Bloch Bauer II

2006

87,9

93,5

4

7. Rubens The massacre of the innocent persons

2002

76,7

91,5

8

8. Bacon Triptych

2008

86,2

85,9

5

9. Rothko Centro Target (Yellow, Rose and Lavender on Rosa Rosa)

2007

72,8

75,3

9

10. Andy Warhol Green Car Crash

2007

71,1

73,6

10

Supposing that this ranking is correct (that of course not, because there will be works sold earlier by nominally minor, but much major quantities if Giacometti was expressing himself in today dollars) would stay in an honorable put quarter, but very far of 135 million dollars to which there would be equivalent today the 83 that were paid, in 1990, for the Portrait of Dr. Gachet of Van Gogh.
Anyway, that as with the false Incarnation record, they are telling us a milonga.