Estimate – This is the auction house’s guestimate for what a particular work could fetch in a sale, agreed upon in advance by the house’s specialists (as a bracket around the appraisal) and included in the auction catalogues. It includes a low estimate and a high estimate, and is typically written in the format of “$14,000,000 – $18,000,000,” or a permutation thereof. There are estimates for each individual work and estimates for the overall sale.
