There have been some clever plays in this market. For example, the dealer swap - two dealers agree to bid up each other's pieces at auction. The final sale prices are inexplicably very close, so they swap the pieces without moving much money around.
The market as a whole sees a much higher price - so they've made a few (tens of) millions on the assessed value of the pieces and also (probably) raised the value of future auctions of work by the same artist.
For example: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/arts/design/mary-boone-se...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/art-dealer-larry-gagosian-settl...
There have been some clever plays in this market. For example, the dealer swap - two dealers agree to bid up each other's pieces at auction. The final sale prices are inexplicably very close, so they swap the pieces without moving much money around.
The market as a whole sees a much higher price - so they've made a few (tens of) millions on the assessed value of the pieces and also (probably) raised the value of future auctions of work by the same artist.
All for the cost of the auction fees.