The Phillips auction archive is the online database of past sale results published by Phillips, covering jewellery, watches, contemporary art, and design across the firm's global salerooms in New York, Geneva, Hong Kong, and London. It is part of the standard set of public auction archives consulted by dealers, valuers, appraisers, and collectors when establishing market comparables and tracing provenance, alongside the archives maintained by Christie's, Sotheby's, and Bonhams.

What the archive contains

For each lot, the archive typically publishes the sale title and date, lot number, full catalogue description with attribution and dimensions, condition or provenance notes where present, the catalogue estimate range, the hammer price, and one or more catalogue images. For consigned signed jewellery, descriptions normally include maker, period, and any laboratory report references quoted in the catalogue. For coloured stones and diamonds, descriptions cite weights, dimensions, and grading information from accompanying reports.

Hammer prices are published net of buyer's premium; total prices realised, including premium, are typically displayed alongside. Sale results are searchable by maker, period, gemstone, sale date, lot number, and free-text terms across the description.

Use as comparables

The Phillips archive's particular strength is depth on signed twentieth- and twenty-first-century jewellery — Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, JAR, Suzanne Belperron, Verdura, Bulgari, and contemporary studio names — reflecting the house's market positioning. For valuing a signed brooch by Belperron, for example, the Phillips archive may yield more directly comparable lots than the equivalent Christie's or Sotheby's records, depending on the period.

For Burmese ruby, Kashmir sapphire, and other top-end coloured stones, Phillips comparables exist but are typically thinner than the corresponding Christie's and Sotheby's Geneva archives; for those stones, the Magnificent Jewels sales at the larger houses remain the principal comparable set.

Practical limitations

As with all auction archives, the published price is the price realised at hammer plus buyer's premium and does not include any private aftermarket transactions, post-sale offers, or dealer-mediated resales. Bought-in lots — those that did not meet the reserve and were not sold — are typically not published with prices, and that absence can distort the comparable picture for stones whose sale environment was difficult.

Catalogue attributions reflect the house's view at the time of sale and may have been refined since. For provenance research on signed jewellery, the catalogue note on a Phillips lot is a starting point, not a final answer.

In the trade

Combined use of the Phillips, Christie's, Sotheby's, and Bonhams archives, plus the relevant subscription databases — Lot-Tissimo and the Heritage archives among them — is standard practice for serious valuation work. The Phillips archive is most often consulted when the subject piece is signed twentieth- or twenty-first-century jewellery, where the house's market depth is greatest.

Further reading

• GIA Gems & Gemology — auction valuation methodology
• ICA — coloured stone market and price reporting
• International Gem Society — valuation comparables