Kopenaghen Fur Auction Report
Kopenhagen Fur’s September auction marked the end of the sales season 2011/2012.
With a very diverse offering of 4.1 million mink skins, Kopenhagen Fur reached an all time high offering of 20 million skins in one season. In addition to the mink offering, the collection included a record number of chinchilla skins, very beautiful Swakara skins and various other skin types.
China has been dominant throughout the season. China’s dominance in the fur market has been strongly influenced by the favourable economic conditions in the country. As one of the few countries in the world, China has maintained an impressive economic growth at a time when virtually
all other fur-consuming countries have been in major financial problems. The economic growth in China has created many consumers of fur, as the giant middle and upper classes use their new wealth to exhibit their success.
However, as the auction approached, we could see trade beginning to stir. More Chinese customers signed up for the auction and the trade in fur in China improved. The expected number of customers went up from between 400 and 500 to more than 500 and more and more customers
expressed optimism regarding price developments.
The result was what might be expected; from the start of the auction, there was great activity and especially mutation mink and males in general fetched higher prices. During the last few years, Kopenhagen Fur has as a courtesy sent out a text message with average price and deviation for each type. The calculation of deviation percentages are always based on latest price obtained. Since the September auction is the last auction of the season, all skins are sorted and many of these sortings have not been under the hammer since last year.
Due to the uncertainty associated with the valuation of these lots, we chose not to publish deviation percentages for many types. Only for those types where we had a significant number of skins with similar descriptions under the hammer in June, the deviation percentage was published.
Prices were generally better than our valuation and the entire mink collection was sold with an increase of 5%, corresponding to an average price of DKK 373, a fantastic price taking into consideration the large number of lowgrade skins in the collection.
With 373 DKK being the average price for the auction, the result of the 2011/2012 season is an average price of DKK 476 for all skins sold at Kopenhagen Fur. Kopenhagen Fur’s turnover for the season reached DKK 10.5 billion, a fantastic result, not only for the fur industry but certainly also for Denmark in these tough financial times.
