Obviously Brompton's or any other auction house does not think like you. If they did, they would have been happy with these big ticket items selling and not run an After Sales for the other items that did not sell. The OP did not notice that these items sold but noticed that many items were unsold. Its bad marketing for Brompton's as people will think twice before consigning items to them considering they have many unsold always. The auctioneer has a responsibility to try and sell every item consigned to them. Value is definitely a metric that is closely aligned to profitability. But volume and percentage sold are equally good and important measures to attribute the success of an auction. If Brompton's had a value strategy alone like you mentioned is the most defining metric, they would focus on fewer and high ticket items. Not over 250 items with estimates spread from the low hundreds to half a million. I don't know what strategy you are talking about but clearly there is no strategy here.