Our best kept secret in 2025: how some 500 specialists across 40 departments drove $1.5 billion worth of private sales

Adrien Meyer, global head of Private Sales, and his team at Christie’s have a very particular set of skills. They probably know more than anyone else about where the world’s most important works of art are kept — and can connect their owners with willing buyers behind closed doors to broker deals beyond the auction saleroom.

In 2025, he oversaw the equivalent of four transactions a day, conducted via an international network of 500 specialists spread across 40 departments, ranging from antiquities to wine, Chinese ceramics to handbags, and rare books to contemporary art. Still signing contracts on 31 December, his team made $1.5 billion worth of private sales — a quarter of Christie’s total sales in 2025. The previous year, private sales were up 41 per cent: proof that if an object exists, chances are Meyer and his Private Sales team can match it with a buyer.

‘My job is to hunt for works of art. But unlike auctions, where you act on behalf of the seller, private sales are more focused on the buyer,’ he says. ‘We get to know their tastes, patterns, needs, then find things that might interest them.’

It’s a skill Meyer has acquired over the course of more than 25 years in the business. ‘From the age of seven, every weekend my father would take me to the local salerooms in Paris,’ he recalls. ‘I was fascinated by the atmosphere and the chance of a discovery.’

After studying at the Ecole du Louvre, Meyer began working in the world of auctions around 2000, joining Christie’s European Furniture department four years later. In 2010, he moved to the Impressionist and Modern Art department in New York, before taking the reins of Private Sales in 2019.

Despite the department’s discreetness, it has existed since the very beginning. In 1779, the company’s founder, James Christie, negotiated the private sale of around 200 paintings from the collection of Britain’s first prime minister, Robert Walpole, to Catherine the Great for £40,500 — works that are now a key part of the Hermitage collection.

Many buyers still have similar motivations today, says Meyer. A collector might approach him because they require a particular period Basquiat to fill a gap in their collection, or a Richter to hang above their mantel in time for a party at the weekend. A decorator might be urgently seeking a Roman marble to furnish a project that can’t wait until the next auction season, or someone could be looking for a Birkin bag for their partner’s birthday the next day. Then there are those burdened with ‘underbidder regret’.

In addition, more than 50 of last year’s private sales were to institutions, such as the National Gallery in London, which acquired Edgar Degas’s Ballet Dancers, as well as Guercino’s King David, the latter from the estate of Jacob, 4th Lord Rothschild.

The department’s growth can be pinned on several key advantages. Theoretically, a private sale could be completed in a matter of hours — and 82 per cent of items find a buyer within 50 days. ‘You could be waiting 10 years for a great Georges Seurat Conté drawing to appear at auction,’ says Meyer. Private sales remove the variables that can occur on the night of an auction, prices are never made public and ‘freshness’ is untouched. The service is tailored, exclusive and confidential.

Part of Meyer’s remit, however, has been to maintain the delicate balancing act between keeping private sales discreet while also demystifying the process.

He has shaped the various routes a private sale can take: works can be stored by Christie’s and only shown to a handful of individuals, hung in Private Sales exhibitions, listed on Christie’s website or even promoted on social media when relevant. ‘We can advise on the most appropriate way to optimise the value of a work,’ he adds.

Proving the power of making private sales less opaque, Meyer recalls a recent sale to a 93-year-old collector. ‘She was looking for a Joan Mitchell, and discovered one on our website. She came into Rockefeller Center the next day to see it, and bought it on the spot. Amazingly, it was the first time she had ever set foot inside Christie’s.’

Four years ago, Meyer was part of the team that pioneered ‘private auctions’. On several separate occasions, he stood at the rostrum while specialists manned the telephones in the wings for one single lot of exceptional quality. The only difference was that the seats were empty and the doors were shut. Hand-picked top clients were invited to dial into the sale via encrypted links and bid against each other. In most of those instances, the artwork far exceeded the artist’s auction record. ‘We cherry-pick the works to ensure we maintain the rarity and special nature of these events,’ says Meyer. ‘Private auctions have created the ideal synergy between the auction’s competitiveness and the discretion of private sales.’

While American collectors make up the majority of buyers through private sales, it has become a truly international marketplace. ‘Just this morning I was speaking to a colleague in Hong Kong about sending a Picasso located in Geneva for a private viewing in New York,’ says Meyer. ‘It’s more global than ever.’

So, as a man who knows how to locate precious artworks, is there one discovery he remembers above all others? ‘A friend persuaded me to meet a stranger at a toll station one Christmas Eve. I followed him to a small apartment an hour outside Paris. There, I was introduced to Claude Monet’s heir, who no one knew existed,’ he says.

When he isn’t matchmaking buyers and sellers, Meyer still finds time to conduct auctions in New York, London, Paris and Hong Kong.

‘Private sales have become such a complementary part of who we are now, and an increasingly vital service for Christie’s clients,’ he observes. ‘It’s been a real privilege for me to manage this part of our business, and it feels rewarding to see our great team bring buyers and sellers together and help artworks find new homes.’

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