Heritage Auctions announced $924 million in sales through the first half of 2024, the highest mark since the company’s founding in 1976.
This announcement Tuesday follows the auction house’s best year in its history in 2023, when it completed $1.76 billion in sales, a 21 percent increase over the prior year and the third consecutive year of record-setting sales. That number was more than double the $873 million in sales registered in 2020.
The auction house is on pace for its fourth consecutive record-setting year.
One of the earliest auction houses to embrace the internet age, Heritage was the world’s largest coin auctioneer by the year 2000 (around $120 million in sales), and the company soon expanded into burgeoning categories such as comic books, soon to be followed by a myriad of other sectors including sports, literature and more.
These categories have been some of the largest drivers of growth for the auction house, with sports leaping from $70 million in 2019 to $180 million in 2022.
“Much has been made in the media about a slowdown in the auction world, which has been news to us at Heritage,” CEO and co-chairman Steve Ivy said in a release. “As we near our 50th anniversary in 2026, the excitement continues to build: As the worldwide leader in the collectibles community, Heritage continues to add new offices worldwide, new categories, new records, new technological innovations and new clients, among them first-timers for whom popular culture serves as their introduction to the auction world.”
Heritage established records across multiple categories in 2024, including a $6 million sale of an Action Comics #1, the most expensive comic ever sold, as well as multiple record sales in sports memorabilia, such as a $1.8 million Sandy Koufax jersey, and in the realm of rare coins, which saw the most expensive Dutch coin cross the auction block in May.
Some of the most highly anticipated sales are still to come this year for the Dallas-based auction house, which will sell Babe Ruth’s “Called Shot” jersey — estimated to surpass $30 million and become the most expensive piece of sports memorabilia in auction history — as well as a screen-matched “Star Wars” ship (Starting bid: $300,000) and a first-edition Harry Potter book (current bid: $75,000 with buyer’s premium).
One of the auction house’s most important items, the ruby red slippers from “The Wizard of Oz,” is currently on an international press tour ahead of its December auction.
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct.