Hirst valuation
What a Hirst is worth turns on which of several thousand editions you actually own, and on whether its paperwork still exists. Here is what we look at.
More people own a Damien Hirst than own a work by any comparable artist, and that is the whole difficulty. The editions run to many thousands of sheets across a dozen distinct bodies of work, so the name on its own settles nothing. What settles it is which edition you hold and what documentation came with it — and both are usually answerable from photographs. If you own something and want to know what it is before you approach anyone, that is a conversation worth having first.
What sets the value
- Which series, and which edition within it
- Hirst does not have a body of printed work so much as a dozen of them — spots, spins, butterflies and kaleidoscopes, the foil blocks, The Souls, The Virtues, The Empresses, and more besides. Edition sizes run from a few dozen to several thousand. Two sheets that look alike to an owner can belong to different editions published years apart, and until that is settled nothing else on this list can be judged.
- The certificate, and who issued it
- HENI for the recent prints and digital editions, Other Criteria for much of the 2000s output, and Science Ltd for older material and the database behind it. This is not filing: an edition whose paperwork cannot be produced is a materially harder sell than the identical sheet with it, and the gap between the two is wider on a Hirst than on almost any comparable name.
- Signature and numbering — including their absence
- The conventions changed as the publishers did. Earlier editions are typically hand-signed in pencil on the front. More recent HENI editions are signed and numbered on a printed label on the reverse, which is correct for those editions and alarms owners who expect a pencil signature. An unsigned sheet is not automatically wrong. A sheet whose inscriptions do not match the convention for the edition it claims to be is a question worth answering before a saleroom asks it.
- Condition, judged by surface
- The materials are less forgiving than ordinary printmaking. Foil and high-gloss surfaces hold every handling mark and cannot be flattened or cleaned like a sheet of wove paper. The colour in the spots and butterflies fades on a sunlit wall, slowly enough that the owner is the last person to notice. Condition is judged against what the edition normally looks like, not against perfection — but on these surfaces the gap between the two shows.
- Provenance, and the date on the work
- Where it has been since it left the publisher, with invoices and receipts behind it. Dating deserves its own mention here: in May 2024 a Guardian investigation reported that at least a thousand of the paintings issued through The Currency and dated 2016 were in fact made in 2018 and 2019. Hirst's lawyers said he dates work by conception rather than completion, and that artists are entitled to be inconsistent about it. Whatever view you take, a buyer's advisor will raise it, so it is better established before a consignment than during one.
- What the work actually is
- Print, unique work, or one of the hybrids. The Currency paintings are unique works on paper that arrived through an edition-like process; the spot editions are prints; some of the cabinet and butterfly works are neither. They sit in different sales with different buyers, and a valuation that treats them as one category is not a valuation.
What we do with it
A valuation is only useful if it leads somewhere. We compare what the work is likely to achieve across the international and regional salerooms, weigh sale dates and settlement periods against each other, and negotiate the seller's terms rather than accept a published rate card. All paperwork and remittance stays in your name. Selling a Hirst covers the routes and the timetable, and what selling at auction actually costs sets out every fee that comes off the hammer price.
Common questions
Does a Damien Hirst need a certificate to sell?
Practically, in most cases, yes. There is no single authentication body of the kind Pest Control provides for Banksy — the Hirst Authentication Committee no longer operates — so what a saleroom relies on instead is publisher documentation: a HENI certificate for recent editions, Other Criteria or Science Ltd paperwork for older ones, supported by invoices and receipts. Where a certificate is genuinely lost, a work can still be sold, but expect it to be harder and to be reflected in the estimate. Establish the position before consigning rather than after.
My print is not signed on the front. Is something wrong?
Probably not. The conventions changed with the publishers. Earlier editions are usually hand-signed in pencil on the front, while more recent HENI editions are signed and numbered on a printed label on the reverse. What matters is whether the inscriptions are consistent with the edition the work claims to belong to, not whether they match what you expected to find.
I have one of The Currency paintings. What do I need?
Collectors who exchanged their NFT for the physical work generally did not receive a paper certificate, and access to the digital record ended with the exchange. Whatever you kept from the transaction — the exchange confirmation, the original purchase receipt, the tender number — is the provenance, so gather it before you do anything else. The 2016 date printed on these works has been publicly questioned, and it is better to have your own record straight than to answer that question cold.
How do I get a Damien Hirst valued?
Images are enough to begin: the full sheet or work, the reverse including any label, the signature and numbering wherever they appear, and any certificate or invoice. Add approximate dimensions. There is no charge, and a valuation carries no obligation to proceed.
What does it cost to sell a Hirst at auction?
Seller's commission, insurance, cataloguing and — if the work does not sell — an unsold fee. We set out how each of those works on our selling at auction page, and we negotiate them on your behalf rather than accepting a published rate card.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with the artist, his studio, his publishers or any auction house. Nothing here is investment advice.
Send images and any paperwork to info@whitebankfineart.co.uk, or get in touch below. Photographs of the work, the reverse and whatever documentation you have are enough to begin.