Second, I think it’s also worth noting that when prices are lower than specialists’ expectations they often talk about the piece as not having achieved its price, or matured to its price, rather than it not being worth the estimate.

I’m on board with the sensemaking and information value of prices. But the specifics matter more – when and under what circumstances will market values confirm, dis-confirm, or alter art world values?

I’m leery about the separate spheres of value arguments (per someone like Waltzer in Spheres of Justice), and I know Daniel Beunza has written about ‘value’ v. ‘values’ in various guises. I’m also a little invested in Viviana Zelizer’s view of circuits of value (whereby the social gives the economic value rather than the economic draining value from the social).

I think the next step is a series of defensible hypothesis or something more structured.

Another way to think about it is to consider the sensemaking of prices. Prices are not, in almost any market, straightforward measures of value. They need to be interpreted by experts and others who are looking for information about the value of assets. So when a valuable piece of art sells for a high (but not record) price or when a free agent signs a baseball contract below the expected amount, the experts have to weigh in with their opinions as to what the price actually means. In this sense, price always requires interpretation. This view of price would be something like Hayek*Weick.