Philippine Auction Houses Explained: Fees, Deadlines, and Export Rules

Hello, this is SEILA.

If you follow Philippine art for any length of time, you end up at the auction houses. Most of the recent record prices for the country's modern masters, from Amorsolo to Hidalgo, were set in Manila salerooms.

Yet there is surprisingly little written for an international reader about how those salerooms actually work. So I read the published terms and conditions of the four Philippine auction houses listed on this site, and compared them with what you might be used to at Christie's, Sotheby's, or the Tokyo houses.

The differences are real, and a few of them will catch you out if you don't know in advance.

The four houses

The two majors are León and Salcedo, both founded in 2010. Serious auction culture in the Philippines is, in other words, about fifteen years old. León's founder, Jaime Ponce de León, trained at Sotheby's and Christie's; Salcedo's co-founder, Richie Lerma, previously directed the Ateneo Art Gallery.

1. Buyer's premiums are flat, and lower than you're used to

Philippine premiums are a single flat rate, like Japan's, rather than the sliding scale used in New York and London. On a ₱10 million painting (about US$156,000), the premium at Salcedo is ₱1.68 million; at Christie's it would be ₱2.8 million.

Philippine VAT (12%) is charged on the premium, not on the hammer price. Casa de Memoria's conditions say so explicitly, and the figures published by León and Salcedo work out the same way.

2. You have three days to pay

This is the one that surprised me most.

León's conditions require the invoice to be paid in full and the lot collected "within three days of the date of sale." Casa de Memoria allows five business days. Salcedo does not publish a deadline, but a first-time bidder who wrote up the March 2020 sale was told to pay by bank transfer within three days.

Compare that with seven calendar days at Christie's, or ten business days at the Tokyo houses.

Payment methods also tell you something about the market. León accepts cash, cashier's cheques, wire transfers, and personal cheques (the lot is held until the cheque clears). Casa de Memoria takes credit cards and PayPal. SBI in Tokyo, by contrast, is wire-transfer only.

3. There is no warranty, and the houses say so

León's conditions put it in one sentence:

All items sold do not have any warranty.

Casa de Memoria's conditions give "no guarantee" as to authenticity, and León's catalogues add that checking the details is "the due diligence of the consignor / buyer."

Christie's and Phillips offer a five-year authorship warranty. Even the Tokyo houses give you one to three years. In the Philippines, there is nothing.

One further point worth knowing. Christie's five-year warranty does not apply to Southeast Asian modern and contemporary art. For that category, the only remedy is cancellation if the lot is proven a forgery, and you have twelve months to claim (Christie's New York conditions, April 2025). Philippine art is a thinly warranted field wherever you buy it.

So the preview matters. León, for example, opens its preview for about a week before each sale. The ₱73.6 million Spoliarium boceto sold at Salcedo in 2018 was later the subject of a public dispute over provenance. Go in assuming the homework is yours.

4. Deposits work differently at each house

Salcedo asks every bidder for a refundable deposit. The amount is not published (the 2020 account mentions ₱10,000). If you don't win, it is refunded a week after the sale.

León may ask for a deposit on absentee bids above ₱200,000, "or at the discretion of the auctioneer."

Casa de Memoria takes your credit card details instead, with authority to charge a 10% penalty on the final bid if you fail to pay.

5. Results are not always public

Salcedo's results are visible only to logged-in clients, two weeks after the sale. In New York, London, or Tokyo, results go up almost immediately. Price transparency is still a work in progress here.

6. Export takes sixty days' notice

This applies to all four houses, because it is the law rather than house policy.

Exporting artwork from the Philippines requires a permit from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA). Applications must be filed at least sixty days before the intended export. For works that do not qualify as cultural property, the NCCA issues a Certificate of Non-Coverage (₱300 in fees). Foreign applicants also submit a copy of their passport.

Works by deceased National Artists are presumed to be Important Cultural Property, and permanent export requires a resolution of the NCCA board.

León and Casa de Memoria state in their conditions that shipping and permits are the buyer's responsibility; Salcedo offers a delivery service through its relationship managers.

Which leaves a practical gap. You must pay and collect within three days, but you cannot ship for sixty. For close to two months the work has to sit somewhere in the Philippines. The realistic answer is a local fine-art shipper who knows the NCCA process and can handle storage, the application, and crating as one job. Budget for it before you bid.

7. A 5% resale right exists, on paper

This one I did not expect.

Section 200 of the Philippine Intellectual Property Code gives the artist, or the artist's heirs, an inalienable right to 5% of the gross proceeds every time an original painting or sculpture is resold, for the artist's lifetime plus fifty years. The seller pays. It covers sales through galleries and dealers as well as auctions; prints are excluded.

Europe has the same kind of right (droit de suite) and collects it. Japan has none at all. The Philippines has the law but, as far as I can find, no auction house collects it. The Intellectual Property Office (IPOPHL) has been urging artists since 2024 to enforce it, and a group led by the sculptor Ramon Orlina is setting up a collecting society.

"The law exists but doesn't run yet" is a fair summary of a lot of this market.

Prices to know

At today's rate, the Joya is about US$1.75 million. Almost every record dates from 2015 or later. On 12 September 2026 the two majors held their flagship sales on the same day: Zóbel's Saeta 82 made ₱31.2 million at León and Amorsolo's Tinikling Dance ₱38.5 million at Salcedo.

Contemporary records, though, are set in Hong Kong, not Manila. Ronald Ventura's Grayground sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong in 2011 for HK$8.4 million (about ₱46.9 million at the time). Broadly, the division still holds: masters and historical material in Manila, living contemporary artists in Hong Kong.

For the trade

If you are a dealer or auction specialist looking at the Philippines for the first time, four things to carry with you:

Three days to pay, sixty days to export. Bridging that gap with storage and paperwork is the main logistical problem.

No warranty. Even Christie's offers only a twelve-month forgery clause for this category. Provenance is your job.

A 5% resale right exists in law. Not collected today, but a collecting society is being organised. If you plan to resell inside the Philippines, treat it as a future cost.

Transparency is uneven. Salcedo's results are client-only, and databases such as Artprice miss some Manila sales. To read the market you have to follow both houses' catalogues and results yourself.

FAQ

Can I bid from overseas? Yes. Both León and Salcedo take online, phone, and absentee bids. León also appears on LiveAuctioneers and Invaluable, where the premium rises to 25.16%. Neither house publishes its ID or deposit requirements for foreign bidders, so email before the sale.

Can I pay by card? Not at León. Casa de Memoria takes cards and PayPal. Salcedo does not say. Assume a wire transfer.

Can I ship straight after the sale? No. You need an NCCA export permit or Certificate of Non-Coverage, applied for at least sixty days ahead. Use a local shipper who handles the application.

Are the houses in English? Yes. Catalogues, conditions, and salerooms are in English.

SEILA

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