How One Object Can Have Multiple Values At The Same Time
The Currencies of Value
Not long ago, I was asked to value a single painting.
It was a straightforward request, at least on the surface. The work was known. The artist had an established market. There was sufficient data—auction records, gallery sales, comparable examples. Nothing about the object itself presented a particular challenge.
And yet, within the span of a single conversation, I was asked for not one value—but several.
What would it be worth for insurance?
What would it be worth for an estate?
What might it bring at auction?
What could it sell for privately?
What would a dealer pay for it outright?
Same painting. Same moment in time.
Five different questions.
Each requiring a different answer.
One Object, Multiple Questions
This is the point where most people begin to feel uneasy.
Because we are conditioned to believe that value is singular—that somewhere, beneath all of the variables, there exists a “true” number waiting to be uncovered. And if the numbers don’t align, then something must be off.
But in valuation, the opposite is true.
When the numbers differ, it is often a sign that the analysis is working.
Because value is not a fixed attribute of an object. It is a function of context.
Value Is a Function of Context
Take that same painting.
If it were to be insured, the value would reflect what it would cost to replace it—today, in the current retail market. Not just the price of a comparable work, but the realities of sourcing it: gallery markups, limited availability, transaction costs, the time it might take to find another example of similar quality. The number is, by design, protective. It assumes loss and seeks to make the owner whole.
Shift the context to an estate, and the framework changes entirely.
Now we are no longer asking what it would cost to replace the painting, but what it would reasonably sell for between a willing buyer and a willing seller, neither under compulsion, both informed. This is the standard defined by the IRS as fair market value. It often aligns more closely with wholesale conditions, where transactions occur with a degree of efficiency and realism about what the market will bear.
Move again—this time to auction.
Here, the number becomes something else altogether. An estimate is not a declaration of worth; it is a strategy. It is calibrated to attract bidders, to create momentum, to reflect not just past results but present appetite. It must account for timing, competition, and the unpredictability of the room. It is as much about psychology as it is about data.
A dealer, evaluating that same painting, will look at it through yet another lens.
What price allows for resale?
What margin is required?
How long might the work sit before it finds the right buyer?
The number here is shaped by risk, by capital, by the realities of running a business within a market that is anything but static.
And then there is the private transaction—often the most opaque of all.
A sale negotiated quietly, influenced by relationships, by urgency, by taste. A number that may sit above or below public benchmarks, depending not on what the market says in the abstract, but on what two parties agree upon in a specific moment.
Five Values, Five Frameworks
Five values.
All derived from the same object.
All supported by the same underlying market.
All correct.
The Problem Isn’t the Number
The mistake is not in the existence of multiple values.
The mistake is in assuming that they should reconcile into one.
I have seen this play out in ways that are not just confusing, but consequential.
An insurance value used as a proxy for what something might sell for—only to result in disappointment when the market responds differently.
An auction result cited to challenge a replacement cost—without accounting for the conditions under which that result was achieved.
A fair market value questioned because it does not align with a gallery price—when in fact it is not meant to.
In each case, the issue is not the number itself.
It is the misalignment between the number and its purpose.
From Calculation to Translation
This is where valuation becomes less about calculation and more about translation.
Because what I am often doing is not simply determining value, but explaining why different values can exist simultaneously without contradiction.
Why a higher number is not necessarily more “accurate.”
Why a lower number is not inherently conservative.
Why context is not a complication, but the very thing that gives the number meaning.
Layered, Not Conflicting
Over time, I have come to think of these values not as competing, but as layered.
Each one reveals something different about the object.
Its position within the market.
Its accessibility.
Its liquidity.
Its replacement potential.
Together, they form a more complete picture than any single number could on its own.
But only if they are understood for what they are—and what they are not.
There is a quiet discipline in holding these distinctions.
In resisting the urge to collapse them into a single figure for the sake of simplicity.
Because simplicity, in this context, is often misleading.
And clarity requires a willingness to sit with nuance.
If last week was about recognizing that purpose must come before price, then this is the natural extension:
Even when purpose is defined, value does not resolve into one answer.
It expands.
Next week: why expertise alone is not enough—and why even experienced specialists can struggle to support a value when the reasoning behind it is left unspoken.