The art market: The sex factor

From The Financial Times:
Oh la la! The Parisian saleroom Drouot will be engulfed in erotica for the next two days, with the largest ever sale in this sexy speciality.
 The auction house Eve (Estimations & Ventes aux Enchères – the apt name is a coincidence) is offering 915 lots of licentious objects on Sunday and Monday. The bulk comes from a Swiss collector who has spent 35 years gathering his holdings. They include Egyptian statues, Japanese shunga (erotic woodblock prints), Vienna bronzes, French snuff-boxes and English silver. Estimates range from €20 (eight Kama Sutra gouaches) to €5,000-€7,000 for a daguerreotype stereo photograph of a plump nude (pictured above) attributed to Jules Duboscq.
 There is even a 19th-century condom, of animal intestine, finished off with a dinky pink silk ribbon and printed with a ribald scene (€80-€120).
 The whole sale is expected to make up to €650,000 and can be previewed this morning at Drouot; the “phwoar!” factor has already worked on the catalogue: it’s sold out.