A long-standing relationship with a major auction house such as Sotheby's, Christie's, Bonhams, or Phillips, or their specialist equivalents, produces records that follow the principal across consignments and acquisitions, sometimes for generations. The auction house's customer file, the dealer's archive, the catalogue entries that name the consigner or buyer, and the secondary commentary that follows, all accumulate over years of trade.

The customer file at a major auction house is among the more comprehensive of the records in private wealth. It includes the principal's interests, the consignments offered, the purchases made, the underbids placed, the prices realised, the addresses used, and frequently the bank accounts through which payment was made. The records are held with considerable care, but the field is small, the staff move between houses, and the records have on occasion been the subject of leaks, breaches, and disclosures in litigation.

The published catalogues are the most visible part of the record. A consigner who has been named in a catalogue is named permanently; the entry survives in the libraries and the digital archives that the auction house maintains. The named buyer in the results sheet is similarly preserved; the underbidder is not named but is identifiable, in many cases, to anyone who attended the sale.

The press coverage of important sales adds further visibility. The financial press, the trade press, and the specialist magazines all report on named consignments and named purchases. The cumulative effect, over a career of substantial dealing, is a corpus of secondary commentary that is harder to retire than the primary records.

The work in this category is well-established and is most effective at the moment of consignment or acquisition, when the principal's preferences for discretion can be reflected in the catalogue entry and the announcement. The auction houses are accustomed to such conversations and are generally responsive to them; the conversation is, however, more productive when it is held in advance of the sale rather than after the catalogue has been printed.