The Wall Street Journal ran an article on starting an art collection titled Your First Picasso by Brooks Barnes on Friday, April 4. If you missed the article or are not a subscriber to the WSJ (which means you can't access the article on-line), I have spelled out the highlights (and added a personal comment or two) here. These cliff notes will be posted in sections.
The goal of the article:
With the neophyte collector in mind -- and also more-experienced buyers who want to add cheaper works -- Weekend Journal went in search of strategies for finding less-expensive art with the best chance of increasing in value.
Here is their first of four recommended strategies for finding works at $5,000 or less:
1) Buy 20th-Century prints at auction or through private dealers. Last year, print sales at the big New York auction houses "totaled $31 million, a 35% increase over 2002." Recommended artists: only Picasso... no other artists were named, except as an example of price increase. Takashi Murakami prints sold for $2,800 in 2002 and $8,000 last March. If you didn't get one in 2002, his prints are now above the $5,000 limit they are writing about. They recommend buying Picasso prints from the late 60's or early 70's because prints in all other periods are over the $5,000 mark. My favorite tip: "Try to avoid [Picasso] works that are overly erotic; it keeps value down." Very funny. Recommended auction houses outside of New York and LA are Ivey-Selkirk in St. Louis and Skinner in Boston. They recommend you see a print in-person before buying it to assess condition (torn edges or frayed corners are no-no's); therefore buying a print on-line is not recommended.
I think this recommendation is best for the Investor Collector. (Actually, the whole article is geared towards this type of collector over any other. No talk of collecting out of passion for art in this article anywhere. Then again, it is the WSJ.) If you are looking to collect as an investment, this is the route for you. As you would research a stock, so should (and can) you research a print by most 20th Century artists before heading to an auction. There is a plethora of information available to you by checking out auction results at artnet.com or contacting the auction houses directly to request price lists. Some auction houses even post their recent auction prices on-line.
The Ebay prices are the only prices you will get for the Park West junk. WSJ has tried to sell the stuff to reputable dealers w/o luck. They called it low quality poster art, same for their framing jobs. THe embelished art they sell as being done by the artist such as Max are not done by the artist! (see the wording on their COA). Much is assembly line art work with the ARTIST just adding a few brush stokes.
PARK WEST WILL NOT TAKE THE STUFF BACK FOR 80% OR 50% ON THE DOLLAR... WHICH SHOULD TELL YOU WHAT THEY THIK ITS REALLY WORTH.
Note dealers asking prices are many times higher than they will actually pay or sell the work for( big discounts) and bare no relationsip to the actual value of the work.
Until 2008.. all sales were final by the way... no refunds.
Park West paid a P/R firm to post positive comments on the websites to cover up the massive protests. Some such posts are here.
FAR is not a competitor... they allow their members (10 bucks per year) to post their pictures on their site for for sale and get no percentage of the procedes.
Leading experts have ruled the Dalis as fakes and or fake signatures including German universities and the police.
Such nonsnese as prints going up 400% lol... modern prints with no real artist involvement simply dont go up in value with very rare exception!
Dali Pints pre death are worth a couple of hundred bucks and 500 more if they have a legitimate signature...lots of luck on that.And almost nothing if post death ... 100 bucks.
In the past ten years only a couple of modern prints have increased slightly in value. Destino is made up of only 14 seconds of work that Dali was involved in.... around 355 frames... of which only 85 remained and who did them is unsure. They ere basically unsigned ... they are worth may be 200 hundred each as post death prints hich were Dali expired and or partially Dali done.
World renown experts including the German police have supported FARs findings concerning the Alberto collection.
Park West has been getting 18K for the Destino prints... LOL.....
My Nephew has not been able to get back 10% of his Park West "investment" after 5 years... thats yourexpected return.. from Rembrants, ERTes, Maritos,Chagalls, Turkay Faunch, Dalis and Picasos, Moully and etc ...
Regards
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Posted by: VIPER | February 09, 2010 at 03:45 PM