Art is money. It’s exactly like money and, if you handle it commercially without sentimentality, it trades fast & easy.
Stocks, Bonds, Real Estate, Commodities and now, Crypto-Currencies. That’s the standard by which we measure wealth and/or prosperity, but it’s wrong.
I just listed 422 of my own art prints on eBay, and have sold $400.00 worth on just the first day of listing them.
Sure, I put up some auctions, but don’t expect too many of them — they’re expensive and only serve as a sort of thermometer for the marketplace, which is how I used them.
Most of my recent postings are intended to sell at $39.95, which I’ve locked onto as a perfect number for this market and our audience.
Even those who find $39.95 burdensome can manage to save it up over a period of a year or two at the present rate of the economy. If the economy improves, it will get worse for the poor and better for the rich. Where have I heard that before?
So how to trade art?
I can’t lay it all down in one message how to work every art hustle, so let’s just look at prints.
They were originally intended to both promote the artists and to satisfy a market for less expensive artwork, and prints fit the bill rather well.
Most people didn’t frame their prints. They kept them tucked safely away inside their Holy Bibles, where they lay protected for centuries.
Many of my Rembrandt “finds” were between the pages of antiquarian books. I have one of “St. Jerome in a Dark Chamber” that is undoubtedly the best Rembrandt print I’ve ever gotten hold of, and I’ve handled and sold hundreds.
I also happen to have a number of EARLY LIFETIME Renoirs, if you know an art dealer looking for the real thing. Most of the stuff out there now is fake or crapola posthumous prints.
As far as my own stuff is concerned, I’ll be putting out a special “Dover Laid Paper” set of prints very very soon.
I bought 7,000 full 20″x30 sheets of this ultra-rare paper, and it’s the best for prints I’ve ever used, including the Arches Rives BFK, so I’m switching over to the Dover paper as soon as I can.
It’s a matter of hand-tearing them, because a paper-cutter edge looks terrible, if you want to float-mount the print, which I would certainly do, with a nice wide DOUBLE mat board and a wide museum-style classical carved & gilded wood frame.
My miniatures will be the best presentation — there’s nothing like them. Nobody produces miniatures like these anymore, but I still do, because I like to create them, no other reason.
The larger prints sell best. They run 10″ x 14″, and frame out well at 16″ x 20″, which is a very standard and inexpensive size, and it fits most apartments and is still large enough to work on a homestead style wall.
The miniatures are not really so miniature. Actual sizes? The image size will run around 4″ x 8″ and the paper size will run roughly 6″ x 9″ — the parent-sheet is totally European sized, so the numbers are a bit screwy in inches.
Dover paper is a laid stock, with watermarks, and is absolutely the most expensive and luxuriant paper I’ve ever used for a mere print, but it’s great stuff, and I want to use it.
The brilliance of the colors and the inherent light-sphere contained within the paper surface are well worth the extra money.
Unfortunately, I bought literally the world’s supply of it back in 1987, when their factory closed, thus ending a 400-year history of making Dover paper.
The Dover paper I have resembles 17th century printing paper so much that it’s used to repair antiquarian books, and it brings $30 for one parent sheet, it’s that expensive, if you could find it anywhere, but you can’t.
If you know someone who restores antiquarian books, tell them about this paper before it’s all gone. I have some reserved for conservationists.
It used to be that you’d make a few prints and that’d be it, mostly because if I had to actually print all those images out and put them into a gallery, I’d be out tens of thousands of dollars or more right now.
I don’t have to print anything. It’s all “by demand”. All I need to do is produce the art itself, photograph or scan it, and post it on eBay and wait for results.
At a mere $39.95, it doesn’t look like much, but boy, does it add up FAST!
If you want to sell more expensive goods than $39.95, go ahead and list them, but don’t hold your breath.
$39.95 is just enough to cause a little pain, but not unreachable. At $50.00, they’re calling their accountant before they buy it.
Psychologically it doesn’t make sense — what’s an extra $20 bucks? But for most people today, it does make a difference, so keep your price low and well within the range of your customers.
I used to know people who bought great big architectural art, but I don’t socialize anymore, if indeed, I ever did, so I have three storage units full of giant-sized paintings, some of them over 50 feet wide!
If you know of anyone interested in gigantic architectural art, I’ve got it, and some of it has photographs of famous people playing jazz concerts in front of them.
I plan to list a whole lot more stuff, but eBay has put a limit on the number of things I can list, and I’m right up against it now.
Hopefully, they’ll be disposed to help me out here by expanding my sales-limit. I have a 22 year history with eBay, so it won’t be hard to convince them.
I used to be a Platinum Power-Seller, but these days, who has that kind of energy?
Maybe you can see your way clear to becoming a marketplace maven, but it takes work, work and more work to get there from where you have to start.
Did you know that virtual real estate is selling well these days? Do you have any idea how it works?
Are you not aware of the virtual retail stores, where you can whirl around the whole shop and talk via zoom or other media with salespeople?
Have you followed the new technology that allows a tailor to take your measurements over a cell phone?
Fairly soon, you’ll be happy to be left alone for a few moments, to relax and not think about consuming things and accumulating stuff and feeling better.
Hey, want to feel a whole lot better?
Go look through my offerings — take the time to blow the images up big, go into the listing and read what’s said about it.
Now go thou, and do likewise.
If you go about it properly, it will become a powerful part of your Work Discipline and give you an opportunity many times over to fulfill your Bodhisattva obligations here on Earth.
Maybe you don’t have any Work Obligations, in which case, just have a good time.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby