There is more money in the world than great paintings by John Jan Popovic

BUYING ART STRATEGICALLY
To buy and sell art successfully, you must develop contacts and build relationships.

BUYING ART STRATEGICALLY
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Art Market Relationships
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To buy and sell art successfully, you must develop contacts and build relationships.
25/25/50 Rule
Remember this rule, because it applies whether you're an engineer, teacher, or art dealer:
25% of your success will come from your knowledge.
25% of your success will come from your skills.
And 50% of your success will come from your relationships.
Develop these attributes. It is of fundamental importance.


WHO SUPPLIES ART?
Serious buyers of art develop "relationships" with Informers, Art Historians, Art Critics, Dealers, Galleries, and Auction Houses.
In the fine art Eco-system there are also Museums, private art collections, private and public art foundations, art archives, Fine Art publishers, banks and funds who treat the fine art arifacta as precious investment commodity.
And in contemporary art there are also living artists, present in this Eco-system.

80 % of all art moves from dealer to dealer, each tagging on a profit. Eventually most art winds up on a collector's wall, usually at the highest price. You can feed off the bottom or fish at the top, but you want to buy at the beginning of the art chain, or as close to it as possible.

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Door Knockers & Pickers
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In the old pre-internet times Knockers knocked on house doors, saluting politely, they asked, "Do you have any art or antiques to sell?" Now, in the era of Ebay and Internet, it's a dying trade, but even now, when practiced can produce unexpected results.
Pickers buy an antique drawing for '50 in an antique shop, then go to an another country and sell it for '150. In a less than a month, an experienced Picker will strategically comb an entire geographic region, often finding valuable works of art for selected customers. He knows his customers wish-list. Pickers know to which dealers and clients to sell their acquisitions.

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Art dealers
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Art dealers generally sell to high-end galleries and their customers, usually at a lower price. More experienced dealers sell to collectors, investors, galleries, even museums, usually for higher amounts.

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Quiet art transactions
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Top artwork, generally very expensive, usually NOT available on the open art market, comes with a documented provenance, bibliography, expertises, and viewing may be organised in safe house or in the bank, under certain conditions* and only upon an prearranged appointment.

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Internet era
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Today in this Internet era of global communication, smart dealers working off their home, can easily compete with renowned galleries for the same customers and the same valuable artworks. Remember, auction rooms offer great opportunities to buy and sell art. You must learn which Rooms to buy from and which to sell to, and how to find "winners" in Fine Art newspapers and magazines, and selected web sites.

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New contacts
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From Fine Art newspapers, web sites, and selected art magazines you can harvest names and telephone numbers of serious art collectors and dealers and important galleries, who will become your future customers and suppliers.



Investment art is valuable for three reasons:
(1) superior quality,
(2) rarity, and
(3) scarcity.
Some people who deem scarcity as prize-worthy, are willing to pay an exorbitant price for the last anything on earth that someone else wants, needs, or admires. You might have heard, they stopped making 19th century art more than one hundred years ago. It's like waterfront property, it isn't made any more, which is why it cost 10 times more than rural farmland. If you're lucky enough to own a rare painting, say one of a kind, well, that artwork can be near priceless.


WHICH SUBJECTS ARE BEST?
Notwithstanding the exception to every rule: horizontal pictures are better than vertical ones. Paintings of girls are more desirable than pictures of boys. Landscapes are more valuable than seascapes. Life-pictures are more valuable than death scenes. Domestic animals are more appealing than wild animals. Organic still lifes are more valuable than inanimate pictures. More is better than less, with fruit, flowers, and fish etc. Thick paint (impasto) is better than thin paint (dry brush). Bright colors are better than soft tones. Remember, religious pictures are hard to sell, unless an Old Master, or executed by well-known artists. Full size paintings (cm 70 x 100) are better than small or medium size pictures. Experimental themes are not as valuable as paintings from an artist's main body of artwork. A masculine face on a woman dressed in satin and lace will have little chance of fetching a good price at auction. Cheerful subjects, such as kittens pawing a ball of string, goldfish swimming in a bowl, or children chasing fireflies on a summer evening are highly desired subjects, and form a generally safe buying guide.




BUYING ART STRATEGICALLY
The below buying criteria will help establish standards for buying investment quality art, thereby assuring you of a profitable outcome.

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Buy
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- only original paintings; signed and dated by the artist.
- only listed artists with multiple auction records.
- paintings by artists who produced a prodigious body of work in their lifetime, e.g., more than 200 paintings.
- works by artists who had major exhibitions and shows in their lifetime, e.g., The British Royal Academy, The Paris Salon, Art Basel.
- artworks by artists whose School of art remains highly collected and in demand.
- representative examples of an artist's central theme paintings.
- subjects that other people collect and invest in, e.g., children at play, women under parasols, genre pictures, mountain and bellavista landscapes.
- examples that are fresh and new to the market (have not recently been at auction, or "shopped around").
- representative paintings of an artist's highest quality.
- large size paintings, cm 70 x 100, but generally not larger than 160 cm on any side.
' examples that are in good to excellent condition.
' paintings with an authenticated well-documented provenance.
' art works that come with a free title, bill of sale, and a guarantee.
' unsigned paintings, with no attribution, that are outstanding (if reasonably priced), especially if accompanied by expertise and attribution from a renowned specialty scholar.

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Originals, Art archives and Artwork Authenticity
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Before buying an artwork, it is appropriate to verify its provenance and authenticity. If the artwork is not included in the latest and most comprehensive Catalogue Raisonné of the artist and if there is no the the Certificate of Authenticity issued to the owner, you have a problem!
You should ask for a CERTIFICATE OF AUTHENTICITY, Artwork archiving number, and relative bibliography if existent. In the case that purchased artwork is not accompanied with the CERTIFICATE OF AUTHENTICITY, it is convenient to obtain it directly from the artist, if living, or from the foundation's experts and scientific committee, or from the art archive which is protecting the artistic heritage of the artist.
For the protection against acquisition of fake, counterfeited artwork or of dubious origin, the certificate of authenticity is the only way to protect the investment.

Those who are approaching to the world of art, both collectors and enthusiasts, it is of fundamental importance to re-control the validity of their CERTIFICATE OF AUTHENTICITY, by well known established authority for the artist in question.

There is also the existent legislation on cultural heritage which impose on those who trade paintings, sculpture, graphics, objects of antiquity or objects of historical or archaeological interest, to release time of sale of a photographic copy of the artifact with the written statement of authenticity and an indication of the origin.