Digital BW, The Print

Jerry,

I basically agree with you, and I certainly don't buy anything for my
collection that I don't first and foremost truly love. But beyond some
price point I'm not willing to simply pay whatever the price is for
something without at least considering whether it is possibly overpriced
or will potentially lose value. For instance, I once bought a piece at
auction that I later found out was generally available on the retail
market for about half of what I wound up paying. At the time, I was
comfortable that my enjoyment of the piece would be worth the price I
paid. But it was definitely a bad financial decision, because I could
never recoup the money I invested if I ever needed to sell the piece for
whatever reason.

My point being, even when you're buying something you love, you still
have to give some consideration to whether you're spending your money
wisely. Buying into a scheme that has the potential to decrease in value
under the conditions where it would normally increase (i.e. a
particularly good piece that winds up becoming popular) doesn't seem
smart to me. That was the comment I was trying to make about Mark's
idea. Of course, it's pretty hard to predict what the actual economics
of Mark's proposal would wind up being. It may be that the popularity of
a work that would drive Mark to a second or third printing would
overcome the dilutive effect of introducing more copies onto the market.
As we all know, the valuation of works of art is pretty much entirely
subjective.

(By the way, an interesting book on this topic is "The Worth of Art:
Pricing the Priceless" by Judith Benhamou-Huet.)

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/2843232848

-Jason


-----Original Message-----
From: glewis4457@... [mailto:glewis4457@...] 

It has always been my understanding that you buy what you like and hope
for 
appreciation,  It is a bad strategy to try and second guess who will
become 
popular and appreciate and who will be a dud.  If you buy what you like
at 
least you will always have a piece of artwork that you like.

Jerry in Houston