Buying art at garage sales tips?

[batcap]

It really helps to have your research tools with you. For me that's a smart phone with web access. Find the artist's signature and look it up. Almost everything is in the name. Do look hard to be sure it's not a print. I have embarrassing, maybe funny stories I haven't yet shared about that. Lemme tell you about the time I bought this Douglas Fairbanks Jr. boat drawing . . . someday, when the pain subsides.

My favorite art find is still on my wall now: a Willie Restum painting titled "My Kind of Girl". I bought it to sell, and tried to sell it once, but now I'm more than a little fond of it. I think it will be part of my estate, and someone else will look up that name and buy it for $5 hoping to turn a buck. And they, like me will realize that Willie was more famous for his baritone sax than his paintbrush. If he is lucky, he will find her in the thick gobs of brown paint and decide she's his kind of girl, too.

 

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[capt-zero]

One thing not mentioned yet, is that with fine art, if you find just one good one, it more than pays for a housefull of worthless prints. I've had a passion for art for only a few years, but since I've been looking for and studying it, I have found about three or four good ones each year. Art, unlike a lot of things discussed here, takes a lot of time to understand and recognise. It doesn't, however, take a lot of time to distinguish an original oil from an offset print. I have found no comprehensive free websites of artist's signatures and art has no hallmarks. There are as many or more fakes of art, than any other object discussed on this website. I think the most important thing about buying it to keep in mind though, is the small, but very real chance to strike it big time with an artwork. So basically, what I'm saying, is it can be chancy, but as long as one keeps the outlay reasonable, you could be the one who finds the next unknown DaVinci (as a New York collector recently did (he also recently turned down $80 million for it)). It doesn't take a DaVinci, though, to do well. Except for one piece, I haven't tried to sell any of my good stuff, yet, but my auctioneer is constantly after me about it. I would hesitate to put a dollar figure on it, but I do know that I have recently found some very good works. I did, however, spend a couple of years picking up a lot of largely worthless pictures, but one day I found a signed and numbered Escher print that paid for all the previous garbage I'd bought previously and a nice used car I'm still driving. So spending some time on research and taking a few chances can pay off.