ART SPECULATING
ART SPECULATING An art speculator is someone who buys art that he recognizes as being far more valuable than the price at which it is being offered for sale, or that it is expected to fetch, if the sale is an auction. The art speculator has an ancestor which used to be called “a picker”. Pickers’ old-fashioned routine consisted in having routes and visiting weekly hundreds of places where something of value might be for sale for very little: antique shops, antique malls, thrift shops, Salvation Army stores, estate sales, auction sales rooms. It was inefficient and did not easily allow performing research to get crucial information. A lot of guessing had to be done on the spot. Most of the old timers who operated this way drove beaten up vans and died poor. Today’s art speculator looks for unrecognized quality; works offered as artist unknown; wrong dating of anonymous works; originals described as copies; originals listed as “after” pieces; originals listed as by followers