I remember standing in the corner of a drafty, repurposed warehouse during a London graduate exhibition in the late nineties, nursing a lukewarm glass of cheap Prosecco and watching a collector squint at a series of charcoal drawings. He wasn’t looking at the technique; he was looking for a sign—some sort of institutional stamp of […]
Stop listening to the glossy, white-walled whispers that suggest you need a six-figure windfall and a membership to a private club just to own something meaningful. There is a pervasive, exhausting myth that art collecting is a game played exclusively by people with more money than sense, and frankly, it’s a lie designed to keep […]
I remember sitting in the back office of my gallery in 1994, staring at a stunning 19th-century daguerreotype that had been handed to me by a client who thought a velvet-lined wooden box was a substitute for actual climate control. The silver was flaking, the image was ghosting, and the sheer negligence of it made […]
People will tell you that the art of hunting for classic comic books is about finding that one “holy grail” issue in a dusty basement, as if it’s some grand, romantic scavenger hunt. They want you to believe it’s about luck or a divine connection to the medium. It isn’t. In my twenty-six years of […]
If you think a “vintage” label and a heavy price tag are the same thing as excellence, you aren’t collecting—you’re just being subsidizing a dealer’s lifestyle. I spent twenty-six years watching people walk into my gallery and mistake mere prettiness for provenance, and I see the same mistake happening in the glassware market every single […]
People love to talk about the prestige of philately, as if you need a mahogany desk and a trust fund to appreciate a bit of perforated paper. They treat it like an auction house spectacle, all hushed tones and astronomical hammer prices, completely ignoring the actual soul of the thing. To me, the joys of […]
Stop listening to the glossy brochures and the “experts” on YouTube who treat numismatics like a high-stakes game of Wall Street poker. They want you to believe that learning how to start a vintage coin collection requires a massive inheritance and a private vault, when in reality, most of them are just trying to sell […]
I spent twenty-six years watching people treat art like a commodity and even more time watching collectors treat their music like mere clutter. There is a particular brand of nonsense floating around the internet lately—expensive, aesthetic-focused nonsense—suggesting that you need custom-built mahogany shelving and a professional archivist to manage your library. Let’s be clear: if […]
I remember a client in 2014—bronze, 45cm, 2012—who spent forty minutes swooning over the texture of a piece, only to realize three weeks later that it wouldn’t actually fit through his front door. It is a classic, avoidable tragedy. Most people approach the market thinking that once they’ve mastered the nuances of canvas and pigment, […]
I remember a man in my gallery back in 2004, standing in front of a silver gelatin print, looking utterly paralyzed. He wasn’t moved by the image; he was terrified of the transaction. He kept asking if the “scarcity” was real or just a clever bit of marketing, and frankly, I couldn’t blame him for […]