Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Reproductions have odd effects in art markets.

Prints or limited edition prints usually raise the value of the original (fame value).

But if the limited edition prints don't sell out, the original tends to drop in value.

So popular artists like Beverly Doolittle, can have big sets of limited editions (1000-10,000) and still command a high price (3-4 digits) for prints. Originals are in collections.

Less popular artists make smaller runs of prints, and often the prints don't maintain value.

If I were considering buying a print at a swap meet, the first thing I would do is look on the back, to see if it were numbered. Knowing nothing else, I would choose a numbered print over an un-numbered print, and an original over a print. If I couldn't tell the difference between an original and a print, that's a great reproduction, and I would value it higher.

Today Mr. Twofingers had this. $2.

Sold it as-is for $75.

After Being Found in Dumpster, Paintings by ‘Largely Forgotten’ Artist Get New York Gallery Show
https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/f ... 234624886/

The CBS story linked below interviews to the guy who found the paintings in the dumpster. He talks about googling and googling and googling until he figured out who the artist was. This is something I now do daily and really enjoy the detective work.

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/uncoverin ... illions/#x

You are going important work for posterity Ego. Keep it up.

Thanks @Chenda. The woman with the box of photos contacted me to say that she is still out of town and will pick them up in May or June.

One of the downsides to my art pricing strategy is that I am now accumulating a lot of paintings and have to find ways to store them. I adopted the strategy from another seller who is a friend of a friend. Apparently he has a warehouse full of paintings and frequently has trouble finding them after they sell. It seems to work because the ultra-high price subsidizes the extra percentage I pay for ebay promoted listings. Ebay uses that additional percentage to buy ads for the items that appear at the top of native google searches. It is scary how well that works.

I have kludged together a few hanging shelves in the speakeasy room in the basement.



I have not sold at the swap meet for a while and have accumulated a lot of dead merchandise that has to go so I spent a few days getting organized. I plan to sell the next two Sundays.

I sold at the swap meet this morning. Squeezed everything into the Honda Fit. Who needs a pickup truck?

I hope you sold most of that stuff! The Fit is aptly named.

@moortrees, I sold 85%. Dropped the remainder at Goodwill. A good day. The basement is clearing up. I still have four road bikes and one mountain bike to sell.

Went for a ride this morning. I took the ferry across with the intention of heading south. As I wheeled my bike off the ferry another cyclist asked if I knew how to get on the bike path toward the border. I told him I'd be happy to show him the way. As we pedaled along we talked.

He is my age. In town for a property management convention. He owns seven very large apartment complexes back east. The smallest has two-hundred-and-fifty apartments. I peppered him with questions about his life.

When he turned fifty he hired a COO and handed the day to day operation to her. Since then he has focused on the things he has always wanted to do but never had the time. Travel and fitness. But he is still very active in the business. He has visited some relatively obscure places in his travels. The Okavango Delta and gorillas in Africa. Some unusual places in Europe. Asia is next.

After looking at the border from the pedestrian bridge we turned back toward the ferry and he asked how it was that I could go for a long ride on a weekday morning and have it stretch into the afternoon without having to check-in with anyone. That led to a meandering conversation that opened many doors.

By the time we landed at the ferry dock we were fast friends. We exchanged numbers and he headed to the convention center while I came home for lunch with Mrs. Ego.

At lunch I talked a bit about his life and the interesting things I learned. Mrs. Ego thought for a moment and said it reminded her of The Parable of the Mexican Fisherman.

Ego wrote: ↑

Mon May 30, 2022 8:05 pm

@moortrees, I sold 85%. Dropped the remainder at Goodwill. A good day. The basement is clearing up. I still have four road bikes and one mountain bike to sell.

Fantastic! That car was FULL. Nice work. I'm sure the bikes will go quickly as there still seems to be a shortage of used bikes.

A tenant will be moving across the country and began discarding stuff. This leather pouf was in the trash last week. It was stuffed full of her pre-covid, size 2 wardrobe.



Mrs. Ego was about to head up to her apartment to do the walk-thru with the tenant while wearing a new, very colorful little dress I had never seen before. She was at the door when I said, "You didn't get that dress from X's pouf, did you?"

Oops.

Finally she came and picked up the bin full of old family photos, journals and passports. She was embarrassed because she had forgotten to pay the rent on the storage unit and was surprised when it was sold at auction so quickly.

Ego wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 28, 2021 1:30 pm

Lately I have been running a loop of the island on Saturday mornings and then meeting up with my cycling group to do the ride. I ride about 20 meters behind the lead group and try to hang on without the benefit of drafting. I usually get dropped about halfway and then grab onto the back of the second group, staying 20 meters back to avoid crashes. So far so good.

This morning I started the run at sunrise and arrived at the beach before any of the beachcombers.



I found a coffee cup with a barnacle attached and an iphone. The phone had an otterbox case and the slots held the owners IDs and credit cards as well as some cash. The owner is from LA so the phone probably took a long trip to get here.



After the bike ride we gather at a house for coffee. For years we've been collecting misfit mugs so I cleaned it off and added to the collection. I gave the phone to one of my friends who was riding home past the police station. The cops in mayberry are very good at reuniting people with their stuff.

i love this mug collection

Nice finds! Sounds like you’ve gotten back into a good exercise routine. Mrs. Animal and I are glad to hear you got back to riding with your cycling group. I can imagine that must make Mrs. Ego happy.

@ertyu, me too. The shoe on the top left is used to mark milestones with a champagne toast. There was a shoe prior to that one. It was found on the side of the road, had a very tall heel and was disgusting. It had been used for about 20 years for immune system testing champagne toasts. No one died. One day it just disappeared from the garage.

@animal, thanks, yes, back to a similar routine as outlined in one of the first posts. The past few weeks I've had plans to do some open water swims with friends but the border sewage situation is weird so the beaches and bays have been frequently closed. The county started using a new DNA test for water quality. The water itself is the same quality as before but the test is more sensitive so more closures. Everyone has been in a an uproar so they recently changed from banning to "at your own risk". As it should be. If I get cholera, you'll know how.

The tenant with the pouf stuffed full of expensive Mrs. Ego-sized clothing (see above) finally moved out last week. She was a huge Amazon shopper and continued to receive large deliveries up until the day before she was moving, which was strange because she was leaving by cross-country flight. The only thing we can figure is that she had it set to auto-delivery and forgot to turn it off.

Well, the night before her flight she threw out an unbelievable stockpile of brand new, unopened stuff. Among the finds was a case of hand soap (3 gallons). Dozens of bottles of spray cleaners of every variety. A case of swiffer heads (three boxes). A case of paper towels (24). A case of Tide liquid laundry detergent (3). Several types of fabric softeners. Expensive make up, moisturizers, facial cleaners and various shampoos, conditioners, soaps and other things that I don't know what they do. A strange electrical face stimulator that sells for $500 at Neiman Marcus. Various kitchen devices and a microwave oven. A nice, large television monitor. Full packages of every type of food a good vegan girl would have in her pantry.

This morning, several days after she left, a case of Cottonelle toilet paper showed up at her door via Amazon. I texted her and she said we should keep it.



We are frugal and either do not use this stuff or use the least expensive version. I fear hedonic Cottenelle adaptation is in the cards for the Egos.

Wow Ego! That's an insane haul of very usable items. I enjoy getting free things, when people move out, but that sized haul may just be too overwhelming.

We are fortunate to have a ton of storage in the basement and Mrs. Ego is a good organizer, but yeah, it is a lot of stuff. The thing I don't understand is where the tenant would have stored it all in her small apartment.

Another box arrived with a case of kitty litter and a case of Cottonelle flushable wet wipes. Mrs. Ego has a pool party with a frugal friend who has a cat so she gets the cat litter. Never in a million years would we buy the wet wipe things but it is interesting to see how the other half lives. Sooooooothing.

Completely unrelated, today I was working in the office and got to hear the stream of tenants going past. I am convinced that childless mid-thirties women get pets for the sole purpose of satisfying some deep primal urge that blossoms at about that age to incessantly scold, nag and micromanage. I don't remember this stage with Mrs. Ego, but maybe I blocked it out?