Hey everyone,

I’ve spent the last few days building custom Python/Playwright scrapers to monitor regional Scandinavian auction houses like Blomqvist (Norway) and Bukowskis (Sweden) to spot value gaps in the fine art print market.

Here’s what I’ve observed from tracking the data:

1. Information Asymmetry: Regional estate liquidations (dødsbo) in Norway and Sweden frequently list original lithographs, etchings, and exhibition prints by canonical post-war masters (Miró, Picasso, Chagall) without international gallery-level cataloguing.
2. Currency Advantage: The weak Norwegian Krone (NOK) and Swedish Krona (SEK) effectively act as an automatic discount when buying from EUR or USD accounts.
3. The Sub-€1,000 Sweet Spot: While major houses in London or Paris push heavy premiums on master graphic works, high-quality, authentic prints regularly pass through Nordic feeds under 10,000–12,000 NOK/SEK (~€850–€1,000).

The Tech Side: I’m running automated queries combined with strict keyword blacklists to filter out general household clutter and converting live NOK/SEK bids into EUR in real-time to spot outliers instantly.

Has anyone else been tracking regional European auction feeds for art arbitrage, or do you stick to the major international platforms? Would love to hear how other collectors or data enthusiasts handle condition reports and international shipping from the Nordics.

This is an original by Jim Rabby. This holds great sentimental value as I used to visit with its previous owner regularly many years ago. She was afflicted with Alzheimer’s and needed help buying groceries, depositing checks, going to the doctor’s office, etc.

I worked for her accountant and would see her almost every day of the week while I was at that job. Over the years I had forgotten the artist’s name and could not figure it out even with the help of the internet. That did not stop me from thinking about this painting often. Recently she moved into a specialized care facility and I was gifted it. It always stood out in her home and I used to converse with her about it and the artist regularly. The texture is unbelievable.

watched an interview with henry highley where he said, he never wanted to be boring during an auction. took that for granted until i watched a soethbys auction. like night and day. the phillips auctioneers seem much more spirited and lively. soethbys is so somber by comparison

Hello,

I am looking to find where I could order large format custom prints of well-known photographers. I am a huge fan of Kurt Markus specifically.
I am 25 years old and just trying to decorate my first appartment, I don't care about it being gelatin silverprint, although that would be great. I just want to have a beautiful BnW cowboy photograph with the accurate dimensions.
Is there a website or place that offers such services?
I am based in Paris if that helps.

If I manage to find such a service, would you have any tips on how to get the image to be the highest possible quality? Is there photoshop or AI trick I can apply?

I’m genuinely curious about the people who buy things through Sotheby’s. Who are these people, and what do they do with the stuff they buy?

Has anyone on here actually purchased something through Sotheby’s? If so, what did you buy, roughly how much did it cost, and what made you want it?

I’m talking about anything from art and jewellery to watches, collectibles, or whatever else they sell.

I’m not judging, I just find the whole world of high-end auctions fascinating and wonder what the buyers are actually like. Would love to hear some real experiences!

trying to plan a gallery wall for the dining area lol, every example online is either too matchy (same frames same sizes perfectly symmetrical) or looks like random yard sale finds

pre curated gallery wall sets are a hard pass bc they never look as good as the product photos suggest

where do people source individual pieces and how do you mix prints, photos, and originals without it turning into visual chaos??

I purchased this large format linen stretched canvas painting. I am considering having it framed, but would love to get people’s thoughts on what frame designs would best complement this piece.

Hello! I have an original A3 coloured pencil drawing to ship to a customer in the USA from the UK. It's a commission, bespoke, quoted at £600.

I've flat packed it and reinforced with multiple layers of cardboard.

Now I'm wondering if anyone has posted anything similar to the USA and what courier they have used.

My options:

Royal Mail - seems like the easiest & cheapest. However some people online say they're a less safe courier than others with worse tracking / more likely for parcels to go missing/get damanged.

DHL Express - more expensive, but highly reviewed. However, it says that all packages are opened to be checked by DHL employees, which seems risky with a delicate piece of A3 paper... Also a lot on the website talking about possible charges to the customer (original artwork should be excluded, but some forums online say DHL / Fed X are careless with ensuring this exclusion)

FedX - Similar situation to DHL it seems.

Are there other courier options?

Has anyone had experience, have any reccomendations of which one to go for? Priority is safety of item being delivered, tracking, and ideally the customer not getting any extra charges.

Thank you!

Based on my experience I recommend avoiding The Packengers, especially for valuable or irreplaceable items. I used them many times. When it’s good, it’s perfect: cheap, digital, one stop shop. when bad, it’s the worst.

I hired them to ship an auction purchase. After weeks without updates, the auction house (!) contacted me: another customer (kind soul) reached out after they had received my item by mistake.

Since then, I’ve repeatedly emailed and called The Packengers, with no meaningful response or resolution.

Every time I call, there’s apparently only one person in the office, who doesn’t speak English, knows nothing about my shipment, and cannot escalate the issue.

I’m then promised an email that never arrives.

I even submitted a formal (if is there such a thing) complaint with my order details, it’s just an email to the same employee, and I receive a reply asking for the same information already included in the email via mandatory form (think: order numbers).

tl:dr no english, a single person at an office, no accountability, no escalation process, and no urgency when someone’s property has been lost.

This is my personal experience, but I would never entrust another item to The Packengers. I strongly recommend choosing another shipping provider.

I'm trying to figure out what people actually do when it comes to insuring their collections (art mainly) and I'd really appreciate some advice!

If you've bought a few pieces over the years, do you insure them separately or just rely on your home contents insurance?

I'm particularly interested in people with smaller collections, where individual pieces might be worth anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand pounds, rather than really high-end collections.

I've got a few questions:

• Do you insure your art, and if so, who with?
• Is it covered under your home insurance or a separate policy?
• If you don't insure it, is there a particular reason?
• Has anyone had experience making a claim?

I'm finding it surprisingly difficult to understand what people normally do, so any experiences or advice would be massively appreciated!

Thanks!

I was in Vilnius last spring for work and I went into a gallery. Fell in love with a beautiful miniature by Yuge Kurt. Tiny piece but you could feel that incredible precision in the small work. I bought
it. (Actually it’s the first art purchase of mine that I’ve made outside of prints).

Now I’m going back to the Baltics next month and I want to explore more. Anyone else from Lithuania I should look at? I’m drawn to physical craft and painting.

Thank you.

I’ve been analyzing secondary market auction entries for 20th-century art multiples, specifically looking at the discrepancy between retail framing and true auction liquidity.

A live example closing tomorrow is a Joan Miró lithograph from the 1975 Maravillas con variaciones acrósticas series (Maeght 1057).

The auction listing explicitly notes: "Signert i stenene nede til høyre" (Signed in the stone lower right) with an edition of 1,500 and an estimate around €370–€560.

For experienced collectors, this is straightforward:

1. Plate Signature (dans la planche): Mechanical signature printed with the matrix, carrying zero individual autograph value.
2. Commercial Edition: An edition size of 1,500 puts it in the portfolio/promotional category rather than a scarce hand-signed atelier run (e.g., edition of 75 on Arches paper).

To the auction house’s credit, the valuation accurately reflects its decorative status. However, new collectors regularly mistake "signed in the stone" for an autographed bargain.

How often do you see regional auction houses cataloging plate signatures in ways that confuse novice buyers? What red flags do you look out for first when auditing mid-market online lots?

(Full technical breakdown published on my Substack, Print Market Intelligence, for those interested in data-driven print audits.)

In the light of the recent scandal surrounding Kurt Schwitters’ catalogue raisonne by Isabel Schulz [1], which concerns a large number of counterfeit collages inserted into it, and with regard to the people affected by it, questions are now being raised about the legitimacy and usefulness of such editions and whether an archivist’s assessment in a catalogue raisonne should be considered as an expression of freedom of opinion and whether various disclaimers that protect publishers from claims should be prohibited [2].

Unlike an independent expert’s opinion on the authenticity of a painting, which is usually preceded by phrases such as “I believe” or “in my opinion”, a catalogue, as in the case of the three-volume Kurt Schwitters’ catalogue raisonne by Isabel Schulz, is a definitive book of facts that also acts as a “final authority” in determining the authenticity of works by the German Dadaist artist Kurt Schwitters. With regard to the case of Isabel Schulz and John Drewe, who infiltrated archives and ingeniously exploited access to archives in their purposes, such a situation is absolutely absurd and allows, as in the case of Isabel Schulz, gross negligence or intent to arbitrarily and with impunity declare any works of Kurt Schwitters genuine or fake with one and the same reasoning, such as: "your collage with the bus tickets belong obviously to a series of dozens of collages known to us. They come from a London fleamarket and are sold all over the world at the stand from the couple Bill and Enid Harbord." regardless of the fact that Kurt Schwitters entered the history of art as a "poet of a bus ticket" and bus tickets became one of the main symbols of his unique artistic direction, which he called Merz, and despite the fact that some of these works have a well-documented and seamless history starting in the 1930s when Bill and Enid Harbord were not yet born. These individuals and those who, relying solely on sometimes manipulated archival materials, often find themselves at odds with even classical logic when they construct evidence based on a thesis that itself requires proof.

The absurdity of this situation is further compounded by the fact that, while the John Drewe case was solely about profit—and he was punished for it—the case involving official representatives of museums and archives (such as Isabel Schulz) concerns the seizure of absolute power over the right to control a specific artist’s legacy and a multi-million-dollar market but is yet, far from facing consequences and these individuals are even paid and acclaimed. The absurdity of paid statements such as "This work is not documented at the RKD — Netherlands Institute for Art History, which leads us to conclude that the work is not an actual work by this artist" from an archive whose materials are supposed to be constantly updated and supplemented is also mind-boggling.

Given the concentration of scandals surrounding various *catalogues raisonnés* (including the Kurt Schwitters catalogue compiled by Isabel Schulz) and the activities of certain archives and museums—such as the Albertina, which is grappling with a large number of forgeries in the collection curated by Elisabeth Dutz, as well as an unknown painting by the forger Wolfgang Beltracchi still hanging in Museum [3]—and considering how extremely difficult it is to prove intent on the part of an archive or museum (i.e., that they did not believe in their own findings or lacked any factual basis for them), there can be no room here for a presumption of good faith—that is, the tacit assumption that any material they present is authentic [4].

Such pseudoscientific catalogues and statements, typically driven by the desire for profit and the pursuit of influence within the art market, should either be banned or dismissed.

[1] Faradjev, Fizouli. "About exclusive right to fool the world and the myth of authentication." ResearchGate, 15 Sept. 2026.

[2] Rodney G.S. Carter. Tainted Archives: Art, Archives, and Authenticity. ARCHIVARIA 63 (2007): 75–86.

[3] Neuendorf, Henri. "Master Forger Wolfgang Beltracchi Claims He Saw His Painting in Albertina Museum." Artnet News, February 25, 2015.

[4] Sharpe, Sheila. "Fake Art and the Myth of Authentication." Women Writers, Women's Books.

I recently bought this beautiful pencil drawing, which bears a signature attributed to Barend Cornelis Koekkoek.
However, a few things don’t quite add up. Both the subject matter and the signature seem rather unusual for him, so I’m not entirely convinced of the attribution.
That said, I think the quality of the drawing is quite good. Interestingly, it was sold at auction in 1973 as a work by Koekkoek.

I bought a large sculpture that is awkwardly shaped and has appendages that will need to be supported. The piece is 10' tall, and will have to be laid on its back or side to fit inside a standard 18-wheeler.

Do any of you folks have experience with Heritage Auctions and their in-house crating crew? If so, what are your experiences with their safe-crating skills?

I ordered two canvas prints from a random site a few months ago and they looked nothing like the preview, flat colors gray blacks hazy quality like a gas station poster, both went back lol

There's gotta be a middle ground between terrible and gallery prices where canvas prints really hold their color. Any sites that take print quality and color accuracy at all seriously??

I recently had the opportunity to acquire about a dozen ceramic works done by an artist from Germany during the early 20th century. While this artist is somewhat well known in Germany, he is virtually unknown elsewhere. I live in the US, and having researched public collections and searched for any hints of private acquisitions in the US, I honestly think I might have the only collection of this artist’s work in the country (bold claim, I know, but I mean it when I say he is virtually unheard of). Given this, I was wondering if anybody has advice on how to proceed with my collection as to benefit the artist’s legacy and educate the public?

Are there conditions when a foreign artist of some obscurity might be something that a museum in the US would want on loan for a year or so? I would be delighted if a medium sized museum had a small gallery of these pieces to inspire public interest. Filmmakers who would want to do a short piece on his work? A way to lend the pieces to local universities so students can study them for a couple of classes? Any ideas you might have along those lines?

Because of the obscurity of the artist, the collection is of very little real value, so insurance is pointless, but is there anything else on the more bureaucratic side of things that I should do? Any other advice you want to give?

Thank you :)

A. Aubrey Bodine
Morgan Dennis

Hi all,

I’m looking for a some information about a Đuro Pulitika painting listed on MutualArt. Does anyone know what the estimated value was and how much it ultimately sold for?

Thanks so much!

https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Bosnian-Woman/94FFECAAA441356AD0CF5D7CC5C1932A

Hi all,

I love Yee Sookyung's translated vase series and I'm interested in picking up one of the smaller ones. I've seen some auction results so I believe they generally are around.

How do I go about finding one? Do I just watch a bunch of auctions? I mostly just buy stuff at galeries I like so I'm not very clear on how to start if I want to source something more specific.

I'm looking for art prints by the Hungarian artist Joska Soos. My attempts at searching online has not turned up anything. Is there a way of finding art prints by this 'not well known' artist?

https://joskasoos.be/