Lets see, spend $7k on 1 of the 17 prints Shrigley released this year or buy a few original pieces from up and coming artists...Feels like a no brainer to me.

£6k now

Given the price just went up again I assume people like it enough to pay. 

I'd agree with this to some extent, but the lack of transparency around the tiers and pricing makes me wonder how many of these they're actually moving. 

Edition is now Sold out 

C-list?.....No, definitely not.

Makes the signed Brighton Festival screenprint for £150, edition of 48 from the other week look like a bargain.

Perhaps I'm comparing apples and oranges but I couldn't justify £5/6k for a Shrigley print.

To his credit he does pump out a lot of affordable art, as well as the counter edition works.

After some reflection, I have one theory (total conjecture on my part) re how Counter can get people to pay £5/6k and have the edition sell out, when any serious purchaser knows that they will be half of that at 2pm the moment they are released, and perhaps a third of the price if they get a VIP link the day/week before.

If you’re a flipper and managed to buy one of these pre-release for £1.5k (i.e. with discount), you are going to want the item to progress through the tiers in order to make that purchase more valuable. One way to ensure that happening is to buy a second print at a higher tier. So if such a seller bought one print at pre-release for £1.5k and another one at £4K (i.e. £5k pre-discount), you have effectively purchased two prints at £2,750 each. Whilst on one view that may seem counterintuitive, on another view it ensures that you are increasing the chances that the perceived market value/list price ends up being as high as possible. I’ve seen hedge funds and similar do this with different levels of debt/equity in capital structures to manipulate / disguise the true price of trades (not the perfect analogy), but it’s the only rational example I can think of to explain what is happening here.

An innocent question, and appreciate the comments on pricing, and the way its being sold, but what is the explanation behind the image/print???

Genuinely curious.

What’s a reasonable price for this set? CE have it listed at £15.5k which is very lumpy (or not based on today’s edition)

www.countereditions.com/david-shrigley-set.html

What kind of moron would buy these prints when they can buy a shrigley original for less?

Certainly possible, and if it was a strong image I would be inclined to agree.

I don't like tiered pricing but I suspect galleries who do it think it taps into the relatively modern
phenomenon of FOMO.

They hype the print a week or so before with teases of the image and fans of the artist get excited and we all speculate about the print. Then it is released and goes on sale the same time we see the image for the first time and you have to make a snap judgement to buy or not. If you are undecided and the price starts to rise, some fans will then get caught up in the moment and perhaps buy it because has reaching a price point that still seems OK to justify the purchase. Finally the price rises further and in the case of yesterday CE even said at one point on instagram it was "almost sold out".
This makes perhaps some art investors and some fans think it is now or never in terms of owning this print.....most people on her would disagree of course and buy on the secondary market for less, but not everyone is as obsessed as us. To some perhaps an extra £1-2000 is not a big deal either.

The hype and the tiers worked brilliantly for CE yesterday and they sold out a print which I think is quite nice, but nowhere near Shrigely's best work, in a couple of hours. I don't like it but when the process works for them as well as yesterday things are unlikely to change. If they had sold this print at say £2500 flat for 125 copies would it have sold out yesterday?

I'd say these tiers quite smartly ranged from well below the possible market price for this piece to a bit above it. I didn't buy, but I think it's a good Shrigley piece.