They plummeted in 2008

It wasn’t an investment. It was a coincidence.

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I can assure that it was not. I bought many works knowing I could flip a print for double the next day. I have sat on a lot of art (not of great value) and watched values rise. Many of the pieces I have bought have been as a consequence of following trends/recommendations on this forum. Take away my Banksy purchases and I’ve still made a really good return on investment.

I can say, hand on heart and having been a member of this forum since the mid-noughties, that I was in the right place, at the right time and bought well. That perhaps was a coincidence, but I found this site after purposefully searching.

I only wish I had bought more when I had the chance. Even the items that have little worth adorn my walls and brighten up my ‘pomme de terre’.

I now own Hirst, Perry, Banksy, Dolk, Ai Weiwei to name but a few. I have commissioned works and love visiting galleries. I would have had no clue about art had I not found this forum at the time I did. A hobby is now a passion and it is certainly not down to coincidence. I feel I have planned my purchases well and have benefitted immensely from the advice of others. Not bad for a boy from a single parent family in Leith!

It interests me as financial investors are considered some of the brightest/smartest individuals (not by everyone, of course) but is what they do any different from art collectors or people sticking money on a horse. If you plan well, you should get good returns.

The benefit with art collecting is, even if the market tanks, you’ve still got colourful things hanging on your walls.

INVEST IN ESTATE
ESTATE 

Check my profile, not many people on this forum anymore from the mid-2000s.

I tended to lurk historically but want to contribute a bit more now as the standard of conversation has plummeted of late.

A return absolutely was expected. The level of return as of now - unexpected. Certain amount of luck involved, I’ll go with that.

I think this forum has a while to go yet until it completely stagnates. There are still a lot of people making the effort to make it interesting.

All investment is luck. Something becoming much more valuable than expected doesn't mean it wasn't an investment. It means it was a good investment.

No it wouldn't. You can buy something thinking it's an investment that might appreciate a little bit. Just because it far exceeds your expectations it doesn't mean you weren't investing. People bought Banksy work years ago for a few hundred quid, or less, and thought they were a good investment because they probably wouldn't lose value. I don't think any bought thinking they'd be worth 1,000 times what they paid.

All investment is based on luck. You can invest intelligently and do lots of homework, but it's still reliant on luck. Financial crashes, artists falling out of favour or tarnishing their reputation, global pandemics - they can all tank a seemingly bulletproof investment.

I said the same 6 years ago and now the figure I had in mind met, but without needing the funds and how the market is expanding globally would be unwise to sell now , the price I bought for even with a crash in the market ,should not reach that price again , so only potential profit lost and initial outlay is safe

I’m curious who is gonna be the next big thing worldwide! Who’s got some new artists to share??

A few years ago in the course of a project I was working on I got to spend several hours in a van with an art buyer responsible for making purchasing decisions that involved significant sums of Russian money. (I didn't ask where it came from!)

There was no point in probing her for specific investment hints as everything she was looking at was so far out of my league it wasn't funny. So I asked her how she knew what to buy.

Her advice boiled down to this:

1. Learn to trust yourself, your taste and your instinct.

I got the impression she'd done this (before she started spending other people's money) by starting small and paying close attention to what happened to her purchases. Which ones appreciated and which ones went nowhere. Why? She recognised there was a lot of luck involved, but also that it wasn't entirely a matter of luck. The more informed she got about people's tastes and about fashions in the art world, the luckier she got – and the more able to trust her ability to find the sweet spot where her own tastes and preferences coincided with those of the wider market.

2. Just start. You never know what will happen – only that if you do nothing, nothing will happen.

3. Be prepared to get it wrong. Not everything you buy will be a winner, and that's fine. To give yourself a chance of success, you have to be brave enough to face the possibility of failure.

4. Don't take it too seriously. It's only daubs of paint (or ink or whatever) on paper. Nothing important really hangs on it, and as long as you are happy to own what you've bought and are willing to place no weight on the outcome then you can just enjoy the art, and the process of seeking it out and buying it, for what it is. Fun, essentially.

Last I heard of her, she was in a Siberian Gulag after losing £150 million of her paymasters' money.

The question has been asked time and time again over the years I’ve frequented this forum.
Simple answer is that no one knows.

This thread should be locked after that post. Perfect.