Or buy a digital frame and load all the images you love onto it.

LOL

corblimeylimey - you know I have mad respect for you - but I think your analogy is flawed. eelus doesn't have higher priced prints like Banksy - and iron-tortoise (and other characters) aren't really speculating with him. And if they are - it is for 50-100 GBP. With Banksy we are talking about hundreds and thousands GBP. There is no other logical explanation to why he would bid on over 90% of all Banksy prints, but almost NEVER win the auction. It creates value, and as new collectors are constantly coming in - they assume the market prices are not inflated. I bet a lot of people that buy Banksy's prints on Ebay aren't a members of either forum - and thus don't have all the information that is readily available to them.

bang on mate fun to read though

I think you can make prices up on ebay. I recently was bidding for a nice Pete Fowler print and when i won the bid the bidder asked me to communicate to him on another email address. The email address name that he gave we was the same name as one of the other bidders. This seller made a school boy error and has since been unregistered by ebay (although with new ebay rules i now would never be able to discover this fraud was happening because I can not see the names of the bidders). Hence the price i almost paid was allot higher than what i would have paid if ebay did not exist. Ebay as a new form of technology has allowed the art market specifically to legitimate prices that wouldn't have before been legitimated. Shill bidding is RAMPANT. Why else did ebay stop us seeing the name of the bidders? Because knowledge of rampant shill bidding by the public would have decreased the trust they place in ebay. The art market is also different to many other markets because the price is all based on a speculation of future prices. Ebay helps people think that art is worth more than it is. In a normal art auction a seller them self (one man band) cannot bid on art which they are selling. On ebay sellers can bid on there own auctions very easily and do all the time. This combined with very misleading 'buy it now' prices and 'sold' prices where money never changed hands causes an illusion. The illusion in turn becomes reality. Hence the great Banksy ebay con trick.

That makes much more sense, but again, doesn't hold up when you look at gallery and auction prices which are several thousand pounds higher than most anything on ebay. Ebay is still a relatively cheap option for all goods as it generally cuts out the middleman retailer costs. Of course it isn't perfect and people are gonna try and take advantage.. way of the world, but if you learn the system, play safe and collect as much knowledge as you can, then you can pick up some great deals. Banksy's included.

As for Shill bidding being rampant, I doubt that's true, and if so ,they rarely get away with it on the Banksy sales. Walk into any high street store or supermarket and your being played, manipulated and ultimately conned left, right and centre. Whether you're buying a tin of beans or a Warhol soupcan, there's a billion dollar industry attempting to make that decision for you. You just have to be aware and conscious of your decisions. Ultimately, this is an exhausting and anxious way to live, it will probably ensure you stomp through life in a constant state of anxiety with a little existential cloud permenantly hovering overhead.

The key is to know when to turn your radar on and off.. and I guarantee 99.9% of the people on this board have their Banksy buying radar very finely tuned these days

(Still can't believe I paid that much for a can of beans).. bastards !

Sorry to shatter yours too. New movement, new buyers, new market, new rules.. fuck the art world of old.. no one pays for the tagging and graf on the walls, why should we pay for it on a bit of paper, it's a modernist myth set up to play you.. ;D

Signed being more illustrious is just a bolloxy way to squeeze more cash out of people.. art of the past was rarely signed.. doesn't make it less valuable does it.

Mona Lisa isn't signed !?!.. go figure

There only long term gambles if you plan on buying them for investments. All investments have risks attached, but if you plan on buying prints to be put on the wall what does it matter how much you paid for it, if you're never going to sell it on. I personally would rather keep my five unsigned prints than sell them to get one signed edition, but thats because I hang them on the wall rather than praying that one day they'll out perform the FTSE 100

Give it up mate, you're preaching to the converted. Half the people on here started by buying a little 5 quid book, saw a piece on the street or net that resonated. Most people aren't buying for investment or cred. They'd sold out long before the galleries woke up to Banksy and Street Art. You could still buy em last year for 75 quid.

People are buying a part of their own history, doesn't matter how much it is compared to past or future artists unsigned works. It's our history and it'll be our history we're looking at on our walls in 40 years time.. whether the value goes up or down can't change that. ;D

If you're buying for the wrong reasons, then yeah, you may be in for a surprise somewhere down the line..but that's only relevant to "investors", which most on here are not.

I think the silly season for both signed and unsigned is over, the prices will rationalise and steady out, the ages of peices will reflect some in the prices ( older prints are less comonly up for sale) they will slowly rise with time and steady out once the last of the LA prints are out and sold, resold and found good homes rather than scalpers. Dont really see that there is any type of con trick going on, just supply and demand, with stronger prints such as GWB demanding higher prices due to the more recognised style and subject compared to something like sale ends or grannies. IMO

If you have issues with people responding to your posts then don't post mate. easy as.