One delightful art buying trick for the serious art connoisseur is to purchase works in bulk. I am aware that this might seem counterintuitive at first blush. Art – good art anyway – is not mass-produced. Instead, its one-of-a-kind, unique nature is part of its allure. But there are certain unusual situations where one is afforded the opportunity to buy in quantity. When those circumstances arise, don’t be afraid to be unconventional in your art buying.
I’ll use my own situation as an example. Way back in 2006 I was monitoring eBay for deals in an area of special interest to me – medieval South Indian gold coins. And I was in luck. A seller from Great Britain was looking to sell a small collection of six half pagodas from the South Indian Vijayanagara Empire.
These were highly collectible, intriguing little gold coins with Hindu gods and goddesses on the front and native script on the reverse. I don’t know where the seller acquired this collection, but it may have had to do with the fact that India was once a colony of the British Empire. This means there are a substantial number of cultural and commercial ties between the two nations.
Photos revealed the coins were very high quality pieces, with exceptionally strong striking and good centering. They were very close to what I wanted, although not perfect. The coins were unattributed as to ruler and the collection contained duplicates. In short, it was a generic lot.
I placed a bid of £168.99 British pounds which was duly accepted. When combined with shipping and handling and converted at the prevailing dollar-pound exchange rate my total cost was just over $58 U.S. dollars per coin. Quite a bargain for 500 year old gold coins in phenomenal condition!
Many years have passed since I purchased that lot of amazing medieval Indian gold coins and I still proudly own them. However, it is only recently that the true wisdom of buying these pieces in bulk has become apparent.
Today gold half pagodas from the Vijayanagara Empire cost anywhere from two to three times as much as I originally paid. This equates to an approximately 8% to 13% return per annum (in U.S. dollars) over my holding period. However, due to the weakness of the British currency over the last several years, if calculated in pounds my return would be 11% to 17% per annum!
It can be difficult to predict how well specific segments of the art or antique market will perform in the future. But art buying in quantity allows you to effectively leverage your collecting knowledge. It takes almost the same amount of time to evaluate a lot of a half dozen similar coins as it does one.
The same idea applies to many other areas of the art market as well. So, provided you have done your due diligence first, it makes sense to opportunistically buy interesting specimens in bulk if you are presented the chance. Although it may take many years for such a move to pay off, in the end you’ll be very glad you did it.
