Fraud at Art Auctions? Say It Isn't So.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

As Art Values Rise, So Do Concerns About Market’s Oversight
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/arts/design/as-art-market-rise-so-do-questions-of-oversight.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

By ROBIN POGREBIN and KEVIN FLYNN
Published: January 27, 2013

When some of the world’s richest people gather for the glittering New York auction season this spring, they will spend hundreds of millions of dollars in an art market that allows opaque transactions and has few outside monitors.

At major auctions the first bids announced for a piece are typically fictional — numbers pulled from the air by the auctioneer to jump-start bidding.

Collectors can find themselves being bid up by someone who, in exchange for agreeing in advance to pay a set amount for a work, is promised a cut of anything that exceeds that price.
....

For two decades some New York State lawmakers have been trying to curb the practice known as “chandelier bidding,” a bit of art-market theater in which auctioneers begin a sale by pretending to spot bids in the room. In reality the auctioneers are often pointing at nothing more than the light fixtures.

[Earth_First]

1. I'm willing to bet that it's the "new money" that is getting fleeced...

...I'd also be willing to bet that the old money sees nothing wrong with a little 'hazing' of the new money when the result is a few extra bucks in their pockets.

Regardless, I shed not a single tear for the rich fleecing the rich.

[jmowreader]

2. Fleecing the rich is a higher crime than fleecing the poor

Bernie Madoff wouldn't be scrubbing pots in Butner for the rest of his life if he would have stuck to telling old ladies he was in jail in Toronto and needed bail money.

[pansypoo53219]

3. when you have tooooo much money.

i on the other hand have little money. i should not buy art cause walls are for MY ART, yet, i have found some GREAT art at estate sales. if i had more cash i really could invest antique roadshow good. as it is, i have 3 excellent etchings. 2 are listed. haven't found the other dude. and i splurged on 12 pieces by a swiss immigrant to WI. tho they are just small simple studies...died in 1930. wish i had gotten more. then there is the amateur war bride...or that funky mid century piece. buy what you like. SUPPORT NEW ARTISTS.