This year, our international art club «Collectors Luck» celebrated its fourth anniversary.In this article, we present analysis of our achievements, invaluable experience and some setbacks experienced during years of operation. Although, listed facts may appear controversial, inaccurate or even erroneous to some readers, our discussion based on true story of four years of work at the peak of the world art market activity. It revealed to us many trades and secrets that are invisible to an average person.

A little bit of history.

Art club «Collectors Luck» was founded in late 2013 by two entrepreneurs from Ukraine: Alexander Zharkov and Alexander Moroslip. At the beginning of the business, founders dealt with a narrow range of customers erroneously assuming that the World full of opportunities is at their feet. As matter of fact, those customers were just some random unrelated to art people trying to make some fast money. After several unsuccessful years in art and luxury items market, founders decided to change strategy. Since then, the art club intent is to bring together the owner of the picture and the collector interested in purchasing.

The initial idea didn’t work because, for example, some household paint supplier pretended to be a genuine seller of a few incredible Modigliani paintings. In another case, some builder from Greece falsely claimed to be a seller and buyer of Picasso, Dali and Monet. Yacht salesman from Spain advertised him-self as reputable specialist in selling Picasso, Dali and Van Gogh. Some employee of one U.S. company was “selling” paintings of Picasso, Warhol. Last but not the least, director of some cleaning services from Russian countryside “offered” Rubens.

Those people, much like us were very naïve. They believed that any middleman stumbled over piece of information about famous painting or a large diamond can quickly sell it by sending out offers to friends or other unexperienced partners. They assumed that this information will certainly fall into the right hands and the potential buyer will drop everything in the pursuit of the Rubens or rare diamond. Much to their surprise it never happened. The market was not responsive. Some of the offers were randomly passed on so many times that they came back to the “original” middleman who sent it. In reality, serious buyer or his representative will never deal with some watch salesman to purchase Picasso «Garçon à la pipe» or Rothko. All unfulfilled dreams of huge sum of easy money were vanishing like a spring snow.

After unsuccessful 2013, we decided to create a system that will work identifying true sellers, and buyers leading to successful transaction. Those were the times of art market downfall. After 2008 crisis art sales diminished all over the world. It was time of great confusion for investors, identifying profit markets. Some businessmen went bankrupt and other became fabulously rich. Therefore, some sellers who for some reason did not want to sell through the major auctions were selling directly.

Over the past few decades, art market went through strange changes. Within the art world, ‘blue chip’ refers to art with great value that is reliable profitable and expected to hold or increase its economic value, regardless of the general economic ups and downs and confirmed through consistent years of sales. This commonly refers to great works of masters of the pastlike Picasso. Although, the intrinsic value of an artwork is often up for debate, thenew artists of the 20th century, such as Giacometti, Rothko, Kooning, Bacon, Pollock, Lichtenstein, Warhol, Richter, Basquiat and others, suddenly became blue chips of many galleries. Their work sold for a large sum of money.

New art idols appeared from nowhere. Their fame was based on a new unusual technique rather than art it-self. Those who wanted make money out of practically nothing raised voiced claiming new era of art. They announced that time of old masters is past and their work belongs in the museum and, therefore, a household art should be modern and contemporary. This propaganda started to work!

The ageless works of old masters were neglected and collected dust in some vaults. Sales of a “new age” art were increasing! It was a soap bubble that kept growing. Painting of modern artists (Giacometti, Rothko, Bacon, Pollock, Warhol, Richter, Basquiat) became more costly than masterpieces of Raffaello Santi, Caravaggio, Rubens, Rembrandt and Goya. The roomer was that the change was provoked and supported by business decision of famous galleries, large auctions which promoted unknown artists in order to bring profits up. Most of the great masterpieces of the past are in collections and rare available for resale, whilenew artist can produce like a conveyer belt.

We are not judging but only stating facts here. Everybody has different sense of beauty. We do not oppose to someone preferring Basquiat. As a matter of fact, we can assist with purchase.

With this new trend, miracle occurred at the end of the 2017 at Christie’s auction Leonardo da Vinci’s painting “Salvator Mundi” sold for an unthinkable sum of $450M. We think it’s great! We, also, happy and congratulate Russian businessman Dmitry Rybolovlev, who is a seller and have good common sense. Previously, he has been a laughing stock of the art community for purchasing a great deal of overpriced paintings. For example, the “Salvator Mundi” sold at the auction in 2017 was purchased for whooping sum of $127.5M. We are glad that justice was served by-fold.

First, art world appeared to turn back to the beauty and skills of old masters. The masterpiece of Leonardo da Vinci’ was able to raise the price for Michelangelo Buonarroti, Raffaello Santi, Tiziano Vecellio, Michelangelo Merisi Da Caravaggio, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony Van Dyck, Diego Rodriguez de Silva Velazquez, Rembrandt Van Rijn, Giovanni Antonio Canaletto, Francisco Goya and others. Second, we are very happy for Dmitry Rybolovlev, who foresaw the global trend and was on its top.By the way, at present we know several confirmed paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, which are in private collections and some of them can be sold by their current owners.

Right now our team «Collector’s Luck» established effective ways to work successfully on the art market. Wecansimultaneously communicate with 15 thousand active market participants around the worldand consider it a great success. Most importantly, due to our real diligent honest work, we achieved trust-based business relationships on the art market. Just as a word of caution for those who are not familiar with insights of the market, a lot of people hanging around the sales have nothing but wishful thinking rather than real access to the art. This causes a lot of frustration to buyers and deals that fall through.

The art market has a few unwritten rules and superstitions. One of the rules states that seller or buyer shouldn’t’ deal with multiple middleman. Another recommends to avoid starting deal with setting a commission. It is advisable to keep information about art limited to a small group. Art sales arethe  trust-based business. There are also a few superstitions around art markets. One of them state that value of the masterpiece diminished when information available to the whole market and sales proceed a few years. We strongly disagree with it. The piece of art doesn’t get worse with negotiation time and its value does not decrease. We believe, the item may be didn’t find the right buyer.

Currently, we have access to the rightful owners or mandates of many masterpieces listed in the application below and other artists. This list is regularly updated.

We are steadily moving towards our goals in unstable art market. For example, just last month we were negotiating the works of such masters as Leonardo da Vinci, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt Van Rijn, Édouard Manet and Pablo Picasso. Our business techniques promote confidentiality.

We would like to bring awarenesson a new world trend called crypto currency. It is a digital currency in which encryption techniques are used to regulate the generation of units of currency and verify the transfer of funds, operating independently of a central bank. We have customers who are willing to sell their items using crypto currency. We, also, preparing a new project allowing young new artists to sell work using this type of currency.

As you can see, the world is changing rapidly and we are tuned in.

Application:

Jheronimus Bosch (1450-1516)

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519)

Lucas Cranach dem Alteren und Werkstatt (1472-1553)

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)

Raphael, Raffaello Santi (1483-1520)

Tiziano Vecellio (1485-1576)

Andrea del Sarto (1486-1531)

Lambert Sustris (1515/20-1584)

Tintoretto Robusti (1518—1594)

Paolo Veronese (1528-1588)

Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564/65-1636)

Jan Breughel the Elder (1568-1625)

Michelangelo Merisi Da Caravaggio (1573-1610)

Guido Reni (1575–1642)

Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)

Simon Vouet (1590-1649)

José de Ribera (Lo Spagnoletto) (1591-1652)

Guercino (1591-1666)

Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641)

Diego Rodriguez de Silva Velazquez (1599-1660)

Jan Bruegel the Younger (1601-1678)

Rembrandt Van Rijn (1606-1669)

Jan Vermeer (1632-1675)

Luca Carlevarijs (1663-1730)

Jean Baptiste Vanmour (1671-1737)

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770)

Giovanni Antonio Canaletto (1697-1768)

Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792)

Francisco Goya (1746-1828)

Antonio Canova (1757-1822)

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851)

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875)

Jean-Francois Millet (1814-1875)

Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky (1817-1900)

Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro (1830-1903)

Édouard Manet (1832-1883)

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)

Alfred Sisley (1839-1899)

Claude Monet (1840-1926)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)

Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890)

Georges Pierre Seurat (1859-1891)

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918)

Edvard Munch (1863-1944)

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901)

Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947)

Henri Matisse (1869-1954)

Nikolai Konstantinovich Roerich (1874-1947)

Brancusi (1876-1957)

Maurice De Vlaminck (1876-1958)

Raoul Dufy (1877-1953)

Kees Van Dongen (1877-1968)

Kazimir Malevich (1878-1935)

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

Natalia Goncharova (1881-1962)

Alexandra Exter (1882-1949)

Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (1884-1920)

Robert Rafaylovych Falk (1886-1958)

Marc Chagall (1887-1985)

Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980)

El Lissitzky (1890-1941)

Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956)

Joan Miro (1893-1983)

Paul Delvaux (1897-1994)

René Magritte (1898-1967)

Lucio Fontana (1899-1968)

Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966)

Mark Rothko (1903-1970)

Salvador Dali (1904-1989)

Willem De Kooning (1904-1997)

Francis Bacon (1909-1992)

Jackson Pollock (1912-1956)

Pierre Soulages (Born In 1919)

Zao Wou Ki (1921-2013)

Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997)

Andy Warhol (1928-1987)

Gerhard Richter (born in 1932)

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988)