Subscribers will be asked to assign a weight to each of the following four performance metrics:

The market adjusted risk per unit of return.

Each artist has a unique numerical value for each of the four-performance metrics based on historical results in the repeat sale auction market.

We ask you to reveal your relative preference for the four-performance metrics by using the preference slider below. The only constraint on your weight is that their sum be equal to 100%.

Multiplying each of an artist’s four performance metrics by the user chosen weight for each metric and then adding them together in a special way yields the artist investment potential (AIP) for that artist. Artists with small positive AIP values have a stronger investment potential than artists with high AIP values. Artists’ AIP values can be compared by the user as a way of facilitating the selection of an artist for investment. There is no one correct set of weights their values are personalized and therefore not comparable across users.

All the analysis is based on works of art that were sold at three of the world’s leading auction houses since 2000 and had been previously purchased at any auction house since 1970. There are currently over 40,000 of these repeat sale pairs in the database. Our site will be updated with new data after every auction season.

In our System, artists are compared according to their respective Artist Investment Potential (AIP) scores. An artist’s AIP is based on your personal decision about the relative importance of each of the performance metrics to your investment goals and risk tolerances. Its importance is shown by the relative weight you assign to each metric. The sum of the weights must total 100 %.

For example, if your investment priority is avoiding a loss on resale, choose a higher weighting for sales resulting in a loss to the seller, loss likelihood, than for the other metrics. If your priority is buying an artist, such as Picasso, that has had a wide market, making it easier to find a buyer on resale, then give a higher weight to relative liquid market size.

To make your investment selection process easier, we use a database of the repeat sales of the almost 900 most active artists, at least 10 repeat sale pairs, from the master database representing about 8000 artists. These most active artists in the auction market are further grouped into artists with similar frequency of sales and average price level of sales.

The sale frequency ranks are high for artists with more than 50 repeat sale pairs and moderate for artists with from 10 to 50 pairs. We find that using fewer than 10 pairs leads to substantial volatility in the results and therefore do not consider those artists in our analysis.

The sale price ranks are high for artists whose works have an average sale price over $500k, moderate for average sale prices between $100k and $500k and low for artists with an average sale price less than $100k.

PICASSO AIP 1.4138
DALI AIP 1.8161
CROWD PICASSO AIP 4,248
CROWD DALI AIP 2.723

These results clearly show that the crowd prefers Dali, but the user prefers Picasso.

Become a PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER (current introductory half price offer of $125 per calendar year) and find out your AIP results for 900 of the most actively traded artists in the international auction market. As an example, see below the top five artists in the high price high market activity group given current crowd source weights.