I’m asking readers to take few moments and think before they respond to the question this week, just a few deeps breaths and then respond.
 
It’s too easy to say, if you’re a collector of glassware, that glassware is then the most reliable. Or whatever segment you happen to participate in.
 
I also want to shy away from making generalizations about the business. “If you buy what you love, then it never loses value.”
 
This may be true, and I readily acknowledge that you shouldn’t start buying solely as an investment, but we all know it’s happening.
 
For my part, I’ve always seen good jewelry and good folk art sell, no matter what, a make good on a return. Whether I like these forms or not is irrelevant.
 
So when you stop and think about it, looking at all the things you come across at shows, shops and auctions – or rummage sales and flea markets, I don’t care – what do you see that, in your experience, reliably sells and holds or increases its value?
 
Let me know at noah.fleisher@fwpubs.com, or post a comment here.

It seems now that Islamic art is absolutely everywhere, and the amount of money that it's fetching - congruent with the amount of ire it's raising in some instances - is pretty amazing.

I've already written about it a few times this week and last week.

It started the attempted sale of some armor once, possibly, belonging to a revered Sikh Guru. Then a 12th century key to the holiest pilgrimage site in Mecca, and now, just yesterday, a dagger once belonging to Shah Jahan - arguably the greatest of India's Golden Age Mugal emporers - the man who built the Taj Mahal, and raised Islamic art and architecture to amazing levels in his reign, sold at Bonham's in London for nearly $3,000,000.



You have to admit, looking at it, that it's a thing of extraordinary beauty, made even more important by its provenance of having belonged to Shah Jahan, a man from whom very few personal relics survive. $3M seems like alot to spend, but as I wrote about the Hajj key yesterday, reclaiming cultural history is an expensive game, and them that have the bucks don't necessarily think of it as a numbers game. Face it, if you have all the bills in the Monopoly game, there's nothing on the board that's out of range.

Again, it went to an anonymous bidder who didn't wish to be identified. Who knows who it is, but most likely it was someone who was unhappy almsot 20 years ago when the Shah of Iran sold it to Jacques Desenfans, along with a lot of other things in the sale, on a visit in 1969, when the Shah's empire was just starting to wobble. That bit of its history has been more downplayed in the hubbub over its sale, but it's all part of the history of such a remarkable piece.

I'm not sure if the dagger is considered a holy relic, so I have no feeling on it being sold. If it is considered such, along with much of the other Islamic "art" that's been coming on the block, then I do have to take issue. Pieces of spiritual significance, whatever the faith, shouldn't be made available for a price. I have to think, though, the Shah Jahan dagger isn't considered spiritually important for Muslims, because there was no outcry, such as the one over the Sikh armor.



Shah Jahan's buildings and his name dot India, most notably the Taj, which he built as a masoleum for his wife, Mumtaz, when she died. I've seen the Taj Mahal, and it's an amazing site, especially if you can get there very early in the morning before the touts, the cars, the tourists and the choking, nasty smog from the copious cars the swarm Agra all day. There are few buildings in the world that can match it, or its creativity.

Wrote about this a few weeks ago. A dealer in NYC sold a box of pics he found in a box lot for $3500. Turns out there was a trove of unknown Diane Arbus photos in there - very interesting ones, to be sure - and they're worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.



The dealer who sold them is suing the dealer he says duped him out of the find of his life. The sale was supposed to have happened yesterday, I think. Turns out it was abruptly canceled. Both the New York Times and our friend Kristi Roberts at Here Be Old Things have been covering this pretty well, so I'll leave it to them. Kristi was going to the sale, and even went by the showroom to get a sneak peak.

I know that a lot of times it's buy and sell at your own risk in this business, and that they seller should have known that he was giving away a fortune at such a small price - the first clue should have been when the buyer who bought the box said, "there's nothing in there worth much at all, but I'll give you $3500 right now for the whole thing, no questions asked. 'kay?"

Money is money, I suppose, and there are no rules that say you have to play fair. Or are there? The speculation is that the original seller may just hve succeeded in his lawsuit. We'll see later.

It's a bit strange to call religious artifacts "art," but the things are beautiful.

A sale of Islamic art at Sotheby's sold roughly $20M in 282 lots, smashing the previous records for a similar sale. It's a good bet that most of the lots, including a very expensive and revered 12th Century key to Mecca's most holy pilgrimage site, are going to the area of their origin. There's so much wealth focused in the Middle East these days, I'm actually surprised that those items on the block didn't go for much much more.

This, though, hearkens to the same discussion I've been having - with myself, that it - over countries reclaiming cultural heritage. I don't know that the pieces of Islamic art that Sotheby's sold didn't come from a seller in the region already, but it also wouldn't surprise me if they were Colonial spoils from centuries and exploits past.

Rob Pegoraro, a blogger at The Washington Post, gives the eBay issue a look from both sides of the issue and concludes that eBay is a Monolith Marketplace, and that it's 80M+ users think of it as a community. It's a nice little examination of the debate that the eBay antiques... uh... sector has been having for a few months now.



This conclusion has resulted in the weird disconnect from reality that has emanated from eBay HQ high on its magic mountaintop in the mist, where it's suspected that a few remaining regular human beings actually may say hello now and then as they pass in the hall on the way to bathroom in the basement.

It's also now thought that the great ancient demon Cthulhu might be the real replacement for Meg Whitman. That's just what I hear, though...

We just got this out the door and off to the press. Here's a sneak peak at 4-23, and a look at our changed cover. Enjoy!

How could I possibly resist a headline like this:

Ancient Tiberias making a comeback

Tiberias deserves a comeback, right? If Fleetwood Mac can do it, and The Who can do it - and The Stones, who have never even quit - then why not Tiberias?

Man, those guys rocked.

This is from the L.A. Times. It's all about the amount of antiquities still missing after being looted when Baghdad fell. That was five years ago today, btw.

At first it was thought the damage done by theft was much much greater, and anyone who loves art and history looked on in horror as numbers like 150,000 were bandied about when those reports mentioned numbers of missing artifacts.

They were talking about the beginings of human civilization - ancient, ancient stuff - that carried with it priceless provenance and importance. Many of those pieces, it turns out, had long ago been hidden by smart curators, well out of harm's way, and that initial massive number dwindled to 15,000.

Of those 15,000 known artifacts, 7500 have been recovered. That still leaves half, and an amazing amount of history still floating around black markets or destroyed and trashed.

The good thing is that these pieces are rare enough that, when one surfaces at auction or on the market, it is usually quickly recognized and taken back to its proper home. This is further heightened in an age when national museums around the world are demanding back priceless antiquities that were looted in past ages of imperialism. Greece is doing it, so are Italy, India and China, among many. This seems to have hit western museums hard. The culture flowing out of Iraq, home to the fertile crescent where it's thought so much life firt streamed out of, is older by millenium than most other countries. It bears direct links to stories in the Old Testament. Of anywhere that deserves its history back, then surely it's there.

I don't know why, but this story off of ReutersUK has struck me oddly.

Basically it just says that the new Russian elite, fueled by massive fortunes made in the odd semi-totalitarian state of Vladimir Putin, are buying up every available piece of fine art - both old and contemporary - that they can get their hands on. Sotheby's and Christies both are setting up Moscow bureaus to take advantage of this tiny percentage with the majority of the Russian dosh.

Collecting like this, to go along side such wealth, have not been seen in Russia since the days of the Czars. At that time it was also anything goes.

I can't blame Russian people for wanting to get back their cultural heritage, especially when it was so abruptly taken from them, scattered to the winds and stomped with a jack boot whenever it tried to reveal itself in the ealry days of Comrade Lenin. I've always been a kind of a student of Russia - give nthat it's in my blood - and the peculiar and difficult path it seems to have always charted for itself. Despite all that, the country has consistently contributed some of the very best literature, paintings, poetry, sculpture, photography, drama and dance the world has, even during the communist era. I also have to mention Russia's contribution to chess, because I love the game and no country has added more to the game.

This competition that seems to have spring up, however, between Russians and themselves over who can acquire the most stunning array of art that can bridge the 100-year gap between the assasination of the Czar and Perestroika and "bring it back home to Russia" is a little discomfitting. No doubt some of it will end up in a museum on display, and some of it may even some day make it on tour to the rest of the world, but it's more likely most  of it will end up at country estates, houses in Moscow, and in homes that dot the hills and the country side of Europe and America. It's what the Russian aristocracy did before the revolution. How else do you think so much of it became available to the world at large?

I believe this originated with the Chicago Tribune, and seems to be an editorial, but it came to me via The Valdosta State Spectator in GA, certainly one of the more obscure sources I've dug around on. I worked on my college paper and, let's face it, a lot of them are pretty bad.

It is, actually, an argument you can dig up most anywhere. I just couldn't resist a link with something from Valdosta State.

This, however, I happen to agree with. When it costs more than a penny is worth to make one, then it ain't worth it, plus the good, collectible ones that are out there will become that much more valuable, which is good for the business of coins.

Numismatics and antiques unite! Down with the penny!

This has been very interesting to watch - somewhat obscure, perhaps, bubt a lot of fun.

Sotheby's claimed some armor being sold belonged to a very important Sikh guru. Sikhs got angry, and Sotheby's claims that the armor is not actually the Guru's, but one of several sets he had made, as he was involved in many wars and military campaigns.

The post linked to above is from a post to WorthPoint.com out of India.

The whole thing is interesting, as I have always associated Sikhism with dervishes and mysticism, a la the sublime poetry of Rumi ("Dissolver of sugar, dissolve me."), not necessarily with warring kings. I'd love to see the armor, but no pics have been released. Check it out if this sort of thing interests you, which it does me, which I bet you've already figured out.