Show me the $$$!!!1!

April 25, 2006 9:22 PM

Fine Art Price Filter: What should I charge for a limited edition digital Art(TM) print?

I made five prints of a particular image from an Epson Stylus Photo 2200 on *very* nice paper and then I destroyed the digital file they came from (that was over a year ago). Now someone is asking to buy one of them! WOO-HOO! How much should I charge for 1 print of 5?

posted by joe_from_accounting to media & arts (7 comments total)

As much as you think you can get away with :) I've sold some of my silkscreens for 400...
posted by atom128 at 9:39 PM on April 25, 2006

Many moons ago, i worked in an art gallery, and unfortunately there isn't any real hard and fast rule about limited edition runs. One metric was how much the original was worth, but this pre-dated the digital photography revolution, so it's not really applicable (though the common practice was to print your LE run and destroy the plates, so it's not completely un-analogous).

This was also around the time that Bateman, Brenders, and (ugh) Redlin really took off, so a limited edition print could be one of 25,000 (which is more than some non-LE posters get...)

Basically, it comes down to you. Have you sold your work before? How much did you get? A friend got a two page spread in Sports Illustrated for one of his photos and walked away with about a grand, so unless you are renowned and published, i would start there and work backwards.

5 is a really small run though, and people like to spend more on art as 'more expensive means more valuable'.

So, without seeing the print and knowing exactly zero about your history, i would say $250. It's cheap enough that the average person could buy it, but expensive enough that they wouldn't consider it an impulse buy.

Oh, and congrats. It's a good feeling to be in demand.
posted by quin at 9:50 PM on April 25, 2006

This doesn't answer your question, but why did you destroy the original? For me, as a fellow digital artist, that's a real misunderstanding of the medium. But I derail.

It will help the people who will really answer to know the nature of the work. Is it a photograph, a photomontage, a an illustration, a generative work, a glitch piece? More useful information - is the paper archival, are the inks archival?
posted by fake at 9:51 PM on April 25, 2006

Fake: It's a scan of a drawing which has been altered digitally (color and cropping). I have the original drawing around here someplace and could produce a *nearly* identical second run if I really wanted to. The prints are with archival inks & paper, and have never ever been touched by human hands.
posted by joe_from_accounting at 10:27 PM on April 25, 2006

why did you destroy the original?

The reason people destroy the original is so that purchasers of the limited run know that there won't be any more exactly like it, ever. To strictly limit supply and thus increase the price, in other words.
posted by kindall at 10:30 PM on April 25, 2006

I haven't a clue, but the art I have tends to be in the $1k to $5k range. All the under $1k stuff we have is what I would describe as "hotel art". It fills the space, and it looks decent enough... but purchased because of size and coloring, not because of artistic merit.

As for the pricing... size up your buyer, and charge them enough that it stings a little, but not too much.
posted by I Love Tacos at 8:36 AM on April 26, 2006

The first question I would ask, as a buyer, would be "Can you define 'very good paper'?" Particularly since until a couple of years ago true archival paper for digital prints had ont really been perfected. The price I would pay would be directly related to how long I could expect the paper it was printed on to remain true to the work. Since you destroyed the original file, there is no way to re-print should the work suffer gas or light degradation.
posted by spicynuts at 9:17 AM on April 26, 2006