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Good deal for a cool $100 Million?


OracleofCarolina

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If I saw that in an art museum, I wouldn't stop to look at it.

 

Same for me, but as long as he likes it, I guess he can spend his money however he wants...

 

And now that it's been sold for that much, the signal has been sent to other collectors that it's worth at least that, so Cohen could probably sell it again and not lose money (as long as he's timing the art cycle a bit and doesn't offload it at the bottom)...

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If I saw that in an art museum, I wouldn't stop to look at it.

 

Same for me, but as long as he likes it, I guess he can spend his money however he wants...

 

And now that it's been sold for that much, the signal has been sent to other collectors that it's worth at least that, so Cohen could probably sell it again and not lose money (as long as he's timing the art cycle a bit and doesn't offload it at the bottom)...

 

You guys are looking at this the wrong way, you should be saying "how can i sell a piece of art like that for a cool $100 million?"    ;D

 

cheers

Zorro

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The sculpture was being sold from the collection of Aleko Goulandris, of the Greek shipping dynasty, who bought the 1950 bronze of a spindly goddess riding atop a chariot in 1972 for $375,000.

 

Now THAT is a nice IRR

 

Also this is rather strange:

Cohen, who is worth $11.1 billion, spends 20 percent of his income on art. In 2006, he famously offered to buy Picasso’s “Le Rêve” from Steve Wynn for $139 million, but Wynn accidentally put his elbow through the painting, creating a 6-inch tear, as he showed it off in his office just before it was due to be transported. Cohen finally bought the repaired “Le Rêve” for $155 million last year.

If Wynn puts his elbow through it, it goes up in value apparantly. :D

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The sculpture was being sold from the collection of Aleko Goulandris, of the Greek shipping dynasty, who bought the 1950 bronze of a spindly goddess riding atop a chariot in 1972 for $375,000.

 

Now THAT is a nice IRR

 

Also this is rather strange:

Cohen, who is worth $11.1 billion, spends 20 percent of his income on art. In 2006, he famously offered to buy Picasso’s “Le Rêve” from Steve Wynn for $139 million, but Wynn accidentally put his elbow through the painting, creating a 6-inch tear, as he showed it off in his office just before it was due to be transported. Cohen finally bought the repaired “Le Rêve” for $155 million last year.

If Wynn puts his elbow through it, it goes up in value apparantly. :D

 

Sweet business plan.  1) Buy a painting. 2) Put your elbow through it. 3) Profit!

 

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Had to think of this article about Paul Singer that Barry Ritholtz linked to last week:

 

This billionaire thinks the Fed is missing the hyperinflation in the Hamptons

The prices of houses in the Hamptons and high-end art are the "leading edge of hyperinflation."

 

Check out London, Manhattan, Aspen and East Hampton real estate prices, as well as high-end art prices, to see what the leading edge of hyperinflation could look like.

 

That's right: Paul Singer thinks Weimar-style inflation might be coming because he has to pay more for his posh vacation homes and art pieces. Now, it's true, if you're a billionaire who's interested in decorating your high-end real estate with high-end art, then, yes, your personal inflation rate is higher than others. But tough luck. (I'm pretty sure you'll manage).

 

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Billionaire hedge fund manager Steve Cohen is the secret buyer of the Alberto Giacometti sculpture “Chariot,” sold last week at Sotheby’s for a near-record $100,965,000.

 

If he really wanted it to be a secret.......it would be.

 

You think he leaked it to show off how much he can piss away on a piece of 'art'? GET OUT OF HERE NO WAY

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  • 6 months later...

This is unbelievable.  I can't be the only one who thinks these sculptures aren't any good.  They look like a high school art project gone wrong where the teacher gave the student a D because he didn't even try.  The same goes for Picasso's cartoon character paintings that are selling for crazy amounts.  I've seen better paintings at the flea-market.  I have a few oil paintings in my house (all of which I paid a lot more for the frames than for the art) which where all painted by people with more talent than Picasso in my opinion.    I have no artistic talent at all, so I obviously need to become an artist.  After I'm dead my family can sell my "art" for millions.  If you actually paint a realistic person or a landscape that looks like something, it is crap.  If you paint abstract finger paintings or cartoon boobs on cartoon women (like the recently sold Picasso "masterpiece") you are a genius.  The funny thing is my kids could finger paint just fine when they were 3 years old.  Adults do it and they are geniuses.  I don't get it.  What a waste of money.

 

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Although I mostly agree with you about Picasso (the painter, not the poster here :P ), some of his stuff was good before he went off the deep end.

 

I think there was some story a few years ago of family selling their 3 year old daughter's (?? I don't remember details ??) paintings for tons of money.

 

So yeah, art is a lot of promotion.

But then you don't like every book or every movie. I'm sure there are books/movies considered to be great that you hate. Why do you expect to like every painting or sculpture?  ;)

 

OTOH fortunately (or unfortunately - I'd love to buy some cheap) the great old masters and Impressionists also sell for tons of money. So some people still have good taste. ;)

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So yeah, art is a lot of promotion.

But then you don't like every book or every movie. I'm sure there are books/movies considered to be great that you hate. Why do you expect to like every painting or sculpture?  ;)

 

You are correct to a point.  Art is very personal.  But when people start spending $M on movies which look like they are filmed by 3 year olds I think I'll start complaining about that too.  :)  I might not like every movie, but even Killer Clowns From Outer Space couldn't have been written, directed, and filmed by a 3 year old.

 

Yeah, I'd love to find something I could buy cheap and sell to one of these art collectors for real money.  The greater sucker theory.

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So yeah, art is a lot of promotion.

But then you don't like every book or every movie. I'm sure there are books/movies considered to be great that you hate. Why do you expect to like every painting or sculpture?  ;)

 

You are correct to a point.  Art is very personal.  But when people start spending $M on movies which look like they are filmed by 3 year olds I think I'll start complaining about that too.  :)  I might not like every movie, but even Killer Clowns From Outer Space couldn't have been written, directed, and filmed by a 3 year old.

 

Yeah, I'd love to find something I could buy cheap and sell to one of these art collectors for real money.  The greater sucker theory.

 

You are mistakenly conflating price and quality. They are quite separate.

 

Anyone can watch Shawshank Redemption or The Godfather for a couple bucks, because there's no scarcity. Yet the quality of those movies is widely considered to be quite high.

 

Art that sells for a lot of money does so because there is more demand than there is supply. Some rich people demand the originals of certain paintings or sculptures from certain "name" artists, and there aren't that many of those going around, so they get quite expensive. And the wealthier art collectors get as a group, the higher prices will go.

 

A quality reproduction will be functionally pretty much the same as an original, so whatever artistic quality there is (or isn't) will be present (and that's subjective, so it's pointless to try to project your tastes on the rest of the world, btw). Art collecting is about something else.

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I understand the economics of scarcity and of supply and demand.  My bafflement isn't about the economics of the situation, but the human motivation.  Let me try to explain.  Say a bunch of very rich people all decided that it would be awesome to own a stool sample from a famous person. Somewhere someone found a piece of turd from Albert Einstein and it was in high demand.  I understand that because so many people want it, and it is a one of a kind item, that the price could be extreme.  My question wouldn't be an economic one such as: "How could the price get so high?". Rather it would be the same question I have for this art: "Why do people want it at all, it's just a turd?".

 

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This is too rich.  If Einstein was sort of average he would have put out 25000 to 30000 turds in his lifetime.  You could set it up and have a limited edition 3d print of Einstein turds.  Would DNA analysis figure out if it was legit?  I for one would be in line to get a fecal transplant from an Einstienian turd.  Better yet, Steve Hawking is still alive, although I wouldn't care to get the disorder he has lived with.

 

Steve Cohen makes me like Buffett more every day. 

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