In this conversational interview, antique dealer Adam Zimmerman and certified art appraiser Glenn Spellman discuss how collectors can treat antiques and art prints as investments. They stress the importance of thorough research, focusing on blue‑chip artists (e.g., Calder, Stella, Zao Wou‑Ki, Picasso) and preferring smaller edition sizes for prints. They explain provenance concerns, warning against cruise‑ship art and recommending purchases from reputable auction houses like Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Spellman outlines his professional background, certifications, and his galleries. The dialogue then moves to auction mechanics: seller’s and buyer’s premiums (typically 20‑30%), insurance costs, reserve pricing, timelines, and the risk of unsold or “burnt” lots, including re‑auction strategies and dealer offers. They also cover practical estate‑handling advice, cash‑offer alternatives, and the value of a broad specialist network for items ranging from pianos to mid‑century design. Throughout, they advise clients to seek knowledgeable local professionals and to match items with the appropriate auction house or specialist to maximize outcomes.
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So basically, I oftentimes are in a house and I'm going over stuff. People are liquidating antiques. They're getting rid of their antiques. They say, I want to get rid of all this stuff and I want to put my money into something that looks nice but will go up in value. In 10 years, I want to potentially double my money. To do that, what's my best shot?
Well, my first suggestion would be to really research and find out what you like. Go to the galleries, go to the museums, go to the auctions, follow the auctions online, talk to dealers, and really learn about what you're gonna buy. Because we see it 9 out of 10 times when we go to people's houses, we see what the people paid and what, and what it's worth now is you know, usually, you know, 1/10 or, uh, 1/5 of what they paid because, you know, because they got excited when they were younger and they bought something at a retail price and they're, you know, they were given a, you know, uh, a story that this, you know, this is going to go up in value. But the good thing about our business is there's data points all day long. Every day I'm looking at auction results, like, you know, the quality behind you, I can go and look at the auction history of this for 30 years, and I can see it's going a little bit up. It's like buying a bond in the stock market. It's, uh, bonds are considered safe investments. He's a modern master, and you can look at the art, you look at the data points, you know, for 30 years. You can look just like the stock market. You can look and, you know, the stock market, there's downswings, but historically it's always gone up.
Of course.
It's kind of like buying a Calder, Picasso, or Stella, you can look at the data points for 30 years and you can see they, you know, sold a few dips, but they just slowly go up. You know, these are prints we're talking about. Paintings are a whole other story. You know, paintings are a little bit more pricey, but, and riskier, but sometimes, you know, paintings appreciate tenfold of what you've spent, but—
But the investments are a lot higher. Right.
You know, painting, generally a painting is going to be worth, you know, you're going to pay more for a painting than a print, you know. And when I say print, it's still an original artwork by the artist, but it's, you know, an editioned high-quality print like a lithograph, etc.
So— So just to ask you a question, because again, my clients are always asking me this when I'm in a house, you know, and I'm sure you as well. We walk into houses and they say, well, I have a Dalí or a Picasso print, and they think it's worth a ton of money. But it's a limited edition of 150 or 500. In reality, you know, it's not. So if you're talking about limited edition, is there a certain number you think is the cutoff? Is it best at 50, 100, 25, something like that?
You know, generally it's smaller edition sizes are gonna be better. You know, if it's a good image by the artist, desirable image, smaller edition sizes are gonna be better because Smaller edition sizes are going to be available because it's supply and demand. You know, there's going to be less on the market. So, but getting back to like, it's research, you know, always buy what you love, then you can't lose. But there's— the information's out there. I can go back and look at the price results for that print for 30 years.
Mm-hmm.
I could see 30 years ago you could probably buy it at auction probably for $600, and now, you know, maybe the auction range is, uh, $3,000 give or take, you know.
So Calder, you would consider by what you're saying blue chip? That's a blue chip artist that you could kind of—
Oh yeah.
That will continue to go up and it will have that relationship.
Yeah, again, this is a print. It's in the $3,000 to $4,000 range. Uh, paintings by Calder, well in the millions. Uh, his sculptures, yeah, millions. You know, a little, little tabletop original Calder, you know, it could be over a million dollars. So he's one of the greats. Stella, you know, Stella is one of the modern masters as well. It happens to be he's still alive. He's born in 1936. He's not a young man. This piece is an important print he did. And again, I can go back, look at the data points at auction, and see—
What's the highest sold one?
that it's, you know, slowly appreciating in value.
I got it. So give me an example. I know I'm putting you in a corner here, but so you got Stella, you got Calder. Give me 2 other artists that you consider blue chips that you would potentially love to have in your collection.
There's a Chinese artist that I love, Zao Wou-Ki. He's the most important 20th century Chinese painter, abstract expressionist if you want to call it, you know, oil paintings in the millions. But, you know, you can have— you can buy his prints, you know, if you pay attention and you're following the auctions, you can buy a great print for $3,000. But there are prints of his that, you know, can go for $15,000 or $20,000.
Yeah.
So I've had quite a few of his pieces over the years. and always done well with them. I have one in my collection right now. So Zabulke is one of the greats, you know, obviously Picasso, you know, there's, there's still Picasso pieces that are relatively affordable, you know, they're gonna be more than a Calder in most cases. He did prints, he also did ceramics, you know, we've handled a lot of Picasso ceramics together. Yeah, Picasso's awesome. Always done well, but again, you got to do your research. There's all these artists, or maybe not Stella so much, but all these artists are forged. You know, there's plenty of Calders that are not authentic, not approved by the Calder Foundation. There's, you know, Picasso is probably one of the most forged artists of all time.
So if you, um, so regarding the forged items, again, you and I are, you know, in houses all the time. If they were buying the items, and let's say back in the day, 40, 50 years, they bought these items, when you're talking about provenance, what are the good places where they could have gotten the items to hopefully assure that the item is legitimate and not a reproduction, not a copy? Is there any particular place?
Generally, if you bought it from Sotheby's or Christie's, the 2 major auction houses in New York City, you're probably safe. You know, there has been the occasional forgery back in the day that's slipped through Sotheby's and Christie's, but generally you'll be safe if they were purchased at Sotheby's and Christie's. If you bought it on a cruise ship, which we see a lot, you know, we see it all the time, people bought a Chagall or a Dalí on a cruise ship, then you're probably in trouble.
Great.
You know, we actually call it cruise ship art because everybody has it.
They're in the mood, right? And they have the money, they're on vacation and they spend a bunch of money. And really, it's, uh, yeah, it's not the best examples and they don't go for too much.
Yeah, these companies promoted blue-chip artists on cruise ships and they're usually prints and they come with these certificates of authenticity and they're just fugazi. They're just not You know, they changed the wording in the certificates so they could cover themselves legally, but they're just not— it's not authentic art. And we see it all the time. Chagall, Dalí, a few other—
Yeah.
The Picassos, I guess.
Now, Glenn, just so we know, what are your qualifications? You know, you've been in this business a long time. You know, what do you do? What's your history? And tell me a little bit about your background.
I moved to New York in 1989 and then started working at Madison Avenue galleries, you know, very prominent galleries. And, you know, just learned the business from some of the great dealers. And then I went back to school and became a certified appraiser in fine art, particularly American art. And my specialties is really art in America from 1850 to like 1970. When you become a certified appraiser, you pick a category, so my category was American art. But between, you know, I think I have a lot of knowledge in other things, you know, mid-century design, even European art. So, so I'm a certified appraiser, Appraisers Association of America. I have a gallery not far from here open to the public on First Avenue called Spellman Gallery. And then we opened this new venture this year in 2024, Upper East Modern.
Mm-hmm.
Just brand new. We just started an Instagram account and we will also have a website at some point. And we're open by appointment. And, um, Adam's other gallery is called Sy Lee Antiques, S-Y-L dash Lee Antiques. Uh, it's been a family-run business for 50, 60 years.
Yeah, my father started it, of course.
And, uh, we do a lot of house calls together between the two of us. We cover a lot of ground. Um, And, you know, we generally like to help people dealing with estates or dealing with their moves. You know, it's— it can be overwhelming for people, you know. But imagine, you know, you have a whole apartment or a whole house filled with stuff that— and you don't know what to do with it, you know, what to sell, what to donate, what to give away, what to throw out. We basically go through the whole home and just sort it into categories and hopefully buy some things if it's appropriate for our business. So it's a fun business if you like what we do.
Definitely. I, I'm trying to think of the most common questions that we get. So, you know, a lot of our clients, they are calling us because they're trying to figure out what to do with, let's say, a high-end piece of art. Could you tell me the benefits and drawbacks of auction?
Well, auctions can be great and they can also be very disappointing. You know, occasionally with an auction house, you know, you'll get a bidding war for something and something will just go way over the estimate and be a, you know, complete home run. Home run for the seller. You know, it doesn't happen all the time, but when it does happen, you know, it's rewarding financially. But on average, you know, auction houses, you know, I don't know what the percentage is, but I would say maybe they sell 70% of their items at auction. So, you know, there is a a chance you put something in auction and it doesn't sell, and then you got to deal with it coming back to you. You still have all the fees.
Glenn, what are those fees? Give me some ideas of what kind of fees my clients are going to be paying.
You know, the fees at each auction house is going to be different, but you know, you figure you're going to be paying 20 to 30%, and it's, it's the seller's premium. So if something sells for, let's say, $10,000 at auction, the hammer price— so that's the, the price sold during the auction— is $10,000. You might get $8,000. The buyer is going to pay, let's say, just for argument's sake, another 20% on top of that, give or take.
So $12,000.
$12,000. So sells at auction $10,000, the buyer's paying $12,000, you're getting $8,000. So the auction house makes $4,000 on a $10,000— they're double dipping basically. Then on top of that, you're gonna get charged for insurance. It's usually, you know, 1 or 2%. I think— did I answer the question?
Yeah, yeah.
I think there were some other questions.
Yeah, I think that was, uh, that's basically the most, uh, the biggest part of it is figuring out, uh, exactly how the auction works because it sounds good when you see that big sticker price, but as you mentioned, you know, the auction world is basically when you see that sticker price in the paper when you're looking at it, that's including the buyer's premium. So that $12,000 in the situation you mentioned, consignor gets $7,000, that's not as, as fun as the, as that big $12,000 number.
Yeah.
There are some advantages because you have a big auction house, you get more publicity, but on the other end, nothing is for sure on an auction house. It's a gamble, and you do have to wait, uh, what's usually like a couple months before the auction happens, and then—
Oh yeah, so—
A couple months to get paid.
Yeah, you, you might submit something right now, what's it, March? Uh, actually, that happened to us.
Yeah.
This week. So we have that old mask, uh, that manuscript. Yeah, we got an auction estimate at Sotheby's in London, but the sale is not going to be until the fall. Yeah, so we're not getting paid until Christmas if we sell it.
Yeah, that's probably about right. So we have it now, we're gonna get it to England, and then still we're looking at Christmas before we see it. And right now it's about spring, so to give you an idea, that's a Yeah, before we get paid.
Yeah, so for us, you know, we're not dealing with the estate. We own it. We're not—
We take all the risks.
We're not in a hurry to get the money, so, and it's the best-selling venue for us, so we're just gonna wait. We'll consign it and pray that it sells well. But for somebody dealing with an estate, or if they're moving to Florida like a lot of people are, They might not want to deal with consigning at all. Let's say if you're moving to Florida, which, you know, I would say 10% of our house calls are people moving to Florida, right?
Yeah.
I'm just guessing. Let's say Sotheby's wants a painting and it doesn't sell, then you're living in Florida, you know, then you got to deal with the shipping to Florida. It's just, it could be a headache. So we like to make offers based on the low estimates of what the auction houses give, and, you know, then it's clean and easy.
And then again, we take the risk at that point, you know. So if it sells, it doesn't, it's on ours, and then the client, you know, will get out. In some instances we do okay. There's been instances where we lost or broke even. It's just kind of part of the game that we play, and that's And that's, you know, that's how it works in this business. But every situation is different. Sometimes estate issues come up and you have siblings and they say, you know what, we prefer going at auction, and that's fine. An auction is appropriate sometimes, but we just want people to be educated. If you're gonna put it at auction, know the right auction for it, know the fees that are gonna come with it, so you know all the ups and downs of what might happen. And then if you give them that, then they have the option, and you could say you could take the cash from us Or you can go to auction, but at least you have options and you can present those options to your siblings, your parents, or whatever the situation may be.
Yeah, the other thing I'd like to mention about auctions is, let's say if you get a painting or sculpture or whatever decorative object and the auction house goes, we'll give you a $6,000 to $8,000 estimate on something, or whatever, it doesn't matter what it is, $10,000 to $20,000, $50,000 to $70,000. Anyway, let's say in this case $6,000 to $8,000. So let's say, so let me said we're gonna put this at auction for $6,000 to $8,000. They're gonna, they're gonna require you to put a reserve price on it. The reserve price is always the low estimate, in this case $6,000 or lower. Some auction houses suggest you do half the low estimate, like I think it's Swann's, I think Swann's Auction House, I think Doyle's Possibly as well. So they say, oh, we're gonna put that up at $6,000 to $8,000 at auction, but they're suggesting that you have a $3,000 reserve, which is half the low estimate. So, you know, you have these big expectations, the table goes in the auction for $6,000 to $8,000, and then auction goes off and you— and it sells for $3,000. So then you're gonna end up with $2,600 rather than Whatever the, you know, you can do the math. So it's, you know, you can't have a reserve higher than the low estimate. So it's $6,000 to $8,000. The minimum selling price is going to be, if it sells, is going to be $6,000. But some auction houses, it's half the low estimate.
So I have, I have a good question that, that's very important that a lot of people don't know that I mention all the time. Glenn, you'd be a perfect person to answer this. What happens when my painting doesn't sell at auction?
So your painting doesn't sell at auction, it's a nightmare scenario. So let's say if your painting— let's go back to $6,000 to $8,000. So if you have a painting, it's $6,000 to $8,000, doesn't sell, The auction house is going to suggest doing it in another sale, the next round of sales. Usually each department, it's like every 6 months. So 6 months, they're going to suggest, well, we'll auction it off again, but we'll lower their estimate. So it was $6,000 to $8,000, now it's going to go down to $4,000 to $6,000. Um, and then, you know, your reserve is going to go half of 4, so your reserve is going to be 2. So in the industry, we call the item burnt. It's burnt in the industry. So it's going to be hard for you to sell it at auction, at the auction range that you initially thought it was going to be. But the other negative is now, let's say you're like, I don't want to auction this again, I'm going to try to sell it to a dealer. Well, you're going to take the painting and you're going to offer it to some other dealers, and the dealers are going to go look at the auction record, which is all transparent and online. They're going to see, oh, that you— this item didn't just— it didn't sell recently at auction. I'm really not interested. Or if they're going to be interested, they're going to be coming much lower than the original auction estimate. So Again, auctions, they can be amazing. You can get a bidding war and you'll get, you know, many times more than your auction estimate, then it's a home run. But more cases than not, it's— I would say most cases, you'll probably get a sale in the auction estimate range and you'll be, you know, fine with that. But But, you know, 10, 20, 30% of the time you're gonna have an unsold item and it's gonna be burnt and you're gonna be disappointed.
Definitely. And I think that it's important to, you know, ask a professional. If you're not in New York, maybe ask another professional. Ask a professional who knows what they're doing, like Glenn or myself, or, you know, anybody who's in your particular area to give you advice. Because if you do go to auctions, there are certain auctions that specialize in certain items. There are certain specialists that I like at specific auctions where I like that specialist. It's not even the auction. So, you know, I think that has a lot to do with it. These specialists have their contacts. They know what— they have an idea of who might potentially buy these items. So by asking us or a professional in your neighborhood, you know, at least you'll get an idea of what might happen at auction. So you're a little bit more protected, a little bit more knowledgeable. Nothing is a sure thing. But at least you'll have a better shot at knowing what you're walking into by speaking to, you know, someone who knows what they're doing.
Yeah, between, you know, between the two of us, we have so many contacts. Like, I go, well, once a month we go into a house call and there's somebody with a piano. Yeah, we got a piano guy. He used to work at Steinway. He's a certified appraiser like me through the Appraisers Association of America. I just know him through taking classes. He's a great guy. We don't want to buy a piano, so we just— we'll give you the number for the piano guy. He's an expert. He comes to your house, uh, he tells you, you know, most pianos you're gonna have to donate, but there are certain pianos that still are desirable in the marketplace. Um, and we, we have the name of the guy to talk to. And that's, you know, we have a Rolodex of— I don't know, what do you think, a couple hundred specialists? Yeah, some people specialize in You know, Herman Miller screens, some people specialize in pianos, name it, there's a specialist for it.
Yeah, 100%. And, and when it comes to auctions, you know, there's probably a lot of people know 2 or 3 main auctions that are in their head, but there's maybe hundreds of auctions even within the New York area. There's probably hundreds right here, and there's certain ones that are better than others for specific items. You know, you don't even have to go, you know, the big brands that you know. Sometimes you could do better at a smaller auction depending on what that item is when it comes into fees. Sometimes the smaller auctions are even a little bit better.
