Gorby’s Fine Art Charity Auctions

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Sorry for the lapse in posting. I had to eradicate the previous post — my flaky internet connection wouldn’t let me post anything for almost a week now. Claude insists that he has no idea why it suddenly works again, but I’m able to post right now, so I’m posting:

I’ll be conducting LIVE online fine art nonprofit charity fundraising auctions starting this very day — at 4 PM I’ll be conducting an experiment for the benefit of several folks who are interested in raising money for worthy causes, among which will be the museum of ancient and modern art, the ashrams and possibly a charter school and a children’s academy, a medical clinic and more. Watch this afternoon LIVE and I’ll give you a basic run-through on THE PLAN. Basically, it’s the sale of a large and important inventory of blue-chip artists such as Rembrandt, Chagall, Matisse, Miro, Picasso and Renoir, as well as modern and contemporary artists, plus gold & silver coins, antiques, daguerreotype vintage photos, gold & silver jewelry, diamonds,  high-grade natural gold nuggets from the Blue Tent Mine,  rare and important meteorites and fossils, exceptionally rare and important antiquarian books & manuscripts, important historical items, stage magic collectibles, handmade clothing by Jed, myself & others and a wealth of other items, including some rather extraordinary items from my Tibetan shelf. We’ll be doing a charity auction as often as I can manage it — getting the items is harder than selling them — probably once a week, a one or two hour auction, with the proceeds going accordingly:

Let’s look an an example of how this would work for all parties. We’ll take the case of a rather important Rembrandt etching.

REMBRANDT — St. Jerome in a Dark Chamber. Etching, signed & dated Rembrandt f. 1642 (B.,W/B. 105 ii/ii; H. 201; B/B 42-E). A fine impression printed with tone, on paper bearing a Seven Provinces Watermark. Provenance: G. C. Freund (Lugt 953). Cost, $4,600 in 1989. Today’s wholesale would be far greater.

Okay, so it sells for, let’s say, a fair trading price of $22,500, which is far below today’s retail gallery price-tag. We have a cost in it of $4,600 in 1989 dollars, but we’re going to ignore the ravages of inflation on our 1989 dollars. Cost is cost, period, measured in dollars, not in would-be could-be dollars.

So, we have a cost of about $5,000 in the piece. The donor is hoping for some sort of tax-credit or donation benefit of some sort, let us say. It’s the donor’s job to make certain, by asking one’s accountant, if this is a viable solution to your tax giving situation. It may or may not work for you, but under the right circumstances, not only is it perfectly legal, donors are encouraged by some of the more responsible government leaders to give, where government can’t do anything to help, such as education and relief of the misery of the masses.

Uh, where was I? Oh, yeh…the misery of the masses. Right. So what becomes of the money? It gets split up this way:

Selling Price = $4,600 (plus $50 for crate & ship, but who’s counting?)

Cost = $4,600

Net = $17,900

So each nonprofit organization gets $8,950.

The buyer gets the artwork and the tax break, if any. Keep in mind that the tax deduction would be the DIFFERENCE BETWEEN the donation and the market value.

In the case of this particular Rembrandt, the buyer would have to get well above the $30,000 mark to get any tax deduction benefit, because the piece is very valuable and rare, and the gallery price tag in a large city could easily  be well above $45,000.

The IRS appraisal is very different from an insurance appraisal, which any appraiser can do. The insurance appraisal will be far above the actual market, to allow replacement. The IRS valuation can only be performed by an approved TAX APPRAISER, and it will be significantly lower than the insurance appraisal, but it will still invariably be higher than most bidders in a charity auction are willing to go.

See, the paradigm of their offering is that they want to help the charity of their choice; actually, they also want to acquire something of value, and get a tax deduction on top of that, to sweeten the deal. But in order to get the deduction, they have to pay more than retail, get it? The market value of the item is deducted from their gift by the IRS and, of course, they want to be seen bidding on behalf of the charity — naturally. Everybody wants to be a hero, and there’s no better way to get recognition than to bid publicly much more than something is worth in order to get some cash into the charity of choice.

Of course, they’re competing against other folks in other Outboard Charity Bidding Rooms who want the artwork and the gratification of making their organization the beneficiary.

See, the organization who provided bidder is the organization that gets the support. Each group has its own account at the auction, and the bidder and receiving institution are matched during the auction so the donation goes to the right beneficiary, see?

Whew, that’s a lot to get through, but it’s worth it, if you manage to understand how it works to everyone’s benefit.

If there are a number of different organizations involved, each would have its own Bidding Designation and its own Bidding Room.

Let’s say, for instance, that one of the organizations participating in next weekend’s charity auction happened to be the National Endowment for the Arts — not bloody likely, but you never know.

The NEA would have their own conference room set up with a large-screen monitor and a voice connection to the auctioneering group here. They then tell their LIVE CONTACT person, who’s on the phone with us in Real Time Present Time, what bid they’re making. They can see the piece on the screen, and closeups can be called for by bidders on, for instance, the artist’s signature or other significant areas of the artwork.

So their bidding group could be designated as NEA.

 

Okay then, so bidder number 138 would make a bid for, let’s say, $6500, a $50 advance over the previous bid of $6000 on the St. Jerome piece.

The Auction Organizer at that location would then call off the bid thusly:

“My floor bidder, NEA-138, bids $6500.00”.

That identifies the bidder as bidding for the benefit of the National Endowment for the Arts, so the net over cost would be split 50/50 between the auctioneer organization, in this case the Museum of Ancient & Modern Art, and the bidder’s “Home Room” group of buyers.

We support local artists, and to make it possible for them to continue to donate artwork, we give them an honorarium of about 10%-25% of the artwork’s street value. This means that the art production is sustainable. You’d want that if it were the product of a rain forest, and I happen to think that artist are at least as valuable as trees. Artists are not typically rich, but this is one way that they can help others even less fortunate than they.

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The Very Rich are not really concerned with human suffering, but they do like to feel that they’re paying back a little for the comforts they enjoy, and frankly, they can get pieces at my auction that are as good as or superior to those offered in the greatest auction houses, with all the security that good trading practices can buy. My pieces are lifetime guaranteed genuine and come SEALED in an archival environment. Seals must NOT be broken, but we will unframe any print if the buyer prefers, so that pieces can be examined by any qualified expert.

All the great Blue Chip Art is hard to find — increasingly so, every day. I love the hunt, but the game is getting scarce. Nevertheless, I can find it if it’s out there to be found.

Tune in today and watch gorebagg on twitter for the latest info. Spontaneous “test” auctions such as today’s 4PM event on justin.tv/gorebaggtv will have average prices of one dollar to maybe $10. It’s just to test the system and get familiar with the timing induced by net-lag.

There are a few ethical auction houses out there, but none of them have real experts — they depend on earlier auction records and bills of sale to help them divine the truth about artworks. We’re in it for the long haul, which is your guarantee of a donor who is not only happy to help, but who has acquired a reminder of your organization’s need for help and readiness to reward that help with wonderful and uplifting art and antiques.

It should be a lot of fun, and we can actually raise a lot of money with these auctions if you can get the crowd of buyers. There’s room for everyone in this adventure, so get on board!

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See You At The Top!!!

gorby