1984 Artist-signed Limited Edition Olympic Posters
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GUEST:
Well, they're 15 different artists that were hired to do... each do a poster for the 1984 Olympics. They did a limited run of 500 each, is what I was told. All are signed. And then they took those and made… mass-produced the rest of the posters.
APPRAISER:
That's right. So you have the presentation box with the 15 posters inside. In fact, it was a run of 750, not 500.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
And of the 750, they were all hand signed by the artists. And these artists really are a who's who of the contemporary art scene. Here we have John Baldessari. Then we have, in the middle, Sam Francis. Closer to you, a collage by David Hockney. Richard Diebenkorn down by your side. In the middle, sort of the great and inimitable Roy Lichtenstein. And then closest to me we have Robert Rauschenberg. Where did you come by this Olympic portfolio?
GUEST:
Well, I have a small coin shop in northern Virginia. One of my customers is a big coin collector, and I had a few coins that he wanted.
APPRAISER:
And how much did you pay for them?
GUEST:
$1,000 value as far as the trade for the coin.
APPRAISER:
What really sets these apart from other Olympic posters are two things. First of all, it's really the first time that an Olympic Games was represented by a portfolio of posters by different artists, as opposed to having one primary designer. And then they really chose some of the great, great names. The whole portfolio, which is 15 posters, you've done a little research into those?
GUEST:
Yeah, it was hard to find something on the total 15 posters. Normally what I'd find is, like, the Lichtenstein, I'd find one, or the Hockney, but I never saw a complete set.
APPRAISER:
And we're sort of trained to believe that a collection is worth more than the sum of its parts, right? So if we have the whole collection, it should be worth more than the individual posters.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
Even though there were 750 made in each of these groups, the entire set comes up very infrequently.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
I found an auction record from 2015, when the entire set of 15 in the presentation portfolio sold for $4,500.
GUEST:
Oh, wow.
APPRAISER:
But here's the thing-- this portfolio really represents the exception to the rule. And this is one of the rare instances where the individual pieces are actually worth more than the portfolio as a whole.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
These six posters really represent the greatest artists from the group. At auction, they would sell, alone, for between $5,000 and $7,000.
GUEST:
Wow.
APPRAISER:
So just these six would sell for more than the portfolio.
GUEST:
Wow.
APPRAISER:
And I figure the other nine posters that are inside the portfolio would probably sell for a combined $2,000 to $3,000.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
So by breaking them up, the total is $7,000 to $10,000, which is almost twice what the portfolio as a single unit sells for.
GUEST:
Wow. More than I was expecting.
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