Posted December29, 2004

Lawrence's Dealer Print Prices, 2004-1992 CD-ROM, published by Gordon's Art Reference, contains retail prices for over 280,000 prints by over 15,000 artists, with approximately 30,000 more listings than the previous edition. Prices for prints in all price ranges are taken from domestic and international dealer catalogues and inventories that date primarily from 1991 through 2003, but a number of entries have been taken from hard-to-find retail price resources dating from 1970-1990. Every entry includes data such as the artist's name, nationality, birth and death dates, image title, dimensions, edition size, signature information, date of the print, condition information, and a reference number to the dealer who is selling it.

Data can be accessed easily and in a variety of ways. For example, if you can't make out the title of a particular artist's print, a free text search allows you to search for that title by any group of consecutive identifiable letters. You can also search an artist's prints by price, price range, date of sale, lot number of print in a particular sale, and other variables. These search options are especially useful when you're researching artists with hundreds or thousands of entries like Picasso, Dali, or Chagall.

Lawrence's is the only published database of retail dealer prices in the art business. Retail prices are normally privileged information shared exclusively by specialist dealers and experienced collectors, but Lawrence's changes all that. Now anyone can use this information to evaluate selling prices and buy, sell, donate, or appraise prints more effectively.

For people who buy prints, Lawrence's can also be used as a catalogue to shop for images or artists that you collect. Full contact information for all dealers represented on the CD-ROM is included in an index of worldwide print dealers, so when you see an image you might want to own, you can locate the seller, find out whether it's still available, and buy it-- or make an offer. You can also find out whether the dealer has any other images by the same artist, and so on. Additional indexes list dealers by specialties and geographic locations. Comprehensive bibliographies of catalogues raisonne and general print reference works round out this terrific price reference.

Lawrence's is an essential reference for anyone appraising or transacting in fine prints at any level of the trade. And as always, print pros prefer Gordon's.

Lawrence's Dealer Print Prices Annual 2004-1992, CD-ROM LTB Gordonsart, Inc., Phoenix, 2004; $595, initial subscription; $245, annual update.