Gordon's 1999 Print Price Annual and Fourteen Year CD-ROM

Gordon's Art Reference, Inc. publishes the world's leading guides to print prices at auctions as well as at the retail level. Thanks to them, the fine print market place is the best documented segment of the art business in terms selling prices. They offer this information in both book and CD-ROM forms.

The book form of Gordon's Print Price Annual 1999 contains nearly 50,000 results of prints, posters, illustrated books, artist books, and periodicals with original graphics that sold at auctions around the world during 1998. Print types include Old Master, contemporary, modern, decorative, historical, Japanese, Audubon, and Currier & Ives. Gordon's 1999 contains tens of thousands more print price records than competing price guides. Buy-ins are also recorded as well as results of lower priced prints (it has no price cut-off).

Gordon's auction results are by far the best researched and organized of any art price publication. Not only do they contain standard information like artists' names, titles, dates, mediums, edition sizes, auction houses, and dates of sale, but they also document paper types, impression information, catalogue raisonne numbers and states, margin information, condition, inscribed notations, and more. If you want to do your print price research right, Gordon's is the only way to go.

For serious researchers who need access to lots of data fast, Gordon's Print Price Annual CD-ROM, 1999-1986 is definitely the best choice. Its nearly 500,000 entries cover fourteen years of print auctions and can be almost instantaneously accessed in a variety of ways including by artist, title and date. The CD-ROM saves nearly three feet of shelf space that the equivalent hard copy volumes would take up and it saves having to check fourteen separate volumes when researching an artist's selling prices over time.

Gordon's CD-ROM contains all the information of the hard copy volumes including a list of catalogues raisonnes and monographs, articles, advertiser information, auction house addresses, and instructions on how to read the entries. In addition, it contains worldwide directories of auction houses, print dealers, and photography dealers and a print term lexicon in three languages (English, French, and German) so that readers can easily translate from one notation to another.

Art price CD-ROMs have totally changed the way that fine art is researched and Gordon's CD-ROM is no exception. It's unquestionably the wave of the future. As with any top-of-the-line products, quality costs money and Gordon's print price references do not come cheap. If you can't afford them yourself, chip in with business associates on group copies or contact the art librarians at your main branch public library, museum, and local universities and insist that they order them.

Gordon's Print Price Annual CD-ROM, 1999-1986, Gordon's Art Reference, Inc., Phoenix, AZ, 1999. Available for Windows 98, 95, NT, 3.1, and Macintosh. Initial first year subscription: $595. Annual updates: $295.

Gordon's Print Price Annual 1999 edited by Jodie L. Benson, Gordon's Art Reference, Inc., Phoenix, AZ, 1999, hardbound, 2006 pages, 9 by 11 1/4 inches, $245.

Available from Gordon's Art Reference, Inc., 306 West Coronado Rd., Phoenix, AZ 85003-1147 or call 1-800-892-4622.

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Davenport's Art Reference and Price Guide

The 1999/2000 edition of Davenport's Art Reference and Price Guide is out and better than ever. It contains basic price and brief biographical information on 200,000 artists-- nearly 25,000 more than the previous edition. Tens of thousands of auction price results have been added and updated as has a substantial amount of artist biographical data. Thousands of artists are listed in Davenport's and nowhere else. It's unquestionably the best and most comprehensive single volume artist reference available on the market today.

The book doubles as an artist index. All entries contain basic information like artists' full names, birth and death dates, nationalities, and subject specialties. Many entries also list titles of standard artist indexes, dictionaries, and encyclopedias where further biographical information can be located. Over 30 such references are referred to. The great majority of artist entries also contain selling prices from specific auctions where their art has been sold. This sales data has been compiled from many thousands of auctions over the past seventeen years.

Be careful when price information is given in the form of ranges without specific auction references. This means that very limited data is available and that it may or may not be accurate. Fortunately, ranges only appear in a small minority of artist listings.

The most amazing thing about Davenport's is that it's as quick and easy to use as a CD-ROM and unlike other price references, there's no CD-ROM available that contains this much information on so many artists. When I need basic facts and prices and I need it fast, Davenport's is still the first book I check. It's the best. There's nothing like it anywhere. I've said it before and I'll say it again--if you can only afford to buy one major art reference book this year, make it Davenport's Art Reference & Price Guide, 1999/2000 Edition.