WHAT'S THE MARKET ON NAGELS THESE DAYS?

We get that question a lot, not surprisingly.

I have dealt in Nagels serigraphs for over 25 years now and the market for them, if not the general enthusiasm, has swung back and forth. In the halcyon days of the early '80's, art collectors were wading into the market with all that junk bond money and buying not just Nagels but everything else they were told would represent 'investment potential'. Then, at the end of decade of the '90's, prices on 'real' Nagel prints got admittedly soft.

The market has been further sullied by the fact that there was so much fraudulent copies made of Nagel's work and so much confusion about what constitutes a real, or even a 'signed' Nagel serigraph.

Those who recognize the true place in history of Nagel's work knew that sooner or later, it would all come back. Nagel fans and art academicians alike knew there would one day be a strong marketplace that would ebb and flow naturally, rather than through market artifice. I always thought it would be in the year 2020.

I may have been wrong. It looks like it's happening now

WHICH NAGEL SHOULD I PURCHASE?

Because of his untimely demise, Patrick's "lifetime" body of work is (comparatively) very small. But it was important work. The Nagel 'renaissance' has already begun -- the work is being revisited by scholars and collectors alike. Print enthusiasts who didn't know of him during his life, are now vehemently collecting Nagels with the same voracity as collectors have the work of those artists named above. (For more, please read the 'history' page.)

If you're curious, you can take a look at the Mirage price list from 1988, (on four separate pages, linked here), but don't expect much except a look at the way Mirage controlled the market in those days by releasing regular "current prices." It doesn't have much bearing on today's valuations except as a point of departure.
THE LAW OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND

The Value and Price on 'real' Nagel prints will respond to the basic laws of supply and demand:

  • The fewer printed, the more scarce the supply. The more demand for them, the prices are spiked.
  • Limited Edition means just that: limited in number, regardless of the number.
  • For some reason, the art community asigns more value to a work of art with the artists' real signature on it. In most cases, the unsigned artwork itself is physically identical, but the signature can mean quite a bit in the marketplace.
  • Buy what you can afford.
  • Bear in mind, Nagel's body of 'signed' work is extremely small. Compared to many deceased artists, Matisse for example, who did very little printmaking, the work will be very sought after.
  • The market will respond to the vicissitudes of supply, but also other factors: condition, rarity and rating of the print in question, relative to the whole body of work

**Please note: If you love Nagel, then we love you and want to hear from you. However, If you just want to get a price/value on a Nagel you already own, we charge a small fee for appraisals on our letterhead. We hope you can appreciate our policy on this. We would otherwise get hundreds of such requests. Thanks for visiting the site.
Todd Bingham for TBFA