How to get a stake in Rembrandt & Co

Cézanne for $138 million, van Gogh for $120 million. You have to be able to afford art. The Artex exchange wants to change that.

Sif you look at popular indices for the art market, art has not been a bad investment in recent years. By January, the Artprice100 Blue Chip Index, which is calculated quarterly and based on the auction proceeds of the world’s 100 best-selling artists, according to Artprice, had increased sevenfold compared to 2000. The American S&P 500 stock index did not even triple that dax with all its dividends at 1.2 times and the FAZ index as a price index at a tired 14 percent. And while American stocks were a better bet over a five- and 10-year perspective, there was more money to be made overall from the work of the top 100 artists.

However, the asset classes could not be more different. While blue-chip stocks are liquid and trade in large numbers every day, works of art are individual objects that are auctioned off more occasionally and are consequently illiquid. This is also reflected as a premium in the prices, and the collector’s value – and thus the willingness to pay higher prices – is significantly higher than is the case with shares.