There’s one market that seems to be booming — the art market.
Recent headlines show record-breaking bids at art auctions held at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Just recently, one of Claude Monet’s iconic painting of haystacks fetched a record $110.7 million at a New York auction.
Masterworks.io buys multimillion dollar “blue-chip” paintings (work by artists like Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet and Andy Warhol) and then files them with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Founded in 2017, Masterworks.io allows anyone to purchase shares in artwork, for as little as $20 a share, that the company acquires at auctions, making fine art accessible to art lovers as well as investors looking for alternative assets. It is the first company to securitize ‘blue-chip’ artwork.
All the paintings the company “brings to the platform are investment grade,” Masterworks.io founder and CEO Scott Lynn told Yahoo Finance’s On the Move, adding that they are appreciating by at least 10%. Investors make money when Masterworks.io sells the painting. “Shareholders decide when to sell,” he said, similar to how a public company works.
Currently, “we have two paintings. We offered Andy Warhol’s ‘Marilyn Reversal’ which is a $2 million painting and our second painting is Claude Monet’s 1881 landscape that is a $7 million painting,” said Lynn, adding that the company is looking to roll more out more in the future.
So what are the next steps for the company? Lynn said it has plans to launch trading markets.
Additionally, the company is opening a gallery in New York City on Broome and West Broadway in the next couple of weeks. Artwork is currently held in fine art storage, so the new gallery will allow people to view their investments.
Ralston Ramsay is a producer at Yahoo Finance On the Move.
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