(FORTUNE Magazine) – The price of real Van Goghs plunged with the Tokyo stock market, but the market for genuine imitations of Old Masters is thriving. They're going like hot fakes at Bonhams, the London auction house. It now sells about 300 a year, and demand is so great that the work of master copier Miguel Canals, a leading Spanish repro artist, sells out at its annual auction. A copy of Van Gogh's Irises goes for about $10,000. In New York City, you can head downtown to True Fakes Ltd., where gallery president Ellen Lagow, 27, sells copies, or paintings in the style of the greats, and takes commissions painted by false impressionists and other unknowns. Prices range from $1,000 to $8,000 and styles from Picasso to Constable. But Renoir and Monet are the most requested. Business is so good that Lagow is planning to bring out a catalogue. Buyers include interior designers, fancy retailers, and private clients who can't afford the real thing, says Pippa Stockdale of Bonhams. Copies of lesser-known works sell better than such well-known pieces like the Mona Lisa or Monet's Poppies. Says Stockdale: ''They're popular because, to somebody who doesn't know a great deal about art, they could conceivably be original.'' In fact, the owners of some masterpieces commission copies for display because they cannot afford insurance on the originals.