ART FOR LOVE AND PROFIT NOW YOU CAN INVEST--WELL--IN EVERYTHING FROM POSTERS AND JEWELRY TO ROBOTS
By DEBORAH WEISGALL

(FORTUNE Magazine) – Target, Giant Sonic Train, Non Stop Lavender, Radicon: The gang of robots approaches from outer space. Their bulbous incandescent eyes flash, radiator-grille mouths spark, antenna ears spin, arms with pincer hands swing back and forth. Machine Man leads the charge across the cover of a Sotheby's auction catalogue. He is painted the bright red of the future, and his name is emblazoned on his chest just above the on-off switch. Machine Man is a Japanese tin toy robot manufactured in the 1950s, the rarest of all such robots, one of only three examples known to exist (only about 20 of each of the other members of the gang have been found). In November he realized $42,550 for his owner, a San Francisco Bay Area collector named Matt Wyse. In 1980, Wyse paid $12 for his first robot; it was love at first sight. He sold it 16 years later for $1,725--a 14,275% profit.

As Sotheby's robot sale proves, the collectibles market has been rising. According to Christopher Burge, chairman of Christie's, it has doubled in the past 18 months. Unlike in the late 1980s, "it has not been crazy," he says. So this is a great time to look at collectibles, which should make fruitful long-term investments. Just remember collecting's big rule: Be driven by lust. Love what you collect, whether it's robots, posters, or renaissance bronzes. You might have to live with your collection for a long time, and pay to insure it; if you're passionate about the subject, you'll want to learn about it, which in turn will help you to invest wisely. As Burge warns, "What causes the downfall of the market is people who buy to resell. They often buy total junk for too much money. If they trusted advice, it would work. You have to know what is good."

That said (and read Burge's caveat again), what to buy? Jewelry is easy to love, and with its well-defined gradations of quality, it is, according to one authority, "the nearest thing the art market has to a commodity." One of the ironies of the art world is that it attracts a lot of attention, but the serious buyers in each field are usually a rather small group--except for jewelry. "Jewelry covers a wider client base than any other part of the market," says Simon Teakle, Christie's head of jewelry. "But it is important for collectors to understand rarity, quality of design, and condition. And the market is driven by how wearable a piece is." Gemstones are always blue (or blue-white or green or red) chip investments.

On a less rarefied level, signed period jewelry from as late as the 1950s and 1960s is increasingly valuable. You know the names stamped in tiny letters inside the settings: Tiffany, Van Cleef & Arpels, Cartier. A pair of Tiffany art deco earrings, estimated at $2,800 to $3,800, sold last year for $11,000 at Skinner Auctioneers & Appraisers in Boston. Virginia Salem, a gemologist with Skinner, says that "French pieces bring a premium. A piece signed CARTIER, PARIS will sell for 20% to 50% more than a comparable piece made elsewhere. French jewelry exhibits the finest workmanship."

Vintage men's watches are also strong. "I was at dinner in New York the other night," Salem recalls, and a man said to me, 'I'm sick of my Rolex.' " The man simply stopped wearing it and had instead bought a Rolex from the 1960s. "It was a lot plainer than what they're making now." Again, brand names sell: Patek Philippe, Piaget. Five years ago, a 1950s gold Patek Philippe was valued at $1,200; now they go for twice that (and still half of what they cost new).

Whether it is 1990s downscaling, nostalgia, or burgeoning economic vitality, trends often drive the market, trends that have little to do with aesthetics. There has been a growing market in southeast Asian art, both ancient and contemporary, and closer to home, booming popularity of Latin American paintings. Emerging regional economies generate interest in art, as the newly rich literally buy back their heritage; this fall Christie's sold a cracked 17th-century Korean jar for $8.4 million. Now, according to August Uribe, senior vice president of Latin American business development at Sotheby's, "it's a buyer's market." This art has nowhere to go but up. Colonial paintings, works produced in the Spanish vice-regencies of Mexico, Peru, and what are now Bolivia and Ecuador, are "inclined to be rather religious in content," according to London dealer Alex Wengraf--full of rich colors and saints floating on clouds. "You can still get top of the range for $150,000," he says. Or you can get in at the low end for $20,000.

The market for some kinds of art, such as drawings and bronze sculpture, is relatively immune to such trends--these things have always been collected. Francois Borne, the international director of Old Master drawings at Christie's, sees opportunities in French drawings (entry prices are about $2,000). And right now the prices of renaissance bronzes are lower than they have been in years. But this is a field requiring tremendous knowledge--of quality, schools, castings, and the potential for forgery. "You either have to go in with a top dealer or really know your onions," says Pat Wengraf, a noted dealer in sculpture. She says that a first-rate cast of an Italian mannerist bronze "used to fetch between $500,000 and $600,000; now you can get it for $250,000."

Well, cheap is relative, but what drives value remains constant. Bronze prices are sure to go up. They are beautiful, and they are rare. Beauty, scarcity, condition--these things hold even for robots. Or posters, which are mirrors of their time. "It is one of the few areas where you can get a lot of bang for your buck," says one collector. While images by artists like Toulouse-Lautrec or Alphonse Mucha can sell for as much as $55,000, other French music hall posters go for around $2,500 to $3,000. Russian posters produced just after the revolution, including sets of Rosta Windows--propaganda panels, many of which were drawn and written by the great poet Vladimir Mayakovsky--cost between $5,000 and $15,000. Travel posters from the 1920s, which make you want to rush to the Alps, average $550. With $20,000, you can put together a gorgeous collection.

The next hot thing might be enameled poster images--turn-of-the-century European advertisements painted on tin, featuring carbolic soap, insurance companies, and cigarettes; they sell for $1,000 to $2,500. Or there are more esoteric items, like what Matt Wyse is collecting now: hidden fore-edge paintings, which are watercolor miniatures painted in a book that can be seen only when the pages are fanned. He also collects turn-of-the-century bronzes with an Arab theme: tents and figures selling rugs. Why are they popular now? Wyse shrugs. "People are interested in Arabs, I guess." And there are always robots; in 25 years, a $42,550 Machine Man might seem like a steal.