(MONEY Magazine) – Q Five years ago, I purchased an Alvar lithograph for $3,800, a Salvador Dali etching for $1,200 and an Andrew Wyeth collotype for $3,600 from the Atlas Galleries of Chicago. The Alvar is now worth $12,000, the Dali $2,000 and the Wyeth $6,200. I would like to sell, but neither Atlas nor another gallery I consulted will take the pictures on consignment. The prices have risen, so why won't they help? Jeffrey A. Kramer Chicago A I'll tell you why: because you were probably charged much too much in the first place. Alan Menecker, a director at Atlas, a Chicago-based chain of commercial art galleries, told us that your Alvar and Wyeth prints are ''very desirable pieces'' -- worth about what you said. But other experts disagreed. Barden Prisant, president of Telepraisal, a Manhattan firm that documents art auction prices, and Leslie Hindman, president of Leslie Hindman Auctioneers in Chicago, a major Midwest auction house, gave the following prices: about $500 for the Wyeth and $100 to $200 for the Alvar at auction. There's worse news about the Dali: Vergilia H. Pancoast, at the International Foundation for Art Research in New York City, says Dali prints made after 1980 are deader than one of his melting clocks, because of fakes flooding the market. Your print is suspect too, by the way, because Atlas didn't include a print date on your ''certificate of authenticity.'' When we confronted Menecker with all that information, he suggested -- perhaps operating under what I call the ''greater sucker'' theory -- that you put an ad in the newspaper. Matthew Wind, executive vice president of Atlas Galleries, added that it is not Atlas' policy to accept sales on consignment. (Dealers generally get only a 20% to 40% commission on consignment sales, compared with the 100% profit they can make on ordinary sales.) The next time you're tempted to dabble in the nasty world of art, take my advice: don't.

Q My daughter is 21, married to a Navy man and living in California. As a result of a childhood accident, she received a settlement that was invested in a certificate of deposit. It has matured to $54,000, and I am worried about where she can get advice about reinvesting. Also, is it true that the Navy will discharge her husband once it learns she has this money? And how can she protect the funds in a divorce? Name withheld by request New York City

A Mothers, mothers, mothers -- always worried about something. Your concern that the Navy would discharge your son-in-law holds no more water than my mother's 1952 fear that I wasn't eating enough. (Now I'm wearing a pantyhose size called Nimitz-class aircraft carrier.) Next worry -- the impending divorce that every mother is certain will leave her daughter reduced to poverty and abandoned. In California, her $54,000 is not considered community property -- which would have to be divided fifty-fifty between the two spouses -- because she received it before marriage. Just advise her to keep the money separate from any joint assets she owns with her husband. For added assurance, she could ask him to sign a postmarital agreement stipulating that it belongs to her. And if you think that you haven't interfered enough by then, call again to suggest that she diversify her money among no-load stock, bond and money-market funds.

Q I purchased a home in February 1989. Six months later, I found that a mining company had begun to file for permits in 1987 to start a huge quarry operation behind my property. When finished, the quarry will sit only 500 yards from my back door. My appraiser tells me that will reduce my home's value by about 20%. The real estate agent never disclosed any of this to me. Do I have any recourse? Laura Decker New Windsor, Md. A Not much. Etch this on your mind forever: a real estate agent represents the seller, not the buyer. While he has an obligation to tell the truth, it's not clear whether the law requires him to draw your attention to a property's defects. According to Charles S. Colson, executive director of the Maryland Real Estate Commission in Baltimore, you would have a solid claim only if you, as the buyer, had hired the agent using a written contract that required full disclosure. Nevertheless, Colson invites you to make a formal complaint (call his office at 301-333-6230 for a form); if your case proves to be outrageous enough, you may be entitled to as much as $25,000 of compensation from the state's Real Estate Guaranty Fund. You might also check with the state Department of the Environment in Baltimore, the Surface Mining Division of the Department of Natural Resources in Annapolis and the Carroll County Planning Commission and Zoning Office to find out whether the quarry complies with health, environmental and zoning regulations. If it doesn't, you may be able to make a big enough fuss to delay its opening.

Q I have a Charles Schwab account that sweeps uninvested cash into a Kemper money-market fund, but the yield on my statement never matches the yield published in my local newspaper. I called Schwab's Seattle office, only to be told that the brokerage firm keeps one-half of 1% as a fee. Is this a common practice? Rollin Loewenstein Fairbanks, Alaska A In this day and age, anybody with assets of more than 53 cents has to live with plenty of complications -- where to put it, how to pay taxes on it, when to withdraw it, whom to spend it on and how to remember what you did with it. Before I tell you what happened to your loose change, forget everything the Seattle office staff told you; they are wrong. Now, there is a Kemper money- market fund available to the public. But that's not what you had. You had the money-market portfolio offered by Schwab in its cash equivalent fund (CEF) managed by Kemper Financial Services; funds are automatically swept into it from a Schwab brokerage account. The CEF does generally pay a fraction of a percentage point less than the stand-alone Kemper fund. But it is completely understandable why you, Albert Einstein or any other big brain would mix up the two funds since Schwab, in a moment of stellar uncreativity, chose to call your account ''the Kemper money-market portfolio.'' Recently, Schwab stopped sweeping funds into the CEF and started putting them into the Schwab Money Funds instead -- which should clear up some confusion. The money-market portfolio will still be handled by Kemper, but the yield will remain a little under that of Kemper's fund.