http://artelino.com is an auction site, as you said,
offering mainly contemporary Chinese and contemporary and historic Japanese
prints, primarily woodcuts. Nice people to talk with, they represent
several Baren members regularly. I've purchased a number of prints from
them and have had no problems dealing with them at all. The prints usually
arrive as described in terms of impression, condition, and color although
there's a tendency (pretty widespread among all the commercial sites,
actually) to 'push' both color saturation and contrast - don't expect prints
to arrive quite as crisp as displayed.
Although the market is surprisingly active, there can be very wide disparity
in price and estimates among seemingly similar prints from dealer to dealer.
Condition, age, color, impression, popularity, rarity, etc all play a part
in determining price - the most common prints with 'unremarkable' subject,
condition, artist, impression etc are routinely sold for very little,
especially in the bookshops (even the airport shops have plentiful chuban
and oban prints 150 give or take 50 years, for less than $100 (many less
than $25).
http://artelino.com is pretty widely watched, as are
http://auctionukiyoe.com www.kotobuki.de
http://www.woodblockprint.com/ and other
sites which auction Japanese woodblock prints. There are many dealers
around, too, where you can view and buy prints on-line - Artelino, and
Kotobuki both maintain 'retail galleries' on-line - here are a few other
gallery sites I like.
http://printsofjapan.com/
http://www.japaneseprints.net
http://www.japaneseprints-london.com
http://www.sosakuhanga.net/ http://ukiyoe-gallery.com
http://www.hotei-japanese-prints.com/
Personally, I think that late 19th century prints are generally undervalued
(with a few exceptions like Yoshitoshi), and I suggest that you figure that
you NOT consider purchases of cheap prints an 'investment', but rather
purchase ONLY prints you genuinely "like". It'll be a LONG time, I imagine,
before today's 'cheap' Japanese and Chinese prints are much appreciated.
Restrikes are usually indicated by 'key words' like "Later printing",
"Posthumous printing", "date: 18xx, this impression later", "completely
recut from the original design", etc. This is not to suggest that the
restrikes aren't wonderful examples of Japanese woodblock printmaking, but
they don't seem to hold their value very well (there are SO many of them
available today and many designs continue to come off blocks even as I
write) - prints of a design pulled yesterday are often sold at higher prices
than restrikes 50 or more years old. Prints from 'early' editions in good
condition command much higher prices.
Wonderful prints for the price of a (really) good meal, eh? Art NOW, stave
later! Happy shopping!
Mike Lyon
Kansas City, MO
http://mlyon.com