The amount of money you set aside to invest in art depends on many different factors. The obligatory disclaimer is that you should not invest any money you are willing to lose completely. But, there as some additional questions you should ask yourself to determine how much money you should invest in your art collection, including:
- How old are you?
- How does investing in art fit into your retirement plan?
- What other investments do you have?
- What other satellite investments do you have?
- How much of your net worth do you want to be tied to satellite investments?
- How much of your net worth do you want to have tied to art?
Invest proportionally, not nominally
One way to determine how much you should invest in art is to calculate how much you want to invest as a proportion of your total assets rather than as a specific dollar value. Once you determine the latter, you can calculate the former and then set aside this amount for your initially investment in artworks.
A major benefit of this method is that you can adjust (buy or sell) your art investments as the value of your total assets change and the proportion of your art investments falls below or climbs above your preferred allocation.
Side note: Calculating the changing value of your art investments can be a tricky exercise. It is recommended that you have your art periodically valued by an expert if you can afford to do so or require it for insurance purposes.
How do you determine the proportion?
It is not uncommon for young investors (with many more years of investing in front of them) to allocate 10% or more to satellite investments like art, cryptocurrency, or moonshot-ETFs
A 10% allocation of your total investments exposes you to a decent chunk of the investment class and helps you adequately diversify your entire investment portfolio.
Although, the proportional value you consider suitable for you should be determined after answering the question listed above. For investors comfortable with a much smaller proportion, please read Can You Invest In Art With Less Than $1,000?
How do you calculate the nominal value?
After you have determined how much you want to invest in art proportionally, you can determine the dollar value you wish to invest in art.
It might be redundant to illustrate, but for the sake of completeness, below is an example of how to calculate the nominal value:
Example:
- The proportion you want to allocate to your art portfolio: 15%
- Your total assets: $45,000 in stocks, $35,000 in cash, $10,000 in bitcoin, $10,000 in gold (Total value: 45,000+35,000+10,000+10,000 = $100,000)
- Real dollar value allocated to art: 100,000 x 15% = $15,000
Check out Masterworks, Public, and Yieldstreet and explore Art Funds that let you purchase shares in million-dollar paintings from blue chip artists like Banksy, Kaws, and Yayoi Kusama.
Read more: Review: Masterworks vs. Yieldstreet
Read more: Review: Masterworks vs Public
We welcome you to Contact Us with any questions you have about investing in art. Let us know your budget, the kinds of art that interest you, and we can work out a plan to get you started with art collecting the right way.
