First, let me explain how we initially got into the art business and then I’ll get back to the true price of a piece of William Joseph Verdult artwork.

In 2003 in establishing a public company in a totally separate industry – child care to be exact, we were approached by a gentleman by the name of Dave. Dave was interested in owning some shares of a new public upstart in exchange for some art – some William Joseph Verdult artwork.

At the time, though I did not know much about Verdult artwork, it seemed like a good idea to exchange some stock for art to develop the corporation. The initial intent was to either hold on to the artwork, or sale it to increase the corporation’s asset base.

In looking back, as they say, hind sight is always 20…20, there were two major problems with this approach.

First, fine art on the books of a public company must be recorded properly, if not both your internal auditors and the Securities and Exchange Commission will hand you your head in a basket. In other words, both auditors and the SEC frown on a start-up having art on its books …with no apparent purpose other than to just hold artwork on the books.

Both your auditors and regulators want to see that you are doing something with the art other than letting it sit there drying up like a raisin in the sun.

In valuing the artwork, the auditors wanted to know exactly what  plans  the company had for the artwork. Having a major challenge on our hands, we looked around to see what could be done with the many pieces of fine art that we had. At first, other than trade it in a barter transaction, we found out we couldn’t do much.

Then the question became, okay if we trade the artwork for something else of value, what do we trade the artwork for; and at what price? In looking around we found that there was a thriving business of trading Verdult artwork in the barter arena. But we also found there was very little proof of cash sales of Verdult artwork. More important we found that auditors value barter assets at a considerable…and I do mean considerable discount.

To establish some sort of bench mark of past sales, we even went back to William Joseph Verdult who provided access to his records. William wasn’t the best keeper of records. In the late 1990 up to 2006, William spent most of his time – like Picasso was known to do in his later years –  creating a piece of artwork, and trading it for whatever he required at the time. It could be a Mercedes Benz or a piece of fine jewelry, or simply some cash, to take care of some bills. Whatever William required, he’d trade a painting for it and head to the closest casino to get away from it all.

Records showed the artwork had been traded for assets ranging from real estate to fine automobiles. However, except for receipts dating back to the 70s, 80s and mid 90s when Verdult was on the top of his game, no cash receipts for sales were available. In the 70s, 80s, (Verdult’s hay day in terms of sales) and the latter part of the 90s Verdult works sold for several thousands of dollars to celebrities such as Frank Sinatra, Paul Newman, Jack Lord, and Farrah Fawcett.

Make a long story short, after going through many boxes of records and receipts, there was not much of a paper trail of cash sales. Though we found thousands and thousands of dollars in barter sales, very few records of recent cash sales were found.

To make sure that our auditors would not throw us out of the door, we developed a strategy to correct this. In addition, to developing websites such as , www.verdultgallery.com, www.verdultonline.com and wwww.williamverdult.com, we worked with, perhaps, the preeminent appraiser of Verdult artwork who is qualified by various state agencies as well as the IRS to appraise the value of Verdult artwork.

Today, we are the only company in existence that tracks and has a verifiable record of cash sales for Verdult artwork. With the exception of Neal Auction House, who has recorded three sales of Verdult artwork at auction, we are the only company with an extensive list of verified cash sales of Verdult artwork.

To enhance shareholder value, we worked with key on-line sites that track major artist work to include William Joseph Verdult artwork in their data base. Art.com who recently signed an agreement with Sotheby’s,and other major on-line art locations and galleries are now beginning to maintain a list of works by William Joseph Verdult.

Summing things up, we have participated in a number of auctions of Verdult artwork with over 250 plus cash sales of both lithographs and original work. If you want the latest cash sales prices for Verdult artwork, email us.