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Comment by ed209 | Hacker News Reader

This is what it seems like to our generation (I'm guessing you're 25+). By the time current 12 year olds are old enough to buy art, buying it online will seem totally normal.

~2006 I tried to create an online art marketplace (this was a direct-from-artist marketplace from $50 to $50,000) and one of the main problems was that buying online made the work feel a bit cheaper. That's a stigma that will die off.

All you need to sell work remotely is trusting the brand you're buying through (Amazon) and being familiar with the artist you're buying.

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I don't necessarily think buying art online won't work. But Amazon isn't exactly an "upper-class" website, for lack of a better term. It's too commercialized and focuses too much on essential and low cost items.

A bricks-and-mortar comparison might be Target and a higher-end store like Lord & Taylor or Nordstrom's. Amazon is more like Target - it has a decent brand, but you wouldn't really expect to find thousand dollar paintings there. You could, perhaps, expect to find such paintings at a "higher end" store, though.

But, I could be wrong. I just don't think the people spending millions on paintings are the people cruising Amazon for a deal. The online marketplace for exclusive artworks is a different site IMO.

I think that having the expensive stuff at the announcement is all about getting people talking about it. Lots of stores have that ridiculously priced item that everyone wants to see but nobody actually wants to buy.

It does seem to be gallery prices for the commodity art at the low end. But these are just the people that were first in. If we get that race to the bottom among artists, we might see some good stuff for a good price.

Amazon carries a surprising amount of expensive merchandise already. I've never seen, e.g., luxury watches at Target: http://www.amazon.com/IWC-IW356502-Portofino-Automatic-Black... — and notice that the only reviewer opted to buy the piece at Amazon (Prime eligible!) rather than a brick-and-mortar boutique.

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