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By Karin Beuerlein

Get your fine art collection off to the right start with these tips.

Tip 4: Avoid the auction block.
Highbrow art auctions are the realm of experienced dealers, Van Cleve says. Auction pieces are sold as is, with no returns allowed. Since an auction gives no recourse if you get something you don't want, leave auction buying to those who know what they're doing.

Tip 5: Learn to recognize mass-produced works.
Many first-time collectors get original artwork, prints, and posters confused.

Original paintings are, well, original paintings. They're unique, and their cost reflects that. Prints are limited-quantity identical productions of art (for example, from a silkscreen or wood block) made directly by the artist or with her approval. The group of prints is called an edition. Editions carry a number indicating the quantity of copies made of the image. An edition of 10 means there are 10 of these images; an edition of 100,000 means there are enough of these things to fill a football stadium.

"Prints are a great way to start out because the prices are lower generally," West says. "But if you're going to collect very serious prints, prints that are considered works of art, you want to stay in a very low edition number." West recommends buying from editions of no more than 10 prints; this principle also applies to photography.

When edition numbers reach the hundreds, West says, you're talking about posters. Posters, by definition, are mass-reproduced works, often using low-quality ink and paper; they have little or no market value and are purely decorative.

Tip 6: Buy what you love.
After you've immersed yourself in the art market, don't be afraid to trust your own taste. "When you go to a gallery and you fall in love with something, even if you don't know what it is or why you like it, it's important because you like it," West says. "That doesn't mean it's important in the grand scheme of the art market, but that's okay. You can purchase that piece and feel good about it."

Tip 7: Find your focus.
Once you've got a few pieces under your belt, start looking for patterns in your purchases that will help focus your budding collection. "The most important elements for an art collection are intention and passion," Van Cleve says. By intention, she means purchasing with a game plan in mind.

When Van Cleve taught an art collecting class at New York University, one of the first things she had students do was take 100 buttons and sort them according to dozens of criteria, from color and size to history and manufacturer. The only way you could fail the test was not to organize them at all. "That's not collecting," Van Cleve says. "That's just buying. Two totally different things."

By the end of the exercise, she says, students understood the myriad ways one can look at a piece of art. "A really good collection looks at the nuances, not the obvious things," Van Cleve says. If you formulate a general philosophy about how and what you're going to collect, you'll have a direction to guide your searching, instead of becoming overwhelmed by all the choices available.

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