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“When information is cheap, attention becomes expensive.”

― James Gleick

We've come to a point where we're inundated with everyone trying to push their own agenda that it is difficult to both sort the BS out, while also becoming impossible to really appeal/reach out to the people who would appreciate and benefit from what one has to offer.

>I think in the next years we will see rise of companies that help customers make decent choices that are not solely based on advertising.

I'm skeptical. It all comes down to money. The big boys have a lot to spend. Sure, there will always be someone somewhere doing something, but coming out of a niche and reaching out to people is difficult. It is easier get subconsciously influenced by billboards and banners than being aware and knowing what you really want. Especially since no one seems to be aware of if they really need something. Something to watch - https://www.netflix.com/title/80114460

Case in point - is the 'undisclosed buyer' really benefiting $450.3 mil worth? Money has diminishing returns after $70k/yr/person (from the doc above) but people just want more. So we're ready to listen to what people say would be nice to have. Another part is how they've become status symbols.

>For tech stuff there are reviewers out there who test many things and which you can trust

I'm just going to link to a site which I think is very impartial for as long as I've known them and have excellent reviews with their methodology outlined.

It was called thesweethome(.com), but I guess now it redirects to their other website, thewirecutter (was tech stuff only). It has reviews of everything from knives to dishwashing soap (the long read on that was interesting[1]).

https://thewirecutter.com/

It was acquired this time a year ago by NYT and I haven't been too keen on buying stuff in general for a while (again, minimalism) so can't say if anything has changed since then.

[1]: https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-dish-soap/#are-green-...

> Case in point - is the 'undisclosed buyer' really benefiting $450.3 mil worth?

Of course not! They are benefiting from whatever the difference is between $450.3M and what they expect to sell it for in the future, discounted to present value.

Which means they might either expect to make money on it, or at least not lose too much on it.

For some people, buying art aren't isn't too different from buying stocks... except you can't do anything to enjoy equities hanging on your wall.

>For some people, buying art aren't isn't too different from buying stocks

You are making it look like there's no emotion involved. Buying art in my opinion is mostly an emotional one, unless you're lucky and getting a Monet in a yard sale (which you admit by saying 'you can't do anything to enjoy equities hanging on your wall.'). Also, it is definitely not a logical rationale like buying stocks. Atleast not a stable one.

For half a billion dollars there are better ways to invest, and diversity. Without risking a single point of failure like here.

Also, what guarantee is there that this will appreciate? What's stopping from this painting's value from dropping to zero in a decade or two? Other investments do too, but that's where the diversification part comes in. Art definitely has it's place in the future, but a specific piece isn't worth risking half a billion dollars over.

There is centuries of data about how this asset has appreciated. It has a brand that has endured 500 years. Most of the stocks you will invest in, probably won't exist in 50.

What could you possibly want to diversify against? It has outlasted Governments, new technologies, and new ideologies. Diversification is a durability strategy and this painting has proven durability across a multitude of change.

Well, unless somebody proves this is a fake. Its authenticity has been questioned.

>Most of the stocks you will invest in, probably won't exist in 50.

I wasn't just talking about stocks. There are so many other places to invest with that amount of money.

That's right. There are certain luxury purchases that are not about spending money, but rather are a reasonably safe way to park cash.

>>Of course not! They are benefiting from whatever the difference is between $450.3M and what they expect to sell it for in the future, discounted to present value.

You're writing about him, so he's benefiting. He knows and everyone in his social circle know that he has a painting of DaVinci. His children's friends etc etc. After securing our daily bread and then some, we do things for bragging, pleasure..

Not knowing the buyer, it may also be a way to move cash outa his corrupt country (Russia, China, Saudi Arabia...). 'Whatever happens, I have 2 apartments in NYC, one in Miami and a DaVinci painting i can sell'

> you can't do anything to enjoy equities hanging on your wall.

I can't imagine a half a billion dollar painting being hung on anyone's wall. In fact I can't imagine it bringing much enjoyment to anyone, given it is likely to spend it's life locked up in top secret high security climate controlled vaults.

except you can't do anything to enjoy equities hanging on your wall

The buyers might not even get that benefit... there are billions of dollars worth of artworks sitting in storage in tax-efficient 'freeports':

https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21590353-ever-more-w...

I doubt the buyer would do that with this piece. It's too expensive and one-of-a-kind to stash away. If you're buying artwork just as an investment to stash away, you'd probably buy many much smaller pieces rather than a headline grabbing one.

I'd bet that this will be hanging in someone's billionaire's living room somewhere (hopefully behind some protective glass). These guys have egos. Saying you own the most expensive piece of artwork ever gets you something that money can't buy (even though you did buy it).

> Saying you own the most expensive piece of artwork ever gets you something that money can't buy (even though you did buy it).

"Saying you own the most expensive piece of artwork ever" is literary what money can buy.

I'm happy that NY Times bought Wirecutter -- two outfits with integrity.

You don't seem to understand how the art world works. Buying art at this level has nothing to do with the work itself. It has everything to do with demonstrating power. Whoever bought that will have the best Leonardo work outside of museums. Art is a positional good, it shows that you have class and at this level nothing is as prestigious. Say you put that thing in a house or a museum, you can invite the Pope himself to view it. In terms of networking this is the holy grail.

Just because Christie’s went to unprecedented lengths to market the painting it doesn't mean that without that effort the painting wouldn't have sell at this price level. The art market is highly unpredictable.

I agree. Paradoxically, buying this work buys you something that money can't buy, even though it actually did.

I don't see how the value of a Da Vinci painting is a triumph of marketing. If marketing was ruling, I'd expect a contemporary piece of junk to be higher valued.

As it is, I think you have something of undeniable, a classical part of European and world civilization, given a monetary value that seems a bit absurd.

And seems more easily explainable in the way that commodity bubble can be explained - combine investors wanting something guaranteed to be worth something and investors following trends into bubble territory. All exacerbated by the general trend to print money when the financial system is under threat (so money goes into stuff that seem "of certain value").

The DaVinci brand has been promoted for centuries.

From the article:

> Christie’s marketing campaign was perhaps unprecedented in the art world; it was the first time the auction house went so far as to enlist an outside agency to advertise the work. Christie’s also released a video that included top executives pitching the painting to Hong Kong clients as “the holy grail of our business” and likening it to “the discovery of a new planet.” Christie’s called the work “the Last da Vinci,” the only known painting by the Renaissance master still in a private collection (some 15 others are in museums).

> many art experts argue that Christie’s used marketing window dressing to mask the baggage that comes with the Leonardo, from its compromised condition to its complicated buying history and said that the auction house put the artwork in a contemporary sale to circumvent the scrutiny of old masters experts, many of whom have questioned the painting’s authenticity and condition.

The painting has a volatile sales history, and there's many opinions that it's not an actual Da Vinci. Additionally, it has a lot of flaws that simply make it less valuable, however Christie's marketing has apparently been full-force and managed to fetch this figure. The previous record for an Old Master at auction was allegedly ~$105m taking into account inflation, so this is truly out of left field.

Be that as it may, there are very few Da Vinci paintings in the world, even fewer for sale, and the man's cultural clout is still riding high a decade after Dan Brown's book. Once you're in the rarefied space of having "tres commas", you gotta set yourself apart somehow.

"Some educated 3rd party could research that for you"

Consumer Reports does this.

Donate link is in upper right corner:

https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/index.htm

Here is the direct link, but it looks weird, so I included the other link.

https://donateconsumers.org/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=19...

I think it would be best if it could also get as local as possible. If it's global, even per country, it still can only cover the most popular products i.e. those most advertised.

It appears to be perfect timing for trading in da Vinci, seeing that the biography by Walter Isaacson[0] is a bestseller and likely to be turned into a movie. You'd guess that market liquidity would be greatly increased by this, and liquidity (the ease with which one can find buyers and sellers -- buyers esp in this case) is likely to be a major issue in the art market. And a da Vinci might appeal to bidders who aren't normally involved in the art market.

Walter Isaacson talks about his book and the painting in question, "Salvator Mundi," "the one that's going to be going on sale," in a 50-minute interview with Charlie Rose.[1] The talk of this painting is at 31:45. That's pretty good marketing right there.

The painting itself is mesmerizing, gorgeous, awakening, tremendous.

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34684622-leonardo-da-vin...

[1] https://charlierose.com/videos/31068 (31:45 for talk of "Salvator Mundi")

> liquidity is likely to be a major issue in the art market

How much art is being bought only to park some money (like Chinese rich buying houses in US and Canada, keeping them empty)? They might treat art like bitcoin - as unreproducible proof of work standing in for money.

> How much art

Hard to tell.

Rich people store art in freeports (along with gold bars, like in the Geneva Freeport) to secure their assets while avoiding paying taxes. And from times to times, they lend some of their art pieces to museums in countries where they want to further reduce their taxes.

According to an article in The Economist[1] in 2013: "Because of the confidentiality, the value of goods stashed in freeports is unknowable. It is thought to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and rising."

[1] https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21590353-ever-more-w...

> Marketing

In this case: Painting for sale; of Jesus; by Leonardo da Vinci.

I don't think you can cram more important Western culture into one object.

What is culture but successful marketing though.

I'd more characterize "culture" as "stuff you have to do to stay within polite society". Whether that's marketing, I'm not sure.

You could say that about any communicated idea that gains traction (because of its perceived value) but you're not saying much.

> Marketing wins everywhere. Paintings, IT, open source projects, startups

and politics. Don't forget politics.

In Australia we've got https://www.choice.com.au/ that provide in depth product/service comparisons and also advocate a lot on behalf of consumers with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

They're also independant and I trust that they don't have any ulterior motives.

Well said. It's easy to take all the in-depth information we have available for granted when it comes to tech buying decisions, but once you try to research more traditional products (I was looking for a new fridge the other day) you end up in a sea of worthless search engined optimized and affiliate link-ridden sites disguised as review sites.

User reviews won't work either since most of them have the experience of less than a handful of comparable products, at best, or value completely different attributes - if they aren't fake.

Even communities you'd expect to feature lots of expert knowledge often turn into an echo chamber: Subreddits discussing certain product categories quickly settle for a very limited selection that gets reommended over and over again.

I agree with you. A service that provides guidance and is dependent on the customers' satisfaction, not commissions or other vendor-related incentives, should be very valuable, if not downright necessary.

> I think in the next few years we will see rise of companies that help customers make decent choices that are not solely based on advertising.

I hope for this.

I am concerned that what will actually happen though, is that companies will purport to do this, but the call of making money through ads will be too strong. Either by morphing into a review site where reviews occur not through independent research but because companies sent them their product, or by being one of those companies that supposedly sort of fashion or whatever for you, but presumably get their stock based on deals that are not based on quality or research, but on whatever they can get for cheap.

In the UK we have Which?[1], do you not have something like that in America? It used to be a magazine you subscribed to, but is now mainly online (as far as I remember).

It's a subscription service, I know people who subscribed for a bit when making a lot of purchases, like when they bought their first home.

[1] https://www.which.co.uk/

I guess Wirecutter is the closest thing, although they make money from referrals (not sure if Which do), so that might influence their recommendations.

Which? are a not-for-profit charity, consumer rights advocates as well as doing the reviews. I think the membership is the only income source, so all the reviews are behind a paywall.

More about them here:

https://www.which.co.uk/about-which/who-we-are

I don't think they are in the same market. Say I want to give you $100m. I tell you to buy a painting for $10m, then I buy it from you for $110. $10m cost for money laundering.

I'm not saying that money laundering is the ultimate business. But these paintings are like Bitcoin: they are traded actively by rich people.

The advertising/branding is required to give value to a certain item.

> Marketing wins everywhere

> ... decent choices that are not solely based on advertising

Marketing and advertising are different things. Marketing wins everywhere, that's absolutely true. Advertising helps, if marketing is good to begin with. Advertising a badly marketed product will not save it.

Marketing is framing, positioning, helping customers (future customers, but also present customers) see the value of an offering. Marketing is the CEO's job. Marketing wins everywhere because it is everything.

People already pay Gartner a lot of money for just this.

I personally think the painting is worth more. It's an absolute steal for $450M. I mean, you have all sorts of startups with funky names these days with no profits being valued at hundreds of millions. In contrast, for a truly classic masterpiece of an art, why wouldn't I pay so much?

This is not so much of marketing, but rather the (perceived) value. It's a classic piece of art, it doesn't need any marketing. Not a website, not a .ly domain, not an appstore app. It can sell itself like it has. That's art.

I think this one is fairly priced but something like starry night could probably fetch a billion. Mona Lisa? Probably ten times that without breaking sweat in this environment.