What is it Worth?

What is my Donald Art Company print worth? The value of DAC art prints depends mostly on who the Artist is, rather than the publisher.

Keep in mind that litho prints were mass produced in large quantities, and in most cases were intended to be sold cheap. And Donald Art Company was not the only one doing this. During the 60's, 70's and 80's there were quite a few art print companies who sold millions (billions, more likely!) of prints at very low prices. Most of those prints will have little value, but if the artist is popular and their prints are in demand by collectors, then they might sell for a bit more than the average.

If there's a collector-following for a particular artist, it makes all the difference in value. Some artists are persistently popular and therefore their prints are "collectible." But even then, the value is relative to how much the collectors are willing to pay. 

Examples of a few artists I know of who are popular: 
-- Big Eye artists such as Gig, Eden, K Chin.  
-- Florence Kroger painted babies, pets, religious themes.
-- Leonard Weisgard, Mother Goose. (Penn Prints)
-- Warner Sallman, religious (Kriebel & Bates, Warner Press)
-- Heinrich Hofmann, religious (various art publishers.)
-- Norman Rockwell (Donald Art Co and many others.)  

Artists were published by more than one art print company, too. I noticed that Penn Prints had two Florence Kroger religious images in their catalog which were also offered by Donald Art Company. 

And, there were the Great Art Masterpieces, which was a collection put together by Shorewood Color Reproductions and offered to art publishers so they could expand their catalog to include the old european masters. Penn Prints and Donald Art Company offered many of the same classic images in their catalogs and I suspect that these were part of the Shorewood Collection. (Shorewood prints may have been imported from Europe. I haven't been able to learn much about them.) 

Improvements in photography and printing technology in the 1950's made it possible for Art Publishers to provide fabulous, beautiful art prints at very low cost. By the 1960's, mass produced litho prints were nearly as common as sand on the seashore. 

So, how can you determine if your DAC, NY art print is worth anything? 

• -- You should do research on the Artist. If your Artist seems to be well known and popular, then the art print might have some value.
• -- You can search auctions sites such as ebay to find pictures by that same artist. Be sure to search COMPLETED listings so you know what the picture actually SOLD for (not what the seller is asking for it.)   
• -- Keep in mind that an Appraised Value is different from Market Value. What an item is selling for on internet sites is an example of "Market Value." In the current economy the market value of most collectible items has dropped. Appraised value of an art print might be more (or less) than the Market Value. Appraised Value takes other factors into account. 
• -- The SIZE of the print is a factor. Buyers are rarely interested in prints that are smaller than 8.5 x 11.