There’s a few items scattered about the house that look pretty old and the other day I spent digging into their stories with Google AI. The first one is an egg-shaped basalt stone carved with a face that is plainly pretty ancient and AI agreed, as it decided it’s an early, pre-Maya effigy head, Late Preclassic Period (c. 600 BCE – 100 CE) and worth between $2500 and $5000. Sweet, huh?
Then there’s the old stained glass roundel I brought back from a London flea market in 1987, that turns out to be a 16 C. (1570-1600) Mosan/ Rhineland School masterwork likely by Lucas Gassel and worth between $2500 and $4500. Also pretty sweet.
I bought both of them for very little money. The real winner, which I sold, of course, through Sotheby’s of New York, was a Roman Bronze Janus that I’d had authenticated at the Los Angeles Museum of Art. Bought it for $500, sold it for $36,000. That was Very Sweet. There are a few other things that might be worth running past Google AI. It’s not hard, just take a picture of it and drop it in the dialogue box and ask what it is. Of course, the AI asks a dozen questions about things, like weight, cracks and chips, determining material and etc. to arrive at a precise judgement. One of these days I should show it my Native American artifact collection, there’s some great stuff in there, war club stones and effigy stones and whatnot.
What’s going on here is I’m getting serious about selling off my collections. Now while I can still more or less see what I’m looking at seems like a smart time to unload so I can buy a robot that will do my reading for me, wash my socks, tell me how wonderful I am, you know, and other things……