Selling Paintings Found At Estate Sale

[calstone]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Texas

I live near a small retirement community and often find amateur art (paintings) at estate sales, in 2nd hand shops, etc. Some of the paintings are quite beautiful and if offered to a larger market would possibly sell for quite a bit more than is being asked at these venues. Are there any legal issues I should be concerned about if I decide to purchase and resell these paintings on ebay or some other online marketplace? I'm pretty sure that making copies of the painting to sell (like prints or posters) could be copyright infringement, but wasn't sure about selling the actual work of art outright.

 

[quincy]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Texas

I live near a small retirement community and often find amateur art (paintings) at estate sales, in 2nd hand shops, etc. Some of the paintings are quite beautiful and if offered to a larger market would possibly sell for quite a bit more than is being asked at these venues. Are there any legal issues I should be concerned about if I decide to purchase and resell these paintings on ebay or some other online marketplace? I'm pretty sure that making copies of the painting to sell (like prints or posters) could be copyright infringement, but wasn't sure about selling the actual work of art outright.

If you legally purchase artwork, you can legally re-sell that artwork.

The resale of copyrighted works falls under the Copyright Act's "first sale doctrine."

What you cannot do with the work that you purchase is make copies of the artwork (unless the work is in the public domain). To make copies of copyrighted works, as you thought, would be copyright infringement.

 

[OHRoadwarrior]

Now that you are clear on the law, I wish you the acquisition of a Van Gogh for $100.

 

[LdiJ]

Now that you are clear on the law, I wish you the acquisition of a Van Gogh for $100.

I wish ALL of us the acquisition of a Van Gogh for $100.00...LOL

 

[quincy]

Now that you are clear on the law, I wish you the acquisition of a Van Gogh for $100.

Oh. The discovery of a Van Gogh could potentially cause problems for calstone.

With a Van Gogh, the copyright issue changes because the Van Gogh would be in the public domain. Copies could be made of the painting and that could be nice.

But, also changing could be clear ownership rights in the work.

Because the Van Gogh is likely to be quite valuable, a fight is likely to be waged over who owns it, this even if calstone has legally purchased the painting at, say, an estate sale.

There have been other threads in the past that have gone into what can happen if you discover valuable works of art for sale at garage sales but, since calstone is talking about amateur artwork and is unlikely to find a Van Gogh, I won't try to locate these. If interested, others might want to do a forum search.

 

[OHRoadwarrior]

I liked the original copy of the Declaration of Independence from Goodwill myself.

 

[quincy]

I liked the original copy of the Declaration of Independence from Goodwill myself.

Spending $4 for the Declaration of Independence and finding it worth $2.42 million was probably a pretty nice feeling, huh?