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Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Top Tick: Vanishing Valuations in the Contemporary Art Market

Top Tick: Vanishing Valuations in the Contemporary Art Market

Paperback

Business GeneralInvesting & FinanceBusiness of Art

Publisher Price: $16.99

ISBN10: 1038352983
ISBN13: 9781038352989
Publisher: FriesenPress
Published: Oct 27 2025
Pages: 108
Weight: 0.45
Height: 0.29 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
The art world loves a spectacle. But at what cost?

In Top Tick, art collector and former finance professional David Birkenshaw pulls back the velvet curtain on contemporary art's high-stakes circus, where branding often matters more than brushwork. Blending personal insight with auction data, he reveals a volatile marketplace in which only the top 1 percent of brand-name artists (think Warhol, Hirst, or Basquiat) hold their value, while the rest quietly vanish from gallery walls-and balance sheets.

From multimillion-dollar bananas to crypto-funded publicity stunts, Top Tick explores how hype, wealth signaling, and fashion routinely outpace artistic merit. This isn't a takedown of contemporary art. Rather, it's a clear-eyed look at how it's traded, flaunted, and forgotten. A cautionary tale disguised as market analysis, Top Tick is essential reading for anyone who still believes investment-grade art is anything but an oxymoron.

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Investing & Finance