ICASSO'S "Boy With a Pipe (The Young Apprentice)" sold at Sotheby's last week for $104.1 million, setting a record for a painting purchased at auction. But another notable development came with the first lot of the sale, when a 13-year-old boy waged a spirited bidding war for a Degas horse drawing.
The teenager, whose parents asked that his name not be used, eventually lost out — the drawing sold to another bidder for $300,000 — but his participation nonetheless demonstrates his precocious grasp of the market. He is so familiar with the art market, in fact, that his parents (who are also his backers) found it unnecessary to attend: they were at the ballet that night, leaving him in the care of a Sotheby's employee. "He might as well have been an adult next to me," said Peggy Race, Sotheby's director of protocol. "He didn't need my guidance."
For their part, the boy's parents, who live in Midtown Manhattan, take his outing as a matter of course. "He's really more of an old master connoisseur," his mother said, "but he loves Impressionists as well."
These days, the stamp and coin collections of the baby boom childhood seem as quaint as Norman Rockwell. But the acquisitive urge burns as strongly as ever among young collectors, thanks in part to the advent of eBay and to television shows like "Antiques Roadshow," which has 600,000 weekly viewers under age 18. The Internet has many appeals, of course, but few of them compare with the thrill of buying low and selling high.
"We're seeing today that kids are more educated about collecting," said Dan Neary, eBay's director of collectibles.
Collecting may be a wholesome pastime, but it is, unavoidably, also about amassing cold, hard value, and that can present some sticky parenting issues. Leigh Keno, an American antiques dealer and a regular on "Antiques Roadshow," tries, with mixed success, to play down the financial aspects when discussing antiques with his son, Brandon, 6. "Nothing is talked about value," he said, passing down a policy upheld by his own parents, who were antique dealers in Mohawk, N.Y.
Nonetheless, Mr. Keno can't help boasting of Brandon's purchase last summer of a marble board, circa 1850, for his marble collection. "He got a really good deal," Mr. Keno said. "It was walnut or mahogany."
"I think it was maple," Brandon said, gently correcting his father.
"Right, maple," Mr. Keno said.
Brandon said, "It was the first thing I ever used my wallet for. I paid $5."
As with many parent/child collecting teams, it is the adult whose enthusiasm fuels the quest to fill out the collection. While marbles "are suited to a 6-year-old's budget," as Mr. Keno put it, the pièce de résistance of the approximately 130-piece clay, glass and plastic collection is a large 19th-century marble that Mr. Keno bought for $350.
In a daring departure from convention, Mr. Keno's own parents believed that the best way for children to learn to appreciate antiques was to handle them, a lesson he now passes along to Brandon, even when the object in question is a 400 B.C. limestone votive relief bought at auction for $70,000. "People say, `And you let your son handle that without a rug underneath?' " he said.
As the Kenos demonstrate, collecting seems to run in families.
"I think it's in people's genes," said George Wachter, worldwide head of the old masters department at Sotheby's, whose 14-year-old son, Brahm, collects everything from baseball cards to a Rembrandt etching he bought last year at the Maastricht art fair with bar mitzvah money.
"I spotted it and immediately knew that was the kind of thing I wanted," Brahm said of the etching, "The Agony in the Garden." "It was really a stunning piece. You could see the expression on Jesus' face, how passionate it was. It's above my bed."
But when Brahm wakes up in the morning, his sense of accomplishment is not based on the beauty of the etching alone: he persuaded the dealer, David Tunick, to knock several thousand dollars off the price. Brahm said he believes his age disarms dealers, and works to his advantage. "I love to bargain," he said.
