Art Appraising and it's Lunacy

Hey Steve,
Yamet Arts. Inc is one of the most reputable art dealers in the business. I should know better than you, seeing that I am an art dealer myself and have been dealing with Yamet Arts for almost twenty years, which is only a fraction of the time they've been around.
If you really knew anything about the art world, you'd know that every so often, fakes are clandestinely introduced into circulation and are able to avoid detection by even some of the most experienced eyes. The same goes for any collection commodity: have you seen the Antiques Road Show?
Reckless comments like yours serve only to blacklist honest people, which is what Joe McCarthy did in the 1950s. Please use the internet responsibly.

If you search around on the web you will find various stories of Yamet Arts, some good, many bad. I remember Yamet from art dealing days as a source to be carefully examined (especially concerning Picasso, Chagall and Dali). They usually made good when proven wrong, but you had to prove them wrong. This thread was started in 2004, but the truth for any time is for the buyer to beware.

I've found this conversation very helpful - even stuff that was posted in 2004, 6 years ago!

I too got caught up in a Picasso scam involving Yamet Arts. A woman named Rose Long who presented herself as an art dealer/appraiser from Memphis, TN was here in New York and she sold me a Picasso litho (don Quixote) for $4,500, which she said was an original numbered Picasso. However, when she delivered it, I noticed it wasn't numbered. I asked her about that and she said "oh, that doesn't mean anything"!

Not knowing much about art, I didn't think much of it until a few months later my girlfriend said, "hey, how come that's not numbered!? And where's the certificate of authenticity!"

So I called Rose and asked about the CoA and she said she'd send me one. Well, what she sent was a fax from 1971 from Yamet Arts simply stating that they had "the following Picassos in stock"! Then it listed several Picassos. That told me nothing! How was that a certificate of authenticty?

So now I started to get mad. I called her up and said "how is this a certificate of authenticity - it's merely a statement of inventory - from 1971!" She went through some long convoluted explanation and then said, "hey, if you don't feel comfortable with it or if you feel like I'm in some way lying to you or cheating you, then you can always return it."

Well, being the sucker that I am I decided that Mrs. Long (wife of Memphis attorney Mike Long), must be telling the truth so I said, "no, no problem, don't worry about it."

Well, a few years later my girlfriend said, "Why don't we take that to Sotheby's and get them to give you an appraisal." I had no idea you could even do that! But that's what we did. When the appraiser walked out and saw it she immediately began shaking her head as if to say "that's worthless"!

She walked over, took a look and said, "$300". Which is basically her way of saying, "worthless." I think the frame was probably worth $200 of that!

Anyway, I got scammed by Rose Long on this Picasso, using a 1971 fax from Yamet Arts. I don't think Yamet had anything to do with this, but a search on Yamet turns up a lot of stories of involvement in scams.

Oh, I keep meaning to finish a website I put up about Rose Long and this art scam, Edit [Moderator]: Link removed. I want to copy all the unbelievable emails I got from her husband Mike Long, as well as a copy of the Yamet supposed "certificate of authenticity."

I hear you. I was left a picasso of a bullfight in black and white. I have emailed pictures to all of the auction houses in NYC and have not had a reply. I guess they are busy and I should expect the wait, but perhaps you should try the same thing. The houses are Christie's and Sotheby's.

Grucci, this is an old thread, but some of us will still see it. Portal Star hasn't posted in years, unless she changed her user name.

I'm posting to let you know about that, but also because maybe it'll bump the thread up so that one of our posters who knows about this stuff might notice it.