Choose Your Weapon

Choose Your Weapon was released across a large number of colourways, and unlike most of the catalogue the editions differ substantially in size between them — some runs are very small indeed.

The consequence is blunt: no figure can be given for this image without knowing the colourway, and the range between the most and least available is wide. This is the print where valuing from a photograph of the picture is most likely to produce a number that is wrong by a large multiple in either direction.

The dog is Keith Haring's barking dog, one of the most recognisable motifs in twentieth-century street art, walked here by a hooded figure.

That places the print in the same appropriation strand as the Warhol images, and it widens the audience in the same way: buyers who collect Haring are plausible buyers for this, which is a route consideration as much as a valuation one. The reference is affectionate rather than satirical, which is not always true of the artist's borrowings.

By 2010 the print market was fully formed and buyers were collectors from the outset, so documentation on this image is usually good and the market expects it.

A Choose Your Weapon without its paperwork raises questions that the same absence would not raise on a 2003 print, simply because there is less excuse for it. Locate the certificate and the original purchase record before offering one anywhere.