Trolleys (Colour)

The instinct with any pair like this is that colour beats black and white, and here the edition sizes say otherwise.

The signed colour edition is reported at 750 against 150 for the signed black and white, which is five times the supply into the same pool of demand. Scarcity is doing more work than palette. That does not make the colour print a poor thing to own — it is the more available of the two and the one most people encounter — but a valuation that assumes colour commands a premium starts from the wrong place.

Saleroom catalogue descriptions for this release consistently show pencil numbering out of 750 along the bottom edge, with the publisher's blind stamp and a pencil signature.

That line is where the print is identified, and it is also what framing most often hides. Photograph the full sheet with all four margins rather than a crop of the image, get the numbering and signature close enough to read, and light the blind stamp from the side so it shows. Artist's proofs and any proof marking sit outside the main run and are priced separately.

Large flat areas of screened colour are unforgiving in a way a black and white sheet is not. Fading from display is the one that catches owners out, because it happens slowly on their own wall and is only obvious beside a good impression — and it cannot be reversed.

Handling creases across a flat field, tape and hinge staining in the margins, mount burn and trimming all read straight through to the estimate. None of it is unusual on a print of this age, and a paper conservator can address some of it; trimming and fading are the two that cannot be undone.

The colour Trolleys appears at auction regularly enough that comparable results are genuinely available, which is not true of every print in this catalogue — that is an advantage, because a figure can be argued from evidence rather than estimated.

It also means the sheet is compared directly against other impressions of the same edition, so condition is priced sharply.