Very Little Helps

By 2008 the print output was changing: editions were sized less conventionally, releases were less frequent, and the secondary market that now surrounds these works was already forming.

Very Little Helps belongs to that later group, and it matters for provenance. Prints from 2008 onward were bought by people who already understood them as collectable, so documentation tends to be better and condition tends to be better than on the 2003 group — which is worth knowing, because it raises what the market expects of a given sheet.

The reported run of 299 is an odd number by the standards of the catalogue and sits between the scarce 150s and the large 500s.

Practically it means moderate supply: comparable results exist but are not abundant, and a single strong or weak sale has more influence on the apparent level than it would on a 500-run print. When valuing one, look at several results across a period rather than the most recent one.

The supermarket recurs through the output — the value soup can, the flag here — and the joke is specifically British, about a particular retailer and a particular slogan.

As with Soup Can, that has a bearing on where a work sells best. The image reads most sharply to a UK audience, and choosing a saleroom is partly a question of where the joke lands.