What should a certificate of authenticity say

The art market can seem like an overwhelming place for many artists. As a creative person, marketing, strategy, and professional profitability may be foreign to you, but there are a couple of things you need to introduce to your business in order to advertise yourself as a professional individual.

This document should come with every single piece of artwork you create. It also contributes to the level of trust in your relationship with your customers and helps you stand out in the art market. For artists, buyers, and collectors, certificates of authenticity are vital to ensuring the value and legitimacy of artwork. CoAs also enable artists and collectors to protect themselves against fraudulent artwork.

A certificate of authenticity is basically a professional sales receipt, it is a document used as authentication for a piece of artwork. Certificates of authenticity can be problematic; some are basically worthless and others even fraudulent. Unfortunately, many people believe that art with a COA is automatically genuine, but that is absolutely not the case. To begin with, no laws govern who is or is not qualified to write certificates of authenticity except in rare instances.

Nor is there any standard with respect to what types of statements, information or documentation a COA must include. In other words, anyone can write a COA whether they're qualified to or not. As if that's not bad enough, unscrupulous sellers sometimes forge official looking documents or certificates of authenticity and use them to either sell outright fakes or to misrepresent existing works of art as being more important or valuable than they actually are.

These days, anyone can buy attractive COA templates online and simply fill in the blanks. To make matters even worse, meaningless or bogus COAs have been issued for decades, so don't automatically assume that a COA dated , for example, is genuine just because it's old. Your particular situation does not sound good because the seller says the art has certificates of authenticity, but has not yet shown or sent them. At this point, trying to get your money back is probably the wisest course of action.

To repeat-- from now on, make sure you see all information and documentation a seller claims to have BEFORE buying the art. Keep in mind that if a work of art supposedly comes with a certificate of authenticity, not only should you be able to inspect it in its entirety ahead of time and read and review and corroborate that it's actually valid, but it should also accompany the art when you receive it. Never simply accept a seller's promises or claims as true without first seeing the evidence and verifying it.

Certificates of authenticity show collectors that you went to the trouble of filling out a certificate of authenticity form, and that you believe that your work is valuable, which is key when convincing someone to spend a lot of money on a piece of art!

This guide will walk you through where to get a certificate of authenticity and what you need to include on your COA certificate.

These details guarantee of a certain level of quality, and proves that the product is what it is being sold as. A certificate of authenticity for artwork is a document that should accompany every artwork you create, whether or not it sells. This is particularly important with higher-profile artists, but providing certificates of authenticity to your buyers is the quickest way to indicate that your work is worth investing in, and that you believe it could be worth a lot of money one day.

A COA certificate proves that a work of art was created by you, which could be important in determining the provenance and relative value of the work should it be sold later on, particularly if you become well-known and valued in the art market. Each certificate of authenticity can also act as a receipt and record of sale for you and the buyer. You never know when you might find success, and things can start to move really quickly when that happens. Save yourself the future overwhelm by setting up your COA certificate process now.

Plus, certificates of authenticity can actually make artworks easier to sell, especially in auction or gallery settings. Serious art collectors will require any work they purchase to include a certificate of authenticity in order to prove provenance should they choose to sell the work on or donate it in the future. If the collector purchases the work directly from the artist, an invoice can also serve as proof of the origin of the piece, but a certificate of authenticity is still the most highly regarded and accepted way to verify an artwork.

If you are represented by a gallery, your artwork may be sold directly through the gallery, meaning any certificates of authenticity should accompany the work when it is first installed. If you want a high-quality document, a certificate of authenticity template may be the way to go. As such, it has a market of buyers and sellers, but it is the certificate of authenticity or COA that represents the most important aspect of the circulation of artworks today.

Over the last century in particular, the certificates have allowed the works of art to be positioned as branded products, serving as their deeds, legal statements and fiscal invoices. However, as art itself shifted and developed, the certificate of authenticity has too, giving way to a bountiful of forgeries in order to increase the sales.

For any product we buy in general, we need some sort of document to prove its provenance, quality guarantee, the brand or an individual that produced it. The certificate of authenticity for an artwork is a document that contains these facts and it is essential for all sides of the trade.

COA is created by the artist, or someone who is an expert of their oeuvre, to help the collectors prove it is genuine and verify its quality. In the world of fine art, a piece accompanied by a certificate of authenticity is one that is made by a professional, practicing art-maker, making a clear distinction from amateur work and attributing a potential collectable value to it.

Simply put, the certificate provides credibility and it could be considered a promise that the piece in question is made of proper materials and is meant to last long in the hands of its new owner. Legally speaking, it declares the author as indisputable and protects them from fraud and copyright infringement on an international level. A certificate of authenticity is usually provided at the time of sale, no matter whether it is bought from the artists themselves , other collectors or art institutions such as galleries, museums, institutes.

It serves as the only reliable sales receipt, and not only should it be present along with the piece - it should also be complete and contain all the information to describe the work in question. Without these two factors, many frauds find space to create their own, fake COA, particularly when it comes to online art market.

A valid certificate of authenticity in art comprises of specific details about an artwork.