Scott Reyburn’s New York Times column focuses on the online market keying off Hiscox’s recent report. But there may be something else going on here that’s a product of increased online access but not necessarily a measure of it. That is, there seems to be a surge taking place in the print and multiple market.

Picasso’s ceramics are everywhere and selling out everywhere they sell. The growth of low-margin feeder services like Invaluable, eBay and Artsy seems to be contributing to access and exposure. Sotheby’s and Phillips saw strong print sales last month but not a dramatic rise in overall volume beyond the previous range of sale totals.

Here’s Reyburn on the phenomena:

One such print sale, Phillips’s Editions auction in New York last month, raised $6.2 million, the most ever by the company in this category. Eighty-eight percent of the lots found buyers, with 35 percent going to online purchasers. More than half of those internet buyers were using Phillips’s own online channel, with the remainder bidding through intermediaries such as Artsy, Invaluable and eBay, said Andy Foster, the auction house’s deputy chief of staff.

Instead, there seem to be an increasing number of venues offering prints to the same pool of buyers who access the sales through the aggregators, Artsy, eBay and Invaluable. Or the pool of buyers is growing through those aggregators. Word in the industry is that some of those vendors are increasing their efforts and to meet demand.

The Art Market Is Still Waiting for an Online Revolution (The New York Times)