The beauty of art is generally meant to be enjoyed and displayed, and some of the greatest pieces commissioned pieces were created for actual use rather than as an investment. That said, investing in fine art within collectibles can come with prices as high as an imagination will allow. There is a line that can become easily blurred when discussing fine art and antiques at the same time.

Fine art is generally created by known artists, and antiques are generally considered to be 100 years old or more. These generalities and terms are often bastardized when it comes to real world buying and selling. Still, when it comes to collectibles it is true that antiques, vintage goods, fine art and even unnamed art may all be sought out by collectors.

How do antique Russian and Eastern European religious icons fit into the mix of collectibles and as investments?

Collectors Dashboard was created to make the field of collectibles more transparent, allowing buyers and sellers to have more facts other than just “the most recent sale price” as a reference. The world has been forced to accept that collectibles have undeniably matured into an alternative asset class. And to prove the point, there are investors who are solely looking to make a profit who may have no feelings about the asset they purchased. Those investors are also competing for the exact same assets as collectors who may have a deep passion to own and display that exact same item.

Religious Icons definitely fall into the “blurred line” categories of fine art and antiques. These paintings may be representation of Jesus, May, or a saint. The origin is generally Russian or Byzantine, but they may have been produced in other areas as well. Most icons owned by individuals will be from the 1700s into the early 1900s, but there are of course older examples.

Collectors of icons know that the prices can see wild price variations. And due to their location, even currency risks arise. As for transparency and liquidity, two very similar icons on different venues or in different stores may sell at prices that would seem to be night and day. Two painted wood icons of Mary and the baby Jesus with very similar silver covers from the same region and relatively same time period could sell for $1,000 or less at one venue and over $10,000 on another venue, and that does not even imply that there is an arbitrage opportunity.

Another issue is that buyers and sellers rarely know of similar sales at all outside of the major auction houses or away from the top few sellers. They also have little to now knowledge of what those price realizations are either. More details on pricing can be found below.

As for scarcity, there is an unknown number of examples of icons that have been sold over the last several centuries. How many survived war, natural disasters, accidents and fires is unknown. Many icons exist in churches and religious settings. There are countless numbers of icons that are in homes throughout Europe, the United States and elsewhere. And there is no central database of all icons for antique stores and buyers and sellers to track.

Another issue that can be less than scientific is the authentication process of icons. Some icons have very detailed origins and can be identified to certain periods and geographies, or even specific makers, which would also offer some suggestions or specifics about how they were used. There are other icons which may be modern reproductions offered by artists and sellers on eBay, Etsy, and elsewhere. There is also a countless number of icons that have been sold to unsuspecting treasure-hunt buyers which are outright fakes that look and feel exactly like icons of the 1600s to 1800s but were made in modern times.

The line between collecting and investing true icons which are true antiques and were created for religious use is also blurred in pricing. One antique store may have sold an icon in the 1980s to a buyer for $2,000 but the same exact icon may have ended up in an estate sale 30 years later and sold by the heirs for less than $100. That same icon may pass through several hands and ultimately sell through a dealer or specialist for the same $2,000 in a period of months or years — or maybe it was really worth more than $10,000 in proper auction settings.

Heritage Auctions has sold many icons over the last decade. While the sales prices are all over the place, the more expensive ornate icons are the ones which command the highest prices. Heritage sold a large Russian icon that it dubbed as Images of the Mother of God, containing well over 100 individual portrait images in 2009. That was from the late 18th century and auctioned for $11,950.00. Another Russian icon of Christ Pantocrator from 1892 noting an assay mark of Anatoli Apollonivich Artisibashev sold in the same auction for $10,157.50.

While those two Heritage prices were on very specific icons that would stand out, that is not the norm. In the last decade Heritage has had other icons sell for under $1,000 and the rest generally between $1,000 and $2,000 each.

The Kovels’ price guide for antiques and collectibles also listed many sales. Their books recorded many icon sales under $1,000 in 2020 and many other icon sales in 2021 for under $1,000 as well. Still, both years saw sales listed in the $2,000 to $6,600 range.

Sotheby’s has also sold many Russian and Eastern European icons over the last decade. The difference there is that many of their sales have been in the tens-of thousands of dollars as they are dated as far back as the 16th century and 15th century. Sotheby’s also sold a rare Russian calendar icon of the full year dating to the early 19th century for a sum of $204,000 back in April of 2007, but that was also a rather large icon measuring 63″ x 48.5″ (inches).

The website called The Russian Store (russianstore.com) also tracked the 100 highest sale prices from Sotheby’s in London and New York and noted that the high point of Russian antiques was 2007 to 2009. The site also went on to note that the top 80% of top sales had been in the last four years with price ranges as low as $20,000 and just over $500,000. The site also noted that a Faberge icon, with only about 150 different examples ever created, sold for $780,200 in 2007 and that it was on display at the Faberge Museum in St. Petersburg.

And for the icon market for the masses, even eBay has its role in icon sales. The term Russian Icon and ordered in highest price to lowest price has many icons for sale in the $10,000 to $30,000 range, most with “or Best Offer” included. Of the sold listings in 2021, eBay lists most of those from $1,000 to $3,000 per icon but these also contained the “or Best Offer” so the exact sales prices may be different. Some of those are also located internationally, which may alter the price in taxes and duties.

The market for the Russian and Eastern European icons is definitely far from finite. The value can be derived from specific markings and what the use was and where it was used, but with all such pieces it is imperative that collectors know the provenance of what they are buying. It is also important to know that icon sales, like many antique sales, go through very weak periods and the transparency and liquidity for a real “market” just does not seem to be there compared to other aspects within art and other specific antiques within collectibles as an alternative asset class.

After tallying up scarcity, supply and demand, transparency, liquidity, and even considering that currency valuations may play a role due to their locations, the people who buy Russian and Eastern European icons are more likely buying these for their beauty or for use rather than using funds that could have just as easily been used to buy stocks, bonds, or real estate (and other more liquid collectibles).