Advice for agents/dealers who take on commissions:

[ratchet]

Excellent point RS - I have backed off commissions for the most part - and usually only commission artists with great reputations. A deposit makes sense - but 100% up front makes less sense...

[Simplyrob]

Asher and I have started being more selective with our commissions. Our general opinion is that you can only have a certain number of Invincibles and Penguins until it gets tiresome/repetitive. We've started branching out, but, our standing with a number of reps (Bob/Jake/Lan) stands strong as ever. We don't have any issues paying fully up front with those guys because we have great history with them and we respect their artists work. I guess I've been lucky to only of had 1 instance where I paid 100% up front and got burned (6 month wait).

[Royd]

Hmmm, as a collector I've had one bad experience with commissioned work which took 3 years to appear but it did finally get to me However, generally speaking I'm pretty relaxed about timeline expectations as long as the work eventually shows up.

As a dealer, 2 artists (Colin Wilson and Nicola Scott) whose work I handle accept payment after the pieces are completed (Colin does detailed pieces while Nicola does con sketches) while Ardian Syaf (too busy for commission work at present) took half payment up front for his commission requests. Never had an issue.