The topic of this column has been one that I have written about extensively over the years. Usually the topic comes to my attention when I watch YouTube videos of young couples talking about making their first art purchases. The narrative usually entails one or both talking about how they purchased a Salvador Dali or Marc Chagall limited-edition signed print. This spurred them on to collect more and more, and now they are committed buyers. I cringe at these stories. The book The Great Dali Art Fraud and Other Deceptions by Lee Cattrall does a masterful job of exposing the deceptive advertising around many of the prints by modern masters being sold. It is a book worth reading if only to make you wince and shudder a few dozen times at the nature of the frauds that are outlined on the pages. Buying art is intimidating, and I would be remiss in not addressing that right up front. Budding collectors are often accosted by overtly enthusiastic salespeople who are busy trying to make the sale rather than educating the buyer. Buying art does take time and an investment in building your individual eye to identify pieces that you like and are also of quality. To me, the toughest part about buying art is suspending your knowledge of an artist in order to make an assessment. People will know to look for a given artist, and when they find a painting by them, they will mentally whoop with joy about the discovery. Look, its a Walter Emerson Baum, or, Heyits a Victor Shearer. That discovery of a work by named artists can then blind your ability to understand the quality of the work. In particular, I call out Walter Emerson Baum (Bucks County School painter) and Victor Shearer (Reading, Pa., painter), whose respective volumes of work are substantial and sadly the consistent quality of the works is often lacking. To be blunt, when they were good, they were very good, and when they were having a bad day, their paintings were lacking. Thus all Baums or Shearers are not equal. Buying one just because of the signature is to risk getting a work that is not a beauty to behold. One of the toughest tests of any budding art collector is to purchase an unsigned painting solely on the basis of the quality of the work. This requires one to really hone your eye and test your resolve that what you see in the work, albeit being unsigned, is worthy of bringing home. I would encourage every budding art collector to find such a work. Analyze it, study it, acknowledge its strengths and weaknesses, and then buy it! Hanging in our dining room is a massive painting of a stream with a snow scene. The painting came from an auction run by my old friend Ted Wiederseim. The quality of the brushwork is magnificent, the scale of the painting is substantial and the composition is well balanced, but it is completely unsigned. I gambled on the work because I saw a painting of quality. It looked to be of the Bucks County School style in terms of its brushwork and subject matter, but it was unsigned. I pulled the trigger at the auction and bought it for less than I had thought it would sell for. The reason it was not a big seller was the absence of a signature. Did that make the painting less good? Not at all. It will hang in our dining room for a very long time as a great landscape by that incredibly talented and prolific artist, anonymous. Born to collect should be the motto of Peter Seiberts family. Raised in Central Pennsylvania, Seibert has been collecting and writing about antiques for more than three decades. By day, he is a museum director and has worked in Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Virginia and New Mexico. In addition, he advises and consults with auction houses throughout the Mid-Atlantic region, particularly about American furniture and decorative arts. Seiberts writings include books on photography, American fraternal societies and paintings. He and his family are restoring a 1905 arts and crafts house filled with years worth of antique treasures found in shops, co-ops and at auctions.