Gouache and ink on Illustration board. Page 8 and page 67

I’m in the process of preparing to start my collection with a couple of 18th and 19th century pieces. This will be my first time purchasing anything that old.

I wanted to know if there were any recommendations as to what to look for condition wise on these pieces and what I should be asking these auction houses before the sale?

These will mostly be oil on canvas/board and some watercolor.

Several pieces mention craquelure, inpaint, or relined.

Also the process of getting these works either restored or preserved properly?

TIA!

29.7 × 42.0 cm

Charcoal and graphite on coffee-toned vellum

If you'd like to purchase this piece or commission me for a custom art, simply send me a DM.

The auctioneer is Eldreds. They use the Invaluable platform. I have bid on invaluable when they have had auctions in the past and I have sometimes also bid directly on their own site that uses the invaluable platform.
On today’s auction, I bid on a lot where the opening bid was 400$. Soon enough opening bid was reduced to 300$. I immediately placed a bid for 300. I didn’t see any others who countered this bid. The next message I see, a few seconds later, is “sold” but I wasn’t the winner. I saw no other bid that I could counter.
I called up Eldreds and asked them what happened. They said that the lot was closed soon after I bid and didn’t know why. I told them there was no way I could push the bid $325 to go higher (this wasn’t an option) and the lot just closed.
They called up invaluable. I asked them to open this lot again and let the bidding continue but they said they couldn’t do that.

This whole thing looked really weird… have you encountered this before !? Why would invaluable close the lot so fast ? Doesn’t seem right..

Thoughts on condition?

I need help finding a star that I want to get tattooed. It looks similar to the one in the photo but it was definitely black and white and possibly looked like a it was a drawn piece. I remember it being “Seko’s” (an indie band) logo? or just a piece they used consistently. I know it’s either them or some other band genre adjacent. It may have gotten copyrighted and maybe that’s why they had to remove it from their music and brand. I scoured their @s and tags on instagram, it seems to have been removed entirely.