Quoted €350 for a shadowbox I build from salvaged stuff, buyer sold the piece for €1,100 a month later
Built a shadowbox for a guy last spring using his late father's things. Old army patches, a ration book, a pair of worn gloves. He gave me a box of the stuff and said do whatever felt right. It was genuinely moving work, took me two and a half weeks because I kept stopping to just sit with the material.
I quoted €350. He didn't even blink. That should've been my first sign.
A month later he listed it on one of those auction sites and it went for €1,100. I only know because a friend sent me the listing. Same box, my signature on the back, photographed badly in his kitchen.
I'm not even mad, exactly. More embarrassed at myself. The materials were basically free, sure. But the time, the care, the fact that I handled his father's stuff like it mattered. That had a price and I picked the wrong one. He didn't do anything wrong really, he priced the piece at what it was. I just undervalued it first.
Still haven't figured out what the lesson is supposed to be. Charge more? Charge less and get out of the resale game entirely? Both feel true. Neither feels like a plan.
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ngl the pricing thing is real but also... he didn't buy it from you, he commissioned you to build it with his dead dad's stuff. that's a different transaction. he paid for the labor and you priced the labor. the €1,100 is what the market put on the sentiment of the object, not the craft, and he was the one holding that inventory.
that's not to say you couldn't have charged more. €350 for 2.5 weeks is honestly painful and you know that. but the lesson isn't "he scammed me," it's that you priced your time like a freelancer instead of like an artist with a signature on the back. next time you build something that personal, charge like you know who's signing it.
That distinction is fair, and I think it's the crux of it. He commissioned labor, but the signature on the back turned it into something else the moment it left his kitchen. That's the part I keep circling.
But I don't fully buy that sentiment is the whole premium either. A stranger bidding €1,100 on a shadowbox of someone else's father, they're not buying the grief, they're buying the thing the grief was turned into. Which is the craft, whether they know it or not. That's why your point about pricing like an artist and not a freelancer lands. The labor was always the smaller half of the value.
The uncomfortable bit is that this is exactly what printmakers live with, multiplied. Edition of ten, someone flips one for six times my price, and technically nothing was stolen. But it teaches you pretty fast who actually holds the value in the exchange. I don't think there's a clean answer, just a better contract next time.
yeah, that's the loop I keep getting stuck on. he paid for the making of it, sure. but the thing that made it worth €1,100 left his kitchen with my name on the back and his story buried in it. those two things don't cleanly separate.
and you're right that a stranger isn't buying the grief. they're buying what the grief got turned into, which is exactly the part I priced for €350. I basically invoiced him for my hours and gave away the rest for free.
the frustrating bit is I'd probably do it again. somebody hands you a box of their dead father's gloves and you price the labor and call it a day. it's the human thing to do. then the human thing costs you €750.
you know what, you're not wrong. it did feel different with his dad's stuff in it, that's part of why I undersold it. I kept thinking this is somebody's grief, keep the price human.
the €1,100 being mostly about the sentiment thing stings more than the money honestly. like the craft got outbid by the story. which I should be used to by now, that's the whole game.
but yeah. "priced your time like a freelancer" is the part I'm chewing on. I always do that. I don't know how to price the signature, I just know €350 for two and a half weeks of sitting with a stranger's dead father is not it.