What’s the real price for a hot artist’s work these days? It may not actually be the gallery’s stated price but double that—the reason being that if you truly want a work by that artist, you’ll have to buy two of them. You’ll only get to keep one, though. And if that doesn’t make sense, welcome to the pressure cooker that is the contemporary art market. There’s an acronym for this: BOGO, which stands for ‘buy one, gift one,’ although in actuality the collector is buying two artworks. It’s just that one of them will be, via an agreement brokered by the art dealer, donated to a museum.

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In theory, and perhaps in fact, the art buying BOGO is a win-win-win-win scheme, as the artist benefits from two sales and gains the prestige of having artwork in the collection of a museum; the dealer gets to sell two pieces for the effort of selling just the one; the museum gets an artwork it might not have the budget to buy outright; and the collector gets an artwork by an in-demand artist plus a tax break.

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BOGO is the most recent incarnation of the gallery waiting list, wherein people interested in purchasing a work by a much sought-after talent would be allowed to buy their way up the queue, proving their loyalty to the gallery in the hope of eventually being at the top of the list. It was an exercise in patience that could take years to pay off, while BOGO is right now. There can be such a large swarm of prospective buyers competing for a limited number of artworks by a particular artist that those who are willing to buy two and part with one of them gain an advantage. “I may have three hundred requests for twelve works,” New York gallery owner Marianne Boesky told Observer. “Part of my job is to be a........

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