The following example can be used to show how the argument works in a non-probabilistic context (Hansson 1993): A certain stamp-collector has cyclic preferences with respect to three stamps, denoted A, B, and C.
A gallery, the argument goes, can nurture an emerging artist's career and place his or her work with certain collectors; an auction house is interested only in maximising profit.
Certain collectors, like Evie Gay, had only to make a short drive from nearby Keswick to check out the more approachably estimated items in the sale, like the majolica plates lining a cabinet in Ms. Kluge's "country style" kitchen.
"Because of the buzz of them being painted out, he knew that certain collectors would want to own them, and that's why he went back to the studio to make them as paintings, which were then quickly sold off".
He is compelled to spell out why certain collectors must possess every piece of Fiestaware, as if the allegory weren't obvious enough: they need to feel whole, and he does too.
That scheme involves the sale and resale of some priceless rare stamps (the "nine queens") that certain collectors are pursuing as avidly as if they were the Maltese Falcon.
And while certain collectors may sniff, many of these limited-edition lines, because of their calculated sense of urgency, have not only prompted stampedes despite the struggling economy but have also held or exceeded their original value even years after their introduction.
("See it in Venice, buy it in Basel," goes the refrain; for a certain class of collector, the fair and the biennial are one and the same).
"Sometimes it's a way of interpreting a painting," he says, "and Picasso is now seen as an Old Master". If the ornate frame has become a must-have for a certain kind of collector, framelessness is often seen as the natural state for contemporary art.
