Journal

Giving original art as a gift, and making sure it is genuine

Published 1 November 2026 · Buying & collecting

Original art is one of the few presents that can outlast the person who gives it. It is also one of the few where the giver carries a small, real risk. You are paying for something you cannot fully check, often from someone you have never met, and the person who will live with it is not in the room when you buy it.

Most of what follows applies wherever you buy. The last section is about how it works on Veriroo, including what the platform does and does not do when a piece is a gift.

Before you pay: three things to check

• Who made it, and how do you know? A name on a listing is a claim. Look for something that connects the work to the artist independently of the seller: a certificate, an artist profile with a body of other work, or an examination by somebody with nothing to gain from the sale. What you can check before buying art online goes through the options and what each one is worth.
• What paperwork comes with it? Ask whether there is a certificate of authenticity and who issued it. A certificate from the artist or an independent expert means something. One printed by a reseller about work they did not make means much less. Who can issue a certificate, and when explains the difference.
• If it is a numbered print, how many exist? An edition number is the artist’s word unless something else counts it. The four questions in how to check a limited edition take a minute to ask.

An imperfect answer is not automatically a reason to walk away. Plenty of honest work has thin paperwork, especially from artists early in their careers. It is a reason to pay a price that reflects what you are actually getting.

Where to send it

The instinct with a present is to have it delivered straight to the person. With original art it is usually better to have it delivered to you.

The reason is the window after delivery. Most buyer protection on art, ours included, depends on the buyer looking at the piece soon after it arrives and saying so if something is wrong: damaged in transit, not the piece in the photographs, not the size described. If it goes straight to the recipient and sits wrapped for three weeks, that window can close before anybody has opened the box.

Delivered to you, it can be unpacked, checked against the listing and wrapped again. It is one extra step, and it keeps the protection with the person who paid.

Leave more time than you think you need. An original is usually posted by the seller, often the artist, rather than from a warehouse, and large or framed work needs careful packing and frequently a courier. Ordering in November is comfortable. Ordering in the last week before Christmas is a gamble with somebody else’s present.

The part people forget: the record

When you buy a piece, the paperwork names you, because you are the buyer. That is correct, and it is not what you meant. You meant the piece to be theirs.

For a painting on a wall this sounds like a technicality. It stops being one the day the recipient wants to insure it, lend it, sell it or leave it to somebody. At that point the certificate and the receipt name you, and the recipient has to explain why. If years have passed, or the two of you have lost touch, that can be an awkward conversation or an impossible one.

So when you give a piece, give the record with it. Outside any platform, that means handing over the certificate and the original receipt, ideally with a short signed note saying it was a gift, from whom and on what date. Keep a copy for yourself.

If the record moves through an online system, it will almost certainly involve an email to the recipient. Send it too early and you have announced the present. The simplest rule is to pass the record on when you hand the piece over, not when you buy it.

How we handle it

On Veriroo, buying and giving are two separate steps, and they are kept that way on purpose.

Buying. When you buy an original or a limited edition on the marketplace, your payment is not released to the seller straight away. Once the piece is marked as delivered, you can confirm receipt in your Purchases, or use Report a problem if something is wrong. If you do neither, payment is released automatically 48 hours after delivery. That is the window described above, and it is why we suggest having a gift delivered to you rather than to them. For the rest of the purchase, see buying on Veriroo.

Giving. Once the piece is in your collection, open it, go to Ownership and choose Transfer. Pick Gift as what happened, enter the recipient’s email address and send it. Nothing is charged, and there is no price to enter.

The recipient is emailed as soon as you send it, which is the reason to wait until the day. They accept by signing in, or creating an account, with the address you used. A transfer cannot be accepted from any other account, so a forwarded link does nobody else any good. They can also decline, in which case the piece stays with you, and until they accept you can cancel it.

When they accept, the piece moves to them and the gift is added to its provenance record, so anyone looking later sees an unbroken chain rather than a gap. Any certificate on the piece travels with it at no charge and names them as the current owner. If it has no certificate yet, one can later be issued through an expert verification.

Two details worth knowing. A gift never asks the recipient about a resale royalty, because they are not a buyer: a piece that has already sold once keeps the royalty settled at that sale, and a piece that has never sold carries the question forward to its first real sale. And the person who started a transfer can reverse it afterwards. A reversal is written onto the piece’s history next to the original gift. Nothing is deleted.

Open prints are simpler still. An open print carries no certificate and no ownership record, so there is nothing to transfer: it is simply yours to give. The steps for recording a change of hands in more detail are in recording a sale that happened off Veriroo, and they are the same for a gift, apart from the royalty question.