Even more so when there are art galleries and art sellers in game. Would be cool too see pieces cycle automatically or even bubbled up to a system of voting like we have with trashed clothing that gets removed from the game.
Remove selling art to stalls vendors as a game feature, full stop.
Stick a gallery that's accessible to the masses on gold or green that cycles five to six pieces of art from the DB per week. Allow for scaling based on just how much stuff is in the DB (1100 pieces of art? Maybe we need more than 5 a week.) Have a NPC there to escrow deposit things handed to them. NPC sticks it up on the wall until all the slots are filled, backfill the missing with DB objects from markets data.
Set a time for like 7-10 days, and allow people to bid on the item in an automated manner. Maybe have a ATM or card reader or whatever. Stick your max bid in, it goes as auctions go. At the end of the week, if the item was added by a player during that week, pay them out 80% of the winning bid via said terminal. If there is no bids or no winning bid, pay out the player the normal % they would have gotten through the market system. Some NPC connoisseur bought it. Old art from permed people obviously just goes to maintaining the operational overhead of the gallery wink wink.
Now you have the ability for players to sell their art for the pennies on the dollar they're normally allowed to sell their art for via automation. If people like their stuff, they get to make money in ways that is 'artist friendly.' Art from 20 years of artists gets cycled through slowly, and we can see the evolution of the game and sip our champagne and adjust our monocles amongst ourselves.
Also the perfect place to have art shows, fashion stuff, holo wizardry and whatnot events by/for players a few times a year or on demand.
