The Long Term Investor

YOU will be massively rich in 193.5268732 days. I have signed you up for a RUSSIAN mail order bride tour. That should take care of your young chick problem..........and......in a few years your money.

 

I hve not even looked at my account today.......I assume that I am in the negative.

HERE is one of the BIG stories of the day:

Microsoft dips on weak revenue guidance

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/27/microsoft-msft-earnings-q1-2021.html

(BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content)

"Key Points

• Microsoft’s results beat across the board as Azure grew more than some analysts had expected, although guidance for the next quarter was soft.
• The company’s gross margin is benefiting from an accounting change related to depreciation of server equipment.

Microsoft shares moved 2% lower in extended trading on Tuesday after the company reported quarterly revenue guidance that fell short of analysts’ expectations. Fiscal first-quarter earnings exceeded estimates, though.

Here’s how the company did:

• Earnings: $1.82 per share, adjusted, vs. $1.54 per share as expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.
• Revenue: $37.15 billion, vs. $35.72 billion as expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.

With respect to guidance, Microsoft expects $39.5 billion to $40.4 billion in fiscal second-quarter revenue, Amy Hood, the company’s chief financial officer, told analysts on a conference call. The middle of that range, at $39.95 billion, implies 8% annualized growth, and it’s below the Refinitiv consensus estimate of $40.43 billion. Hood suggested that softer business demand would continue to cut into Windows licensing revenue.

In the fiscal first quarter, Microsoft revenue grew 12% on an annualized basis, down from 13% growth in the prior quarter, according to a statement.

Revenue for commercial PCs cratered 22% months after support for Windows 7 ended and the coronavirus pandemic took hold; the category had surged last year, making outperformance this year more difficult.

But one of the fastest-growing parts of Microsoft, the Azure public cloud for hosting applications and websites, grew 48%, accelerating from 47% in the prior quarter. Microsoft doesn’t disclose revenue from Azure in dollars. Analysts had expected around 44% growth.



Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud segment, featuring Azure, Enterprise Services, GitHub and server products such as SQL Server and Windows Server, contributed $12.99 billion in revenue, up 20% year over year and more than the $12.73 billion consensus among analysts polled by FactSet.

The Productivity and Business Processes segment, which includes Dynamics, LinkedIn and Office, delivered $12.32 billion in revenue. That’s up 11% and higher than the $11.78 billion FactSet consensus. Teams, one part of the Office 365 productivity app bundle, now has over 115 million daily active users, up from 75 million in April, CEO Satya Nadella said on the call.

Revenue from the More Personal Computing segment, containing search advertising, Surface, Windows and Xbox, came to $11.85 billion. That means the segment’s revenue grew 6% year over year, and it was above the $11.18 billion consensus among analysts surveyed by FactSet. Microsoft will release the Xbox Series X and Series S consoles on Nov. 10, and Hood called for gaming revenue growth in “the high 20% range” in the fiscal second quarter, which would be up sequentially from 21.6% growth in the fiscal first quarter.

Licensing revenue from Windows device makers declined 5% in the quarter, and licensing revenue for commercial devices in particular fell some 22%, compared with the 4% decrease in the prior quarter, the worst performance in more than five years. Technology industry research company Gartner estimated that third-quarter PC shipments grew 3.7% year over year and saw the fastest growth in the U.S. in a decade.

Microsoft’s search advertising business declined 10%, and Hood said Microsoft sees a “decline in the mid to high single-digit range” in the fiscal second quarter.

The Commercial Cloud collection of products, including Azure, Dynamics 365, commercial LinkedIn and Office 365 services, added up to $15.2 billion in revenue, representing almost 41% of total revenue, up from around 38% in the prior quarter. Commercial Cloud gross margin was 71%, passing the 70% mark for. the first time.

This is the first quarter Microsoft benefits from an accounting change that extended the useful life of its server equipment from two years to four years.

In the quarter Microsoft announced the $7.5 billion acquisition of Zenimax Media, the company behind video game franchises such as Doom and Quake, and Microsoft failed to make a deal involving the video-sharing app TikTok.

In January, Microsoft announced a goal to be carbon-negative, which would involve removing more carbon than it emits, by 2030. In the fiscal first quarter Microsoft provided an update, saying it had extended an internal carbon tax to all parts of its operations and updated its code of conduct for suppliers so that suppliers will have to specify their emissions.

Excluding the after-hours move, Microsoft shares are up about 36% since the start of 2020, while the S&P 500 is up 5% over the same period."

MY COMMENT

GREAT earnings from a great company. Of course, I own this stock. AS USUAL.......the stock was down in spite of the earnings BEAT. AS USUAL.......the focus that was used as an EXCUSE for the drop was the forward looking statements. This......forward looking statements......has become the usual EXCUSE for stocks dropping after great earnings over the past few years. YES.......IDIOCY.....but we are stuck with this sort of IGNORING of strong Fundamentals. MONEY IN THE BANK for longer term investors as we go forward.

 

Speaking of.......IDIOCY.......something I do often it seems:

Record earnings beat is still not good enough for the market and profit misses are severely punished

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/26/rec...-and-profit-misses-are-severely-punished.html

(BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content)

"Corporate profits are performing at a record pace relative to expectations, but investors so far seem unimpressed. And the few companies that are missing expectations are being severely punished.

Third-quarter earnings have beaten Wall Street bottom-line expectations at about an 84% pace, something unseen in the time most firms have been tracking the data. With 27% of the S&P 500 reporting, the beat level for revenues is about same, at 81%, according to FactSet.

However, the stock market reaction to those beats has been muted if not downright hostile.

The companies that beat saw an average one-day return of negative 0.24%, compared to the historical average of a 0.7% gain, according to Wells Fargo.

And through mid-week last week, the sliver of companies that missed consensus earnings estimates saw an average one-day decline of 4.4%, which Wells Fargo senior analyst Christopher Harvey said would be “the harshest quarterly punishing for missing consensus we have ever seen” in data that goes back to the first quarter of 2015.

That decline compares to a typical drop of 2.2%. And the sour mood wasn’t confined to those firms that posted worse-than-expected returns.

“We suspect these post-earnings beat-downs largely are a result of equities getting ahead of themselves in prior weeks,” Harvey said in a note to clients.

Bank of America strategists looked at the strange earnings season reaction through a slightly different lens, comparing the near-term returns to the performance of the S&P 500. In that sense, misses actually have been being rewarded even better than beats, leading to comparisons to the tech bubble of the late 20th century that eventually imploded in the early 2000s.

That was the only other time investors reacted positively to misses and was indicative of a market that had already priced in a substantial level of good news, according to Savita Subramanian, equity and quant strategist at Bank of America Global Research.



“So far this earnings season, companies beating on both top and bottom lines underperformed the S&P 500 by 5bps the day after results (worst in history), while misses outperformed by 60bps, highest in history,” Subramanian wrote. “We believe the lack of alpha indicates a lot of good news (or bad news) is priced in already, and investors are more focused on the upcoming election and macro factors (i.e. stimulus, virus, etc.) than what happened in 3Q.”

In total, market performance has been volatile but still positive through the nascent third quarter, with the S&P 500 up about 1.4% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average around flat.

While companies generally are providing positive guidance for the road ahead, Subramanian said investors in the current climate should be cautious. History has shown that stocks generally perform better prior to upside guidance and soften afterwards, “indicating that stocks typically anticipate positive news before corporates formally guide.”

The S&P 500 will see 40% of its companies report this week."

MY COMMENT

YES.....exactly as you would expect. My HUNCH........we are so focused on the micro......day to day GARBAGE.......and.....the media porn that NOTHING can get through at the moment. We are in a time period of market DELUSION and no one cares about facts or reality. No one cares about Fundamentals. We are ALL ABOUT.......doom&gloom, fear mongering, made up opinion GARBAGE, and rumors reported as financial fact. In other words....nothing......is going to satisfy the short term markets.

Personally.......i consider this sort of data as money in the bank going forward. Being a long term investor I do NOT care AT ALL what the media is pushing short term to try to drive views of their opinion BS. I have noticed a complete collapse of financial reporting and articles over the past couple of years and ESPECIALLY over the last 8 months. It is ALL opinion, opinion, opinion garbage.

As a long term investor.........WHO CARES.

 

Surprise, surprise.......looked at my account and it is very nicely in the GREEN today. Leaders are AMZN, SNOW and NVDA. Ten of thirteen stock positions are positive. I ALSO got a good beat of the SP500 by .87% today.

I will be out of touch in the middle of the day tomorrow. I have to drive to Dallas and back to pick up a painting. Of course......I will listen to some of the business shows on satellite radio on the way up and back. When I can not stand it anymore I will retreat into the classic radio shows channel for ESCAPE from the current reality. The level of acting ability and production of these shows from the 1940's and 1950's is amazing. The SAD THING is.........they illustrate how far we have fallen in our "modern" society in education, vocabulary, etc, etc. These shows are a HUGE window on society, business, living norms, cost of living, culture, etc, etc in the not too distant past before the advent of widespread commercial TV.

 

POOR BOEING........in my opinion......one of the worst managed companies in the world right now. Their management has been EXPOSED by all the events of the past couple of years. I will ONLY put up a link to the story......but......they plan to cut back to ONLY 130,000 employees by the end of 2021. At least......that is the current projection.

HERE.....is just a bit of the story:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/28/boeing-ba-earnings-q3-2020.html

"Boeing swung to a net loss of $466 million in the third quarter from a profit of $1.2 billion a year earlier. That was on sales of $14.1 billion, down 29% from a year ago but slightly ahead of analysts’ expectations for $13.9 billion in revenue. Sales declines were most pronounced in the commercial aircraft unit where revenue fell 56% from $8.2 billion in the third quarter of 2019 to $3.6 billion.

Boeing’s CEO Dave Calhoun told employees the company aims to have a staff of 130,000 by the end of 2021. Earlier this year, Boeing targeted a 10% cut to its staff, which stood at 160,000 people at the start of the year."

CURRENT price per share..........$150. This stock might be a come-back candidate......some day......but I would not touch it with a 200 foot pole right now. Their incompetent management (simply my personal opinion) has TOTALLY SQUANDERED their HUGE advantage of operating as one of ONLY two commercial plane builders in the world. They have a semi-monopoly.

The start of this STUFF.....was their move of their HQ to Chicago......totally removed from their factories and engineers. Next step in this disaster.....outsourcing their production of bits and pieces of planes all over the world to save money.

 

NO it is not......but........I do have one nice "paint by number" painting from the early 1950's that is very well painted. It is a winter snow scene so we bring it out and hang it for Christmas. You can buy old paint by number paintings from about $5 to $50 some are cool in a vintage mid century way. I did catch some nice radio shows from the 1940's. Fall of the House Of Usher, another show staring Orson Wells, and some others. They play the original commercials with the shows and the war time era commercials are very interesting.

YES......not a good day......but.....at the moment it is ALL about the election. Some might say the virus or stimulus.......but no......in my mind what we are seeing is ALL election. No one wants to buy before the next 6 days and many want to sell and are getting nervous. If I was in the market to buy I think I would wait till about next Tuesday to do so.

I was BIG RED........not the drink......today. Down by 3.73% in accounts versus the SP500 being down for the day by 3.53%. My ONLY stock that was UP today was SNOW which was up by $5.67 or 2.13%. I would be surprised to see a green day before next Tuesday......but.......there is some chance that GUTSY bargain hunters might come in and do some buying. SO.........Come On, Man........give us some green tomorrow.

 

Tomorrow is a BIG earnings day. With the HEART of the big tech companies plus Amazon reporting.

The post above brings me to another topic.........portfolio construction for the long term. I TRY to put a portfolio together so it is BOMB PROOF......regardless.....of who is in political power. That is why I focus on the cream of the crop. I believe that ALL the stocks that I own will thrive in a Republican environment and will ALSO thrive in a Democrat environment. I do NOT want to ever be revamping a portfolio to deal with some election result. I want to hold........LONG TERM. NOT till the next election every four years.

 

AND......EMMETT.......sorry I cant show a photo of the painting. Many of the paintings that I own have my name listed with a photo of the painting in a book.........or..........a catalog raisonne......or........in an exhibit.........or........a research paper.......or........in some other article or source.......and.......I dont want to identify myself. I will give a little info......what I collect is...........IMPRESSIONISTIC...... Western Art and Early Texas Art mostly from the late 1800's to about 1955. Mostly oils but a few water colors.

You would think that art collecting would be mostly females. BUT.....at least in the type of art that I do.......it is probably about 90% men that are the collectors. SO........it is a competitive........thing at times. SORRY......TomB16.....this sort of collecting is NOT going to help you with your......."pulling young chick" thing. ( I hope your wife/husband/partner does not read this stuff)

 

HERE.......are the stories that NO ONE cares about. WHY? Because the conditions that created this economic recovery may disappear with the election next week:

(BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content)

Jobless claims fall to 751,000 in last report before election

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/29/business/unemployment-benefits-coronavirus/index.html


"New York (CNN Business)Some 751,000Americans filed first-time unemployment benefits last week, the Department of Labor said Thursday in its last report before the presidential election.

That's down 40,000from the prior week, which was revised slightly higher. These figures reflect seasonal adjustments.

Unemployment claims have been drifting downward in recent months, but they remain far higher than they were prior to the pandemic.

Just under 360,000 people filed initial claims under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which Congress created as part of its $2 trillion coronavirus relief package to provide assistance to those not typically eligible for benefits, such as gig workers and the self-employed. That's up nearly 15,000 from the week before.

Together, initial applications for benefits stood a about 1.1 million last week without seasonal adjustments.
Continued jobless claims -- which count people who have applied for benefits for at least two weeks in a row -- stood at7.8 million, down 709,000 from the prior week's revised level, on a seasonally adjusted basis.

Workers exhausting regular benefits
The declining figures, however, are not necessarily a good sign. Long-term unemployment is surging as the national recovery softens. A growing number of people have been unable to find new jobs and are exhausting the regular state benefits, which typically last 26 weeks.

They are shifting to an extended federal safety net, primarily the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, which Congress also created in March to provide the jobless with an additional 13 weeks of benefits.


About 3.7 million people were collecting these pandemic benefits as of Oct. 10. That's up more than 387,000 from the week before.

And another nearly 401,000 Americans were receiving extended benefits, which provide payments for up to an additional 20 weeks depending on the state. The federal government is fully funding this program during the pandemic, instead of asking states to contribute half.

That extended benefits figure is down 44,200 from the prior week. Some states have been ending their extended benefits program as their unemployment rates improve.

However, those longer-term benefits will not be around much longer. The pandemic extension of payments -- as well as the program for gig workers and the self-employed -- expire at the end of the year. And the feds will no longer pick up half the cost of extended benefits

A total of 22.7 million Americans were claiming unemployment benefits, as of Oct. 10. That's down 416,000 from the prior week."

AND THE BIG ONE

U.S. GDP booms at 33.1% rate in Q3, better than expected

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/29/us-gdp-report-third-quarter-2020.html

"Key Points

• U.S. GDP accelerated at a 33.1% annualized pace in the third quarter, the Commerce Department reported.
• That was better than the 32% estimate from a Dow Jones economist survey.
• A surge in business and residential investment along with stronger consumer activity helped the economy after its worst-ever quarter in Q2.

Coming off the worst quarter in history, the U.S. economy grew at its fastest pace ever in the third quarter as a nation battered by an unprecedented pandemic started to put itself back together, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.

Third-quarter gross domestic product, a measure of the total goods and services produced in the July-to-September period, expanded at a 33.1% annualized pace, according to the department’s initial estimate for the period.

The gain came after a 31.4% plunge in the second quarter and was better than the 32% estimate from economists surveyed by Dow Jones. The previous post-World War II record was the 16.7% burst in the first quarter of 1950.

Markets reacted positively to the news, with Wall Street opening flat to slightly positive.



Increased consumption along with sold gains in business and residential investment as well as exports fueled the third-quarter rebound. Decreases in government spending following the expiration of the CARES Act rescue funding subtracted from GDP.

The powerful growth pace came after states across the country shut down large swaths of activity in an effort to stem the spread of Covid-19, which the World Health Organization declared a pandemic on March 11.

Some 228,000 people have died in the United States from the virus, which has infected nearly 9 million in the country. The economy has been in a technical recession since February, as first-quarter growth declined at a 5% pace.

While the news on Q3 was good for the $21.2 trillion economy, the U.S. faces a tougher road ahead as coronavirus cases increase and worries grow over the health and economic impacts. Nearly half the 22 million jobs lost in March and April remain unfilled and the unemployment rate remains at 7.9%, more than double its pre-pandemic level as 12.6 million Americans are still out of work.



The GDP release came just five days before Election Day, which culminates a heated battle between President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden. Trump has promised a return to the strong growth prior to the pandemic, while Biden has accused the Republican incumbent of taking a thriving economy into a ditch due to mismanagement of the virus.

“This is going to be seized upon by both ends of the political spectrum as either evidence of the strength of the post-lockdown economic rebound or a cursory warning that the gains could be short-lived,” said James McCann, senior global economist at Aberdeen Standard Investments. “The reality is that the GDP numbers demonstrate that the U.S. economy did indeed rebound strongly as lockdown measures were lifted.”

Q3 growth came amid a resurgence in consumer activity, which accounts for 68% of GDP. Though most of the country remained in a cautious reopening, shoppers began returning to stores and the bar and restaurant industry entered the first tepid phase of resuming business despite restrictions on capacity.

Personal consumption increased 40.7%, while gross private domestic investment surged 83% amid a 59.3% increase on the residential side.

While the headline number “looks spectacular,” it still leaves growth 3.5% beneath its level at the end of 2019, according to Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. Shepherdson expects the consumer and business investment rebound that led Q3 to “rise much less quickly” in the final three months of the year.

“Absent new stimulus, and with Covid infections spreading rapidly, we’re sticking to our 4% forecast for Q4 growth, though the margin of error here is large at this point,” he added.

Economic activity was strong in the real estate sector, and consumer and business executive surveys showed that confidence has remained high despite virus-related setbacks.

Personal income fell sharply for the quarter as transfer payments from coronavirus relief efforts dissipated. Personal savings also declined but remained strong at a 15.8% rate, down from the record 25.7% in Q2.

The annualized measure represents how much GDP would grow over the course of a year at the current pace from the same level a year ago. In terms of raw percent change from a year earlier, the economy contracted 9% in the second quarter and 2.9% in Q3."

MY COMMENT

AS EXPECTED......at least by me. Will any of this data matter.....at least over the short term.......NO. We are going to be at the MERCY of the election turmoil for the next 2-3 weeks......at the minimum. With a few states being allowed to count votes for days after the election.......with no signature match at all......we are in for a potential BIG MESS. BUT......this STUFF will........HOPEFULLY......be over within a month or two following the election and the country will be able to move forward to whatever the NEW REALITY is going to be at that time.

 

AND.....later in the day......an earnings bonanza........as Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google report earnings.
.

 

YES it is......perhaps the EARNINGS BONANZA that is going to come at the close is having some impact. It will be interesting to see if we experience the.......DREADED.......late day fade.

I have ACTUALLY played a few shows lately........and.......will be playing a show on Halloween afternoon and again next weekend. I continue to rehearse with my usual TWO bands.......nothing else to do for the most part. It will be interesting when the bars and venues are allowed to open to see how many are still in business. After this long.....I expect that the impact will be SEVERE.

 

THIS article is pretty old......but I am posting it for Emmett. Vintage paint by numbers are.......in the right......mid century eclectic environment actually a cool decorating tool. It is all about the quality of the painting.....AND.......the frame. In my opinion it is the frame that makes the greatest impact in the display of one of these old paintings.

What to collect: Paint By Number paintings — A comprehensive online guide

https://retrorenovation.com/2012/07/18/what-to-collect-vintage-paint-by-number-paintings/

"Vintage Paint By Number paintings are an ironic — and iconic — midcentury modern art form. They are really “low brow” — anyone can do one… But, they also fascinate us — there is something “elemental” about their beauty and “democratic” about the fact they even exist. Simple, graphic — and rendered by a normal person, like us!, back in the day when mass prosperity was emerging across America. They were… lovingly crafted… and as a result, they are easy to love, 50 years later. Over the past several years, I’ve seen vintage PBNs become more and more collectible. And on occasion, we see folks get epic with the art form and create their own Paint By Number murals, which are pretty darn groovy. For this story, I found several great resources detailing the history of Paint By Number paintings — including important social history… and we’ll talk about how best to display paint by number art. Actually, display tip #1 and only, IMHO: As Troy has done with PBN dog collection (above) — group your PBNs for maximum impact.

The history of Paint By Number Kits:
Paint By Number kits were so common, so popular, such a part of the American decorating scheme, that the Smithsonian created a whole exhibit around them in 2001. Their accompanying educational website, still online today, is an awesome resource for Paint By Number history. Their introduction gets right to the point and says that, while Americans loved their PBNs, critics had a snit fit:

Paint by Number: Accounting for Taste in the 1950s revisits the hobby from the vantage point of the artists and entrepreneurs who created the popular paint kits, the cultural critics who reviled them, and the hobbyists who happily completed them and hung them in their homes. Although many critics saw “number painting” as a symbol of the mindless conformity gripping 1950s America, paint by number had a peculiarly American virtue. It invited people who had never before held a paintbrush to enter a world of art and creativity.

The making of the fad is attributed to Max S. Klein, owner of the Palmer Paint Company of Detroit, Michigan, and to artist Dan Robbins, who conceived the idea and created many of the initial paintings. Palmer Paint began distributing paint-by-number kits under the Craft Master label in 1951. By 1954, Palmer had sold some twelve million kits. Popular subjects ranged from landscapes, seascapes, and pets to Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. Paint-kit box tops proclaimed, “Every man a Rembrandt!”

Interestingly — and not surprising to me, at all — the Smithsonian says that Dan Robbins wanted the first kits to be exploration of modern art, cubism and the like. No way, said America! Folks wanted cozy landscapes and such. Yes: Colonial and Early American, not those hi-falutin modernist things.

The Smithsonian exhibit also explored the growth of leisure and how that helped fuel pursuits like PBN painting. Paint By Number gets “deep” when considered in the context of the continuing growth of democracy and meritocracy in America. I love this aspect of American culture. Love love love it. The Smithsonian says:

Writing in Life magazine in the late 1950s, cultural critic Russell Lynes set out to describe the popular pastimes of the “new leisure.” He observed that the usual markers of class-education, wealth, and breeding-no longer applied. The one thing that mattered was something that everyone had. That something, Lynes explained, was free time. In postwar America, class had become a matter of how one spent his or her free time.

Over the decades, the Smithsonian curators say, the Paint By Number aesthetic became so ingrained in our culture that other artists began to use it as a political launching point for their work. Kind of Andy Warhol-esque stuff. By around the year 2000, vintage PBNs started become collectible. Today in 2012, I’d say they are super collectible — although prices are still “affordable”, especially if you find these at estate sales where I live, because everyone did PBNs! There are 12 million Craft Master PBNs out there!

Following the death of Max Klein in 1993, his daughter, Jacquelyn Schiffman, donated the Palmer Paint Co. archives to the Smithsonian Museum of American History.

The Palmer Paint Co. is still in business, and in 2011, they introduced two, 60th anniversary prints, which are still available for sale today. You can buy them here.

Yes, there is even a book (affiliate link above) written to go with the Smithsonian exhibit.

Dan Robbins website
Dan Robbins has his own website, book and video, too! It looks good!:

Dan Robbins also sells giclee prints of important PBNs — including the first Paint By Number design he ever created, Abstract #1. Very cool.
The Chicago Tribune interviewed Robbins in 2005. He explained the genesis of the idea for PBNs:

“The idea was an evolution,” Robbins said. “It was a gradual process of exposing this idea, then that idea, then another. I recalled reading about Leonardo da Vinci, and when he got large and complicated commissions, he would give numbered patterns to his apprentices to block in areas for him that he’d go back and finish himself. From there, it was a matter of proving the concept to see if it could be done.”

In the Tribune article, I learned that the company Craft Master was sold in 1959, and over the years passed through a number of hands. Today, the brand and designs are owned by Craft House, the 1995 article said, and indeed, I found some Paint by Number kits — including some vintage-y looking ones for sale at CraftHouse.

The Paint by Numbers Online Museum
AND, woah Nelly: There is even an online Paint By Number Museum — an amazing archive created by a collector in Massachusetts who wiki says has assembled some 6,000 PBNs. The PBN Museum is darn impressive — you can search and see all the kits and catalogs. There’s a great library. And, there’s a page on artist Dan Robbins with more history, pointing out:

Who is the most exhibited artist in the world? The work of paint by number designer Dan Robbins has been displayed on more walls than that of any other artist. This was true in the past, is still true today and is most likely a record that will stand in the future.

Collecting and displaying vintage Paint by Number paintings
As I mentioned at the top of this article, I am a 100% believer in grouping small painting collections like this, for maximum decorative impact. When Todd lived in his first place, he had the dogs in a grid on one wall. When he moved to his Eichler, Troy came up with another variation on the “grouping” idea: Arranging the collection of dog paint-by-number paintings as a gallery along the hall.



Above: Crown Prince of Kitsch Cullen‘s kitchen — I’m not sure if he really has a many PBNs up on that wall, but this is a great shot to illustrate two ideas. (1) Again, the effectivess of creating tight groupings to display your collections of like-pieces. And (2) While Troy collects just dog PBNs — which makes for a fun collection, Cullen collects pieces according to a theme that includes other varieties of art and collectibles.

Above: Collect cowboy stuff? Add a cowboy PBN. That Betty Crafter knows how to stage a photo…


From AT
Finally, how is this for “some therapy”: Apartment Therapy profiled two people — one — and two — who created paint by number wall murals onto their walls — entire walls. Wow, these may be even more epic than when I covered the four walls of my office with a patchwork of 300 squares of vintage wallpaper. Atomic Ranch also had a story in a recent issue about someone doing this. Seems like the basic how-to is: (1) Find a PBN you like, (2) Scan it in very high resolution, (3) Print onto a transparency, (4) Project the transparency onto the wall, (5) Outline the colors and as you go, write in the color numbers, (6) Figure out which colors go where, (7) Drop out of civil society as we collectively know it and paint until your eyes bug out of your head, (8) ta da, celebrate your epic achievement, but don’t look too closely at your errors. Not Perfect is the New Perfect."

MY COMMENT

Many are available on eBay Emmett. I am sure there MUST be many that have clowns as subject matter. There are currently 812 vintage paint by numbers for sale on eBay. I see a copy of the winter scene that I have on there for $145.

 

NICE green day today......but......still down significantly from yesterday. PLUS.......beat the SP500 by a WHOPPING .02%. YEA!!!