When I started seriously collecting VMIPBs in about 2008 my ceiling for any bottle was RMB4,000 = about US$500 at the exchange rate of that time: US$1 = RMB8. For that price I bought some of the most stupendous bottles in my collection. Usually I paid only RMB1,500 - 2,000, and even as low as RMB1,000 direct from artists ( = US$ 125) .
Nowadays I have to pay RMB 15,000 - 20,000 ( US$ 2,500 -3,000: the current exchange rate is about US$1 = RMB 6.25 ) to get really top class bottles directly from artists, and there's nothing worth buying at less than US$1,000, whether via trusted dealers after discount, or direct from artists.
Some recent members of the Forum have bemoaned this fact : that prices have risen so high. So they go to ebay and buy what they can for their budget of US$100-300. But I fear that what they buy in the VMIPB field is often "junk". ( That's not to say there are no bargains out there on e-bay, also in the antique field. But it's a hit and miss thing and I would never dare to verify anything on ebay unless sold by a trusted collector)
I sympathise with such new members of the Forum. Prices are indeed high and keep increasing.
You may think this is a sudden recent trend in the past 4 years - a sudden general "step jump" increase in prices by 200 - 400%.
But in fact it's part of a much longer trend.
In the early 2000's one could buy la crème de la crème of VMIPBs in Hengshui for only US$100 and prime Wang Xisan bottles were selling for as little as US$1,000 (nowadays prime Wang Xisan bottles sell for minimum US$15,000 and as high as US$25,000) .
Last year I got a first hand viewing of what is probably the world's finest collection of WXS IPBs, and I was astounded when I asked the prices the collector actually paid for many of the bottles in the early 2000's. That collector had real foresight !
So the current top artists can now ask premium prices for their bottles : minimum RMB10,000 , and usually RMB15,000.
( I have heard of some extreme cases of asking RMB150,000 ++ , but I would say that is exploitation and price-rigging within the internal China market where it has become fashionable to gift VMIPBs to clients so the "higher the price the greater the meaning of the gift" : such pricing is artificial, and what I have seen of the actual quality of the works vs the prices is just bubble economics )
But there are still affordable bargains
Every time I go to Hengshui I go to the Wang Xisan museum/shop and pick a few of the best Chinese landscape bottles I see in the RMB 300 -500 price range, painted by top up-coming WXS Academy students. I collect almost exclusively Chinese landscape painting bottles so I now trust my judgement in this very narrow area of IPB painting. In almost every case I find that the student has a couple of years later won a prize in some competition and is on his way to going out solo, in which case his bottles will immediately jump from RMB 200 - 300 to RMB 2,000 -3,000. And maybe one day he will become a great master ... maybe.... that's a long, hard road.
I have a theory that as the world's population expands homes will get smaller, but people's passion for collecting art will increase. Therefore collecting will move to smaller and smaller things = miniatures.
In the average small home ( at least in the East) one can hang maximum 10 full-size canvas paintings. But a well-lit display cabinet can hold 100 - 500 IPBs. There is no school of miniature canvas-type paintings - as far as I know. But there is a well-established school of miniature IPBs , with a 100-year history and all the "mystique" of "oriental China" to back it up .
My prediction is therefore that IPBs is THE most collectable "painting" art-form of the future, and that prices will continue to rise for a long time to come.
In 2008 it really hurt me when I forked out RMB4K for a super- prime bottle. I thought : "what on earth am I doing to spend do much? " . But now when I look at every one of those bottles which I purchased at that time I bless my heart that I did buy them. Every one is worth 5 -10 x what I paid, because I only paid RMB4K for la crème de la crème, and that kind of quality only comes during a very short period of an artist's life, unless he gets a second wind late in life.
What's my message ? Simply this : follow your heart and your instinct,
not your wallet .... and buy
direct with provenance (whether direct from artists or trusted dealers)
Cheers
Peter