A private brokerage for fine art, concours automobiles, investment-grade gemstones, and rare collectibles. Active in international trading since 2010. Formalized in 2025 as UHNWS. Network across four continents. Engagements by introduction or private inquiry.
You cannot Google the works that matter. They are not at auction. They are not on Artsy. They sit on private walls, in family foundations, inside estate vaults — known only to the small number of people who have been at the table for long enough to be told they exist.
Fifteen years of patient relationship-building cannot be compressed into a Rolodex or scraped into a database. It is accumulated, one transaction at a time, by being the dealer who returns the call, honors the NDA, and never names a client — even off the record.
The same discipline applies to concours automobiles, investment-grade gemstones, and the small list of trophy collectibles that carry genuine secondary-market liquidity. Provenance is the work. Settlement is the work. Discretion is the work.
What we sell is not access to objects. What we sell is access to the people who hold them, the integrity to introduce them properly, and the structure to close at scale.
"The market for blue-chip works is small, quiet, and relationship-bound. It rewards patience, presence, and a certain kind of restraint."
Principal identities, exact values, and intermediary parties are permanently withheld under NDA. Category, jurisdiction, range, and structure are accurate. Full references on principal-to- principal request.
Acquisition mandate — Gulf foundation
Off-market post-war canvas, single-family Italian provenance, sourced through a three-party introduction. Independent condition review and catalogue raisonné confirmation in advance of binding offer.
Acquisition mandate — Swiss collector
1960s GT, single-owner-from-new, full matching numbers, comprehensive marque registry history. Pre-purchase mechanical inspection by independent specialist; full provenance file delivered with settlement.
Divestiture mandate — single-family office
Investment-grade unheated Kashmir sapphire, signed mount by a named house. SSEF and Gübelin reports current as of transaction. Quietly placed with a private collector through a single introduction.
A small number of additional engagements — including two nine-figure placements and one estate restructuring — are available for principal review under counter-signed NDA.
Every category is held to the same provenance, condition, and settlement discipline. Outside these four, we refer to specialist colleagues.
Primary and secondary market. Off-market private treaty in the eight- and nine-figure range. Modern and post-war emphasis; selective contemporary mandates.
Heritage automobiles, low-production supercars, and provenance-led collector vehicles. Verified history, expert mechanical inspection, and structured logistics.
GIA / SSEF / Gübelin certified stones. Signed pieces from named houses with auction-grade provenance and capital-gains-friendly settlement structures.
Trophy watches, important manuscripts, vintage instruments, and a small set of categories where secondary-market liquidity and provenance documentation are credible.
These are not selling points. They are the cost of being taken seriously by the institutions and principals who hold the works.
Documented chain of ownership. Catalogue raisonné verification where applicable. Independent condition reports from credentialed conservators. No transaction proceeds without it.
NDA-first engagement. Client names, transaction details, images, and values never appear in public-facing material. Acknowledgment only when explicitly authorized in writing.
Tier-one private banks, fiduciary escrow, structured customs and export clearance. Tax and jurisdiction structure agreed in advance with the principal's advisors.
Active relationships with collectors, galleries, foundations, and tier-one auction houses across North America, Europe, the Gulf, and Asia. Fifteen years of compounding access.
Field notes from inside the dealer network, written for principals rather than the trade press.
Last updated · June 2026
The blue-chip art market in 2026 looks superficially like the market in 2019. Underneath, almost every structural assumption has changed — who buys, how they buy, where the work travels, and the compliance perimeter around the transaction itself.
The 2024 and 2025 Knight Frank Wealth Reports both reinforced what private bankers have known privately for a decade: passion-asset categories — art at the top of the list — are no longer purchased only for prestige. They are modelled, allocated, and rebalanced. UHNW families now carry written acquisition policies. Allocations are sized. Hold periods are projected. Exit liquidity is stress-tested.
The implication for sellers and dealers is unambiguous: the same buyer who twenty years ago wanted the work he saw at a gallery preview today wants an investment thesis, a documented comp set, and a settlement structure that does not embarrass his auditor. The pitch has changed entirely.
The EU's 2024 anti-money-laundering reforms extended full CDD obligations into the art market. The Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) tightened cross-border reporting in 2025. US states with material art markets — New York especially — added their own enforcement layers. The net result is that the unregulated dealer is finished as a category. Every serious mandate now flows through actors who can produce KYC, source-of-funds, and customs documentation as a baseline.
This favoured operators who already worked that way. It hurt operators who improvised. The remaining market is smaller, slower, and meaningfully cleaner than it was even three years ago.
The largest single force in the 2025–2026 market is generational transfer. Baby-boomer collectors — who built many of the great post-war collections of the late twentieth century — are sequencing exits. Their children are not, in most cases, custodians of the same works. They prefer different artists, different categories, different scales of ownership, and meaningfully different liquidity profiles.
This drives a steady flow of estate-restructured supply into the off-market channel, where it can be placed discreetly without the auction-house drag on value or privacy. For buyers with appetite and patience, the next thirty-six months are likely to be the best off-market conditions in a generation.
The professionalisation that art experienced from 2010 forward is now reaching adjacent categories. Heritage automobiles trade with documented provenance files that rival fine-art catalogues. Investment-grade gemstones have formal certification regimes — SSEF, Gübelin, GIA — that function as the equivalent of an artist foundation authentication. The collector who once held only paintings now holds a small, deliberately constructed allocation across four or five categories. The trusted intermediary is the one who can move across them coherently.
"The market did not become more transparent. It became more disciplined. Those are not the same thing — and the difference is the entire opportunity."
Contact through the form or a personal introduction. First response within 48 hours, signed by Shai. NDA available before any specifics are shared.
30–45 minute call. Mutual fit assessment, mandate scope, target categories, timing, and the discretion model. No pitching, no decks. We either align or we part on good terms.
For acquisition: targeted outreach into the network, off-market candidates surfaced with full provenance review. For divestiture: discreet placement, qualified collectors only, no public exposure.
Documentation, customs and export clearance, banking instructions, conservator handover, transport, and post-sale advisory. Coordinated with your legal, tax, and family-office team.
Attributions are withheld by mutual NDA. Roles and contexts are accurate. References available, principal-to-principal, on qualified inquiry.
"We were quietly looking for a specific category of work for almost two years before we were introduced to Shai. He brought us a single, unannounced opportunity within ninety days that we ultimately acquired. The professionalism around settlement was the deciding factor."
"What I appreciated most was the willingness to walk away. Twice during the mandate Shai recommended we pass on works that, on paper, fit the brief. In both cases the reasoning held up over the following six months. That is the kind of judgment one cannot manufacture."
"Discretion is easy to claim and hard to verify. In our case it was tested by an active estate restructuring with cross-border tax considerations. Not a single detail leaked, not a single party knew the others. That is the standard."
"The advisory was not transactional. We spent eighteen months building an acquisition framework before we made our first move under it. That sequencing is what separates an intermediary from a counsel."
Anything else, ask directly. The first reply is always personal.
Open a private inquiryYes. Shai has been active in international art trading since 2010 — fifteen years before UHNWS was formalized as a platform in 2025. His LinkedIn officially lists him as 'Art Dealer & Seed Investor, Founder UHNWS.com,' specializing in off-market blue-chip art and supercars. His network spans collectors, galleries, dealers, and auction houses across four continents.
Four primary categories: (1) Blue-chip fine art — primary and secondary market, including off-market transactions in the eight- and nine-figure range. (2) Concours-grade and investment-grade automobiles. (3) Investment-grade gemstones and signed jewelry. (4) Rare collectibles — watches, manuscripts, and trophy assets with documented provenance.
Off-market means the work is not publicly listed at auction, galleries, or online platforms. These are private transactions between known parties — usually estates, family offices, foundations, or long-term collectors. Off-market access is the dealer's actual product: you cannot Google these works. The network is the asset.
Every transaction includes documented provenance research, condition reports from independent conservators, third-party authentication where required (artist foundations, catalogue raisonné committees), customs and export clearance, and structured financial settlement through tier-one private banks or fiduciary escrow. No exceptions.
Blue-chip art behaved as a structural diversifier rather than an outright outperformer through 2024–2025. The top-tier Post-War and Contemporary segment held value materially better than the broader auction market, which contracted in volume but stabilized in median price. Allocations of 3–8% within UHNW portfolios continued to be recommended by leading private banks. The Knight Frank Wealth Report 2026 reinforced art's role as a low-correlation asset, particularly for principals with multi-generational hold horizons. Returns are non-uniform: artist selection and provenance discipline drive almost the entire delta between top-quartile and median outcomes.
There is no published minimum, but the model is built for transactions in the high six-figure range and above. Smaller collectible interests are referred to specialist colleagues. The work is in fewer, larger, more discreet engagements — not volume.
Private dealer commissions vary by transaction structure: classic principal-to-principal placements typically run 5–15% on the buy side and 7–20% on the sell side, scaling inversely with size. Off-market sourcing mandates with sustained acquisition activity may be retained on a flat advisory fee with reduced transactional load. UHNWS prices on a mandate-by-mandate basis after scope definition, fully transparent in writing before any introduction is made. Hidden fees, undisclosed kick-backs, or double-dipping between buyer and seller are categorically not part of the practice.
The EU's anti-money-laundering reforms of 2024 and the OECD's Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF, 2025) extended full customer due diligence into the art market. In practice every serious transaction in 2026 includes: principal identity verification, source-of-funds documentation, beneficial-ownership disclosure for entity buyers, customs and export licensing, and structured settlement through tier-one private banks or fiduciary escrow. Unregulated cash transactions have effectively disappeared from the legitimate market. This raised the baseline cost of compliance and favoured operators who already worked this way.
NDA-first engagement. No client names, no transaction details, no images, no values appear in any public-facing material — including this site, Wizlu, UHNWS, or any social platform. The only acknowledgment is whatever the principal authorizes in writing, which is rare. Even within the dealer network, transactions are referred to by category and jurisdiction, never by principal.
An art advisor is typically retained on a fee or retainer to guide a collector's strategy, valuation, and acquisition decisions without taking principal risk. An art dealer participates in the transaction itself — sourcing, negotiating, and bearing settlement responsibility. Shai's practice is dealer-led with embedded advisory: every mandate begins with framework work (taxonomy, allocation, hold horizon) before any specific work is introduced. The dealer model aligns the intermediary with successful execution rather than with billable hours.
Single- and multi-family offices, principals of operating businesses, foundations rebalancing collections, estate trustees, and a small number of individual collectors with sustained acquisition activity. Most clients are introduced; cold inbound is reviewed but selectively engaged.
The gold standard is independent certification from SSEF (Swiss Gemmological Institute), Gübelin Gem Lab, or GIA (Gemological Institute of America) — with reports issued or refreshed within the prior twelve months. Coloured stones additionally require origin determination (e.g., Kashmir versus Madagascar sapphire), treatment disclosure, and, for top-tier stones, a formal monograph from the certifying lab. UHNWS does not transact on uncertified material in the investment-grade range. Signed mountings (Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Bulgari) require house archive confirmation where available.
Four disciplines, in sequence: (1) Marque-registry confirmation — chassis number, body number, drivetrain matching numbers, factory build sheet. (2) Independent mechanical pre-purchase inspection by a marque specialist, not the seller's preferred shop. (3) Documented ownership history, ideally back to first owner, with absence-of-restoration or full-restoration provenance. (4) Settlement structure through a fiduciary escrow with title transfer contingent on physical inspection at delivery. Skipping any of these is how collectors lose seven-figure sums to optimistic auction descriptions.
Direct message via the contact form on truchman.com or uhnws.com. First response within 48 hours. The first conversation is exploratory and free of obligation — fit assessment, mutual interest, mandate scope. Engagement proceeds only when both sides see clear alignment.
One paragraph: who you are, what mandate or category interests you, and the time horizon. The first reply is personal and within 48 hours. From there, an NDA, a call, and — if there is genuine fit — quiet work begins.
