from Hacker News

It’s nearly impossible to buy an original Bob Ross painting (2021)

by rmason on 6/15/25, 8:21 PM with 157 comments

• by paxys on 6/15/25, 9:13 PM

  I don't know why the article and everyone here is coming away with the conclusion that Bob Ross didn't want his art to be sold.

  A simpler reasoning is that there wasn't any demand for his paintings while he was alive. His show ran from 1983-1994 and he died in 1995. He was reasonably popular at that time, sure, but Bob Ross as we know him only blew up in the 2010s in the internet/YouTube/streaming age.

  Now there is a trove of 1,165 paintings which are no doubt valuable, but cannot all be sold because they would flood the market and decrease their own value. So Bob Ross, Inc. is cleverly keeping them under lock and key and letting the scarcity drive prices up.

• by ahofmann on 6/15/25, 8:44 PM

  While the article is interesting, the lede is buried literally at the very end of the article:

  > Ultimately, the real reason there aren’t more Bob Ross paintings up for sale is that the artist never wanted them to be a commodity.

• by bluefirebrand on 6/15/25, 8:54 PM

  I think that "I don't want people to just buy my art" is consistent with the persona of Bob Ross, at least presented on TV. Maybe he was a different person in private, I don't know.

  But Bob Ross the personality trying to teach people The Joy of Painting? I think he would rather people paint their own than buy the ones he painted

• by blueblimp on 6/15/25, 8:47 PM

  > Today, 1,165 Bob Ross originals — a trove worth millions of dollars — sit in cardboard boxes inside the company’s nondescript office building in Herndon, Virginia.

  This seems like a bit of a waste given that there's demand for them.

• by Fricken on 6/15/25, 10:55 PM

  Fortunately he left behind detailed instructions showing you how to make a Bob Ross original you can call your own

• by NaOH on 6/15/25, 9:00 PM

  (2021)

  Previous discussion when submitted by rmason:

  It’s nearly impossible to buy an original Bob Ross painting - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27014367 - May 2021 (85 comments)

• by neilv on 6/15/25, 10:11 PM

  > “He was about as uninterested in the actual paintings as you could possibly be,” says Kowalski. “For him, it was the journey — he wanted to teach people. The paintings were just a means to do that.”

  That could be true. Though, someone is sitting atop a treasure trove, the value of which is pinned to the legend being promoted by this article.

  For Bob Ross, I wonder whether he might've been too humble to consider that his shows touched many people, such that -- besides whatever personal creative journey he encouraged them on -- some might appreciate having a tangible, more direct link to him, of one of his own paintings.

• by Bayaz on 6/15/25, 8:48 PM

  There were plans for a Bob Ross Wii game that sadly never came to fruition. Maybe it can be revisited in AR/VR.

• by solomonb on 6/16/25, 3:21 AM

  In the contemporary art market the stated prices are actually really low. Painters fresh out of art school at a good gallery focused on emerging artists will sell paintings for 10-20k these days.

• by ourmandave on 6/15/25, 9:50 PM

  The paintings are nice, but I think his ASMR content is worth way more.

  Fond memories of zoning out on the couch watching Bob beat the devil out of a 3" brush.

  His only nearest competitor was Mother Angelica's Religious Catalog on EWTN.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLEVtOGGC5U

• by VirusNewbie on 6/16/25, 12:18 AM

  I'm not sure I buy the premise that they're sitting around because selling them all would make them a commodity. They could auction one off every couple months. They could pick a handful to sell every year. Why hoard them?

• by CubsFan1060 on 6/15/25, 9:10 PM

  Fun video about the same topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDs3o1uLEdU

• by inasio on 6/16/25, 5:27 AM

  These paintings sound almost perfect for an NFT art project (burn it and turn it into digital tokens), given that the quality of the art pieces is not super high, but there's huge cultural resonance. To be fair the idea is much older (Yves Klein, the Klein blue guy, Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle [0]).

  [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_de_Sensibilit%C3%A9_Pictu...

• by kazinator on 6/16/25, 12:43 AM

  I would say, it is unassailably impossible.

  A genuine, authentic Bob Ross painting is not original.

• by backtoyoujim on 6/15/25, 11:30 PM

  I'm fine with that. Bob Ross Must Be Protected At All Costs.

• by tommmlij on 6/16/25, 4:34 AM

  I just force my brain to think that he was such a good teacher that every TV student is so good that all produced art indistinguishable from his. That thought brings me joy and not the actual copyright blabla...

• by paulnpace on 6/15/25, 8:49 PM

  When the licensing expo was in town here in Las Vegas, two separate attendees told me that Bob Ross licensed products fly off the shelf.

• by gorfian_robot on 6/16/25, 2:14 AM

  can I interest you in a Xavier Cugat?

• by Footkerchief on 6/15/25, 8:56 PM

  When did clickbait headlines become acceptable here?