NC and posting for traffic.
Someone I'm good friends with called me earlier today, ecstatic, as their picture was sold through one of online trading platforms for what looks to me like a surprisingly high amount (around £700).
They are a hobby artist, and their picture was, without any doubts, nice, but still - I really really don't want to sound rude and not sure how to put it - I don't understand why it sold for what it did.
I browsed the online art sales more (admittedly, more the "sold" items category) and I simply could not understand why some pictures are triggering the prices they do. I tried to play a game with myself while browsing - don't look at the price and try to guess from the visuals - and failed miserably. I am certainly not an art aficionado, but can't say I am aesthetically compromised either.
It is not a jealousy on my side, I own probably two or three dozen of sketches / studies by the said friend, and I obviously want her to do very well as an artist and become world famous 
. I am genuinely curious. AIBU to ask those of you who are more refined in their tastes to explain to me the price-making mechanisms of the modern art?