J TOMILSON AND JANINE HILL

“Nobody wakes up one morning and says I want to be a collector,” says Tom Hill, 69, the billionaire vice-chairman of Blackstone Group. He and his wife Janine started buying art to decorate the walls of their first New York apartment in 1980, acquiring some still-life oils by 19th century Danish painter Johan Laurentz Jensen. “It’s not like anybody has a pre-conceived idea of an endgame. Collecting is an iterative process.”

For the Hills, the next iteration was Italian renaissance and baroque bronzes, followed in the 1990s by pop-art superstar Warhol.

“Back then, Warhol was literally in the [dumps] from the market’s point of view, so I bought a hand-painted Campbell’s soup can for like $400,000,” Hill says. In 2010, a similar-sized soup can painting sold for $9 million at auction. From there they moved on to Willem de Kooning, Francis Bacon and Christopher Wool, whose works he still buys, despite the now stratospheric prices. (In 2014, a work by Wool sold at auction for $26.4 million, an appreciation of roughly 350,000 per cent in 25 years.)

You don’t have to start with millions

While buying a $20 million Picasso may not be the best way to start building a collection, Edie Hu, art advisory specialist for Citi Private Bank in Hong Kong, says you shouldn’t go too low.

“You can buy stuff for $1,000 but most likely it is not going to appreciate much,” says Hu. “$20,000 in an established gallery is a good starting place. An artist who is signed on and has a reputation.”

Most of all, building a successful collection is a long term ambition as you gain knowledge and experience. Just like other investments, there will be losses as well as gains. Many contemporary artists will enjoy manic appreciation in value, while some, on a bad patch, will see their work’s value plummet.