Limited Edition

This is when the artist promises to not make more than a specified amount of prints. In the old days of printing the artist would destroy the plate or stone that the print was made from so no more could be made. This is still true today of the traditional printing methods, but most prints are made by offset photolithography, called lithographs, and since they are produced by the means of photographing an original, the buyer only has the word of the artist. An edition can be of any length. For the most part, really fine art prints are limited to 200 to 300 prints. Most of the offset prints are more in the area of 1000 copies. Some are far larger than that. There is no limit to the number of prints that could be made on a modern press. In the old days, the number of prints was very limited and the higher the number the poorer the print. However, today, with photo offset the last one is just the same as the first.