After decades of consigning art to Christie’s and Sotheby’s, Chicago’s Floating World Gallery is going it alone, starting with an auction of one of the world’s most recognizable artworks. Here’s how they got there.
Bill Stein sat in a Cleveland auction house, nerves racing. He had an edge, and a potentially massive one.
The only question was whether another bidder in the room had it too.
Bill had long been fascinated with Japanese woodblock prints. They often showed up at small local sales, usually reproductions worth a few hundred bucks.
This time was different.
Weeks earlier, while browsing a grainy catalogue photo, he noticed something odd. Artwork that was valued as a reproduction had a telltale flaw: A printing imperfection found only in originals.
Buzzing with the feeling of a pirate finding a treasure map, Bill requested a Polaroid of the catalogue entry for a better look. The flaw was still there, and Bill had just identified an original masterpiece priced as a copy.
It was a $500,000 mistake (in 1980s dollars), but only if all the other collectors missed the clue.
The bidding started at $500, then quickly rushed higher.
Bill noticed a man he had never seen before was intensely interested in the artwork and was pushing it higher with conviction.
It was not a promising start. Too good to be true.
Then, as quickly as the stranger bid up the artwork, he dropped out. The gavel fell. $7,000 to Bill. Other bidders, incredulous at what he paid for a “reproduction,” gave him sympathetic back pats.
“They assumed I’d overpaid for junk,” he said.
Bill kept his secret for the moment. Then, he saw his under-bidder prepare to leave. He had to know.
“I caught him at his truck and paid him a compliment. He was the only other person who knew this wasn’t a copy,” Bill said. The man’s response was a short, baffled “They made (copies) of this?”
It was a score for the ages, and it happened when Bill was buying prints as a hobby while also working as an attorney. It was also proof of concept: He could do this full-time.
Decades later, that same pirate instinct would fuel something far more ambitious: a direct challenge to the auction world’s biggest names.
But first, he needed a partner.
Building the Edge
Bill has always likened the collector’s mindset to that of a pirate. The art world rewards risk takers, creative thinkers and networkers, people who can find and exploit an edge, and it’s in a constant state of re-invention. Study and discernment create informational asymmetry, the collector’s strongest weapon.
Bill had the eye. His wife, Roberta, a corporate lawyer, had everything else: A mastery of the business and technological skills needed to build a company from scratch. Bill admits Roberta was the superior lawyer. She also had a keen eye for numbers, which made her more reluctant to consider quitting their day jobs simultaneously. Yet their early success gave them the confidence they needed to raise their flag and sail into the unknown.
“Bill and I have always been entrepreneurial, even going back to when we were teenagers,” Roberta said. “In the beginning, we would research offerings from different auctions. Once we had two nickels to rub together, we’d buy (art) in group lots, keep what we liked, and sell the rest.”
They founded Chicago’s Floating World Gallery in 1987, and their timing was perfect. After World War II, American soldiers in Japan had fallen in love with woodblock prints, buying them in mass quantities at rock-bottom prices.
Those prints came home in duffel bags and were soon on the walls and in the closets of 1950s and 60s American homes. As the Steins launched their gallery, many of these WW2-era soldiers were retiring or passing. The market was suddenly flush with inventory at attractive valuations.
Roberta also made sure Floating World could move faster than larger competitors. In the 1980s, frequent contact with Japan was essential but difficult, with unusual hours, expensive calls, and painfully slow mail. She was an early user of the fax machine, then computers and websites, then e-Bay, then smartphones, each integrated into the business model before the bigger players caught up. A nimble Floating World could innovate faster than global giants.
Together, they advised major institutions and collectors, consigned artwork to the world’s leading auction houses, and logged millions of air miles, all while scouring the globe for undervalued art.
David Meets Goliath
For years, the Steins worked comfortably with the biggest auction galleries, sourcing exceptional pieces from private collectors and small country sales that larger players overlooked. But they couldn’t help noticing the industry was changing, and that the barriers to entry for an independent auction house had become much lower.
An auction house’s mailing list of existing clients was once its ace-in-the-hole and competitive moat. The Internet and search engine optimization changed that calculus. It became easy and cost-effective to grow the pool of potential buyers (mostly new to prints) instead of competing with legacy institutions for clients. Often, Bill would speak to auction house executives who admitted that many top lots were going to new buyers who were mysteries to them or had discovered the artwork online.
“We thought if they can find new buyers, so can we,” Bill said, “and if interested buyers can find Christie’s and Sotheby’s online, they can find us just as easily.”
Roberta agreed. The Steins began running their own auctions to much success, but they hedged their bets and continued to give the best works to the world’s top auction houses.
Now, they are done hedging.
On March 13 the Steins will host one of the most significant Japanese print auctions by an independent dealer ever. The auction’s signature piece is Hokusai’s “Great Wave off Kanagawa,” perhaps the most iconic piece in the art form. The image appears on everything from T-shirts to Japanese money, and is familiar to many people who know nothing of Japanese art. The market has taken notice; the last impression to sell at auction brought nearly $3 million.
And The Great Wave has company. The auction includes 35 other works by this master of Ukiyo-e, plus works from many of the most influential Japanese print artists from the late 18th century to the mid-20th century. This includes designs by Harunobu, the first person to produce full color prints; Hiroshige, whose work was so admired by Van Gogh that he painted copies; and Hasui, the most popular artist of the shin hanga movement.
The sale presents a rare opportunity for institutions and collectors alike: No longer holding back, Floating World Gallery is offering the cream of their crop. Finding masterpieces of similar quality will only get more difficult. “Closets have been emptied,” Bill said. “People like me scour the earth every day for a single great print.”
The Next Generation
Today, Floating World Gallery is a multi-generational affair. Bill and Roberta’s daughter, Meredith Stein, is now an essential part of the business, and its future. She brings the element the Steins need for their ambitious bet to pay off: Auction technology expertise. She spent her early career with one of the nation’s largest auction technology companies, managing millions in online bids and witnessing some of the more culturally iconic sales in recent years, including the high-profile auction for Kurt Cobain’s “MTV Unplugged” guitar.
“We’ve developed a new auction platform under our name for this event,” Meredith said. “And (the inventory) is iconic. You’re lucky to find one or maybe two Harunobu prints in fine condition in a major sale. We have five.”
The family’s complementary chemistry is the root of their success, and the future looks bright. High-end Japanese prints continue to rise in value, a sign of their scarcity, and global fascination with all things Japanese provides a durable tailwind. The expertise gap has also widened in the family’s favor. Sotheby’s no longer has a Japanese department, and private equity pressure has hollowed out organizational expertise, as art connoisseurship has taken something of a backseat to finance credentials.
The Steins, meanwhile, have been hunting, authenticating, collecting and selling in this field for 40 years. They also do something large houses don’t: Provide a money back authenticity guarantee.
Post-Script
Long after the $500,000 auction win that catalyzed the Steins into going professional, a well-known Japanese collector told Bill that he had planned to be present that day. He called the auction house ahead of time to inquire about the specific piece Bill bought.
The auction house told him not to bother, as it was just a “study set,” not worth the trip. That twist of fate helped chart the rest of the Steins’ lives. They had the confidence to bet that the gap between their knowledge and skill and the different focus of other dealers was large enough to consistently monetize. They were right.
On March 13, they are betting that the gap between a small but well-regarded Chicago independent and the auction world’s biggest houses is narrower than anyone thinks.
More information can be found at auctions.floatingworld.com
Posted on March 6, 2026