For a measly $200, you can buy an original painting by an up-and-coming artist, lug it home, and tack it proudly to your wall.

In the short term, it's bound to bring at least $200 worth of joy. In the long term, it might even make you rich.

That's the hope of many who are discovering the potential profits of fine-art investments, the odd mix of high-concept aesthetics and high-stakes finance that's full of potential — and more than a few pitfalls.

For those who judged the market right, the rewards in recent years have been bountiful. Paintings that sold for a few thousand dollars 25 years ago are now being sold for a million dollars or more. Even today, experts say, there are likely young artists whose work can be bought for far less than it will ultimately bring.

The trick, of course, is knowing what to buy and when to buy it. And the best way to do that has nothing to do with easy money.

"Go to galleries. Start looking," said Allison Weer, gallery director at Hardcastle Gallery in Centreville, Del.

Learn all you can about young artists, evolving trends, shifting preferences.

And after you buy, be ready to wait.

"This is not a short-term investment," Weer said.

In a way, art investment has become easier — and at the same time more challenging — thanks to the Internet. Specialized Web sites give potential investors data on sale prices and market trends, but Web sites have also created a worldwide market that brings in more potential buyers.

That broadening interest is one of the big factors driving prices up, experts say. In two weeks last fall, Christie's in New York sold $866 million worth of art, by far the auction house's biggest season ever for major Impressionist and postwar contemporary art.

ArtNet.com, which keeps potential buyers aware of price trends and available works, recently boasted about its 30 percent yearly jump in business.

That hot market has inspired a relatively new concept in art collecting, allowing investors to put money into hedge funds operated by professional dealers.

But investing doesn't necessarily have to be a high-stakes game, and it should provide enjoyment as well as profit, art dealers say.

Unlike mutual funds or other equity investments, art can give instant satisfaction. Like equities, however, there can be seemingly inexplicable volatility.

In the long run, the art market is no more risky than the S&P 500 or Dow, and in some ways is more stable, according to professors Jianping Mei and Michael Moses of New York University's Stern School of Business. From 1950 to 1999, art had a real annual compounded return of 8.2 percent, comparable to the stock market, and outperformed bonds and treasury bills.

The professors also found that the volatility of their art market price index dropped to 21.3 percent over the 1950-1999 period, making art just somewhat riskier than the two major stock indices.

Such relative stability is helping increase art's legitimacy as an investment, experts say.

"People are sometimes looking for a way to expand their investments," said Sadie Somerville, co-owner of Somerville Manning Gallery in Greenville, Del. "My answer primarily is look for the best that you can get, and that takes some research."

And you also don't want to buy a piece that you may not enjoy if it doesn't appreciate.

"That's what we tell people, buy what you like," said Nancy Bercaw, co-owner of Station Gallery in Greenville. "Art is very personal, very subjective ... and you forget about how much you paid for it later."