It’s never too early to start collecting black art.

Seasoned collectors Judy and Patrick Diamond, as well as Dianne Whitfield-Locke shared their expertise ahead of the latest instillation of the “Moments. Memories. Masterpieces” on display at the Harvey B. Gantt Center through July 29. Works from their collections have been curated by historian and professor Michael D. Harris, and can be seen in “By and About Women: The Collection Dr. Dianne Whitefield-Locke and Dr. Carnell Lock” and “A Creative Journey: The Collection of Judy and Patrick Diamond.” Here are five tips from experts to start or build your own collection:

1) Negotiate the price

“You don’t have to pay full price, and often you don’t have to pay it all today,” Judy Diamond said. “You can buy it like you buy other things: a car, clothing, whatever.”

“One of the main things is a budget,” Locke said. “I start off with a budget—whether it’s $200 a month, or whatever. You can go, and you can talk to an artist. You can negotiate. Do not insult them.”

2) Set up a payment plan

“For the longest, I was not doing plans,” Locke said. “I was paying cash money, and they loved me because I was paying cash money, but then I learned that you could do” installments.

3) Read

Locke recommends acquiring roughly 10 art books to use as the foundation for determining which artists you want to pursue.

“I have about 400 art books,” Locke said. “Buy art books and read. My bible for collecting for the longest was David Driskell’s “Two Centuries of Black American Art.” I paid $400 for that book, and it was just as raggedy as could be. It’s worse now. I went through that index, and I wanted to get every artist back there. There are 63 artists in the index, and I think I have like 57 of those artists. The others I can’t get, because they’re out of sight, out of mind. They’d sell for $1 million, but I have just about all of those artists.”

4) Pick an era

“Determine how much money you want to spend and the time period,” Locke said. “I started with the late 1800s to 1940. As time went on, I came forward. Decide a time period, too. If you want to do all contemporary, that’s not really a problem. The only thing about contemporary is that you can’t find books, because I often tell artists, you need someone to write about you guys.”

5) Collect

Just collect. Start small. Dream big. Just do it. Watch it grow, piece by piece.

“We are here,” Locke said. “We are collecting.”