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The first consideration for quality in paint is the vehicle. Since Cennini wrote his treatise on painting materials and methods over 500 years ago, linseed oil has been preferred, because of all the drying oils, it produces the most durable paint films. Walnut oil is an acceptable second choice, but the films it produces are not as strong.
Safflower oil dries so slowly as to not be considered a drying oil. It produces incredibly weak, granular films, and requires the addition of siccatives to make usable paint. It has become quite universal in commonly available oil paints not because of its superiority, but because it is very cheaply available. Produced by the tank-car load in great abundance for use in the food industries, a vast supply is always available.
Conversely, linseed oil is becoming increasingly expensive as declining production makes it more difficult to obtain owing to its replacement in the paint and varnish industry by synthetics and petrochemicals.
"Series" is an identification of a price range that has nothing to do with quality differences between different series. The overall quality of student through professional grade tiers is specified for each grade regardless of the relative cost of different colors. A "series" system is tied to the comparative cost of different pigment stuffs, e.g., cadmium red pigment costs more than raw siena.
Because most painters today expect a certain uniformly thick, pasty consistency from tube colors, there is actually a tendency for some tube colors to be underbound (i.e., not enough oil). A tube of color that exudes free oil only demonstrates that: A. there is ample oil to bind the paint and B. the paint has "aged" adequately, to fully disperse the oil around each pigment particle. Far from being indication of a defect, it's a good sign and easily dealt with by storing the tubes inverted vertically.
As with most items, real value can be a bit difficult to ascertain. My opinion is that "student" grade paints are the absolutely poorest value for the money, and worse, a cruel hoax that puts a very real stumbling block in the way of developing painters who need every possible advantage to smooth the way for their progress. No one ever became wealthy by saving on paint, and the best value for money spent is to buy the very highest quality paints you can obtain.
These days, the best paint is not offered by the "big names" who monopolize art and craft stores. Grumbacher and Winsor & Newton (to name but two) are hollow shells of companies that once represented reliable high quality. They have been bought and sold so many times their committment to their customers and to high quality has shifted entirely to their fiscal bottom line. For the moment, they continue to trade off the patrimony of once-excellent reputations, but their current product lines would not meet their own former standards.
The highest quality paints are currently offered by small, boutique color makers who truly know their craft, and remain committed to high quality. Robert Doak, M.Graham, Old Holland, Vasari, Michael Harding, and Cennini to name a few among these. I have tried them all, and all represent a very high quality.
If you are comparing prices at this level of quality, don't overlook the difference tube size makes!
There is no reason not to intermix oil paints from any number of makers, or even quality tiers . . . almost everyone who paints prefers certain colors form one maker and not another, so most folks' paint-boxes show quite a cross-section of color makers.
Claudemir, much has changed since Sargent's day. There would be no "store-bought" artists colors if industry did not demand massive quantities of pigment stuffs of all kinds. ASTM standards, improved methods of manufacture and chemical engineering have eliminated the old caveats for color intermixtures based on adverse chemical reactions and trace impurities. There is no particular reason to consider such, unless you are mulling your own paints from uncertified pigment sources, or using long-obsolete arsenic compounds.
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