KirbyCollector

Dude, you WORK in the industry... it's sort of assumed you would be an ardent fan

No, I just live in the real world and have 2 young adults who are plugged in and answer questions about these matters... I'm not living in my parents' basement playing video games in a shirt stained with cheese doodles, telling myself my longboxes will make me a millionaire

Based on what? Outside of comics fans, he's a kiddie cartoon figure... the only relevant SM to Gen Z is Tom Holland, and most of that is due to Zendaya

The book in question... a variant cover which has no accurate count of its print run https://www.comichron.com/faq/ultimatefallout4sales.html

I had no idea the comics market was this unmoored from reality. The OA market looks relatively sane by comparison.

Gives me hope for the Aparo B&B Hawkman splash Sunday...

The question is whether investors are going to cash out for purchases or keep riding the train... choppy month ahead past vix opex, imho

$2,100 last month on CLink. I get the SS "tax," but JB late Avengers art is still JB late Avengers art. The price range for panel pages of this kind (unless the seller's first name is Rich or Steve) sits in the sub $4K space.

Recent results don't support those numbers... issue 66, yes, but 266? No

Imho 2000 on the Avengers page, although the Surfer panels could push it to 2500. FYI this is not with BP...

How can they continue to stoop so low, everyone moans. They are frauds, everyone says. Yet the main comic art web site -- one we all use and some support as paid members -- allows them to advertise and spam search results with 20,000+ pieces whose prices bear no relation to reality. AND we continually allow these two to set up and sell at any art show they like. So by fully accepting them in the only OA showcase site and at shows (they will be at OAX) aren't we all complicit in their behavior?

Will add one more thing, you never know unless you try with law enforcement. In 2003 or 2004, I took a complaint call from someone who had sent money to someone else for OA -- and the recipient disappeared. I thought it was a cool call, considering I knew what OA was, so I did some digging... then made some calls... then found the thief in under an hour (he had used a fake address but forgot to use a different phone #). He wasn't expecting someone like me to call, so he had half a heart attack and remitted the money the next day. The sender was thrilled, I felt like Superman, great, right? Wrong... I did all that work without officially opening a case... which got me in hot water and led to 5 days "on the bricks" (the old expression for suspended w/o pay). So good for the sender not so good for me

NY, LA, Chicago, yes understood. But anywhere else it is worth a shot. I live in a county of 400,000 people and I guarantee a $10K theft will get attention, especially if you gift wrap it for them. Again, it might not even take that -- a visit by a uniform to a door can work wonders if handled properly. Btw a search warrant is not that hard outside of California lol. The simplest one I ever did was in conjunction with the Manhattan DA's Office -- one page! I never knew a one page SW was possible, coming from the federal level.

Perhaps it is time to standardize use of smart tags for art. The Apple Air Tag is $29; Samsung's is on sale right now for $25. That's a small price to pay for peace of mind, plus the buyer can always send it back to you for reuse. As for what to do when the air tag is showing the package somewhere it should not be, the $200-$300 to fly somewhere and engage a local police officer (or private investigator for $100) to knock on a door is not a heavy lift (heck, maybe it is sitting at the back of the local PO, forgotten). If the person admits they have it, but states it was purchased under legit circumstances, they will have to show proof. If they can't or won't, the local prosecutor then has probable cause for a search warrant and can seize the art while an investigation takes place (and even if the person can show proof of sale, it still might lead to a seizure b/c they were not the intended recipient). Frankly, if the seller is serving as a fence for stolen goods, they may just give it up to avoid any further trouble. I know none of this sounds fun, but ultimately this is the only way to handle high value theft in a rapid manner.

Not exactly on point, but your question made me think of one thing which has never changed: Will Gabri-El. He is as nice today as when I first met him 20+ years ago: no fake "persona," no looking down at customers b/c they aren't millionaires, no treating them as if they were stupid. Just a regular guy, which I appreciate the older I get.

Am old enough to remember comic art shows in church basements without millionaires... ah the good ol' days

Would you mind sharing a breakdown of type (cover, panel page, strip etc) and price range? I recently put in a panel page to HA at the last minute and they shoehorned it into the Nov featured, but the value was 10K+. I'm going to cycle about 20-30 more pages of lesser value thru them, and having an understanding of what their potential listing thresholds are (featured vs weekly, sooner rather than later) would be helpful. For example, do you know why your first 10 were listed vs the last 10? Or were the choices on their part completely random?

1st Byrne UXM page

1200 + prob another 100 in taxes/shipping gets you to 1300, for a markup of 550 or 42%. It's a little sad that we are so conditioned to seeing 60-70% markups that we think 42% is "light" now...

Perhaps Jay you could persuade Bill to actually comment on OAX here. He may not like this board, but it does represent a space which has built-in growth potential via the larger comics collecting community here. Concentrating on just CAF and the OA FB pages is fine, but it doesn't "grow" the hobby the way or expose it to new people the way this site can... I wonder how many pure comics collectors who have never thought about OA would be interested in OAX, if he chose to market it to them from the POV of meeting all these artists.

This one hurts b/c I was the underbidder in September... from Bechara's update tonight

I get the sense that exclusive access to artists seems to be the main focus of the show, like the one in Lake Como

Thoughts?

"Air going out" is not "dead." The observation I am making is based on the high (as compared to the last 4 years) number of unsold Kirby pages on dealer sites, recent CC results and CLink results (below). Perhaps there is real validity to what others here have noted, i.e., the younger OA buyers just don't want Kirby and are putting their money elsewhere. Whether this is a cyclical "pause" in the Kirby market or something else is up for debate. BTW those splashes will do well, but how well? I'd be interested to know what you think they will go for and then compare that to the results. I don't think that Demon DPS cracks 30K in this market, unless someone is a maniac for Kirby krackle.