RabidFerret

18 hours ago, zhamlau said:

As a 7 year old parts of that movie both scared me and made me want to jump around the living room. I have such memories of that film. I knew I wasn’t getting all the jokes but I caught enough to know it was actually funny. 
 

great pick up!

Thank you:)

I've rewatched it a few times recently and continue to find more jokes! It holds up well:) And I still contend the ending is as good as any movie.

8 hours ago, ESeffinga said:

I'd shudder to watch it now (looking at you Beastmaster and Krull), but I remember sitting though this one more than two or three times, back in the day.

Beastmaster! Yes!!

There was a great contingent of weird and/or cheesy scifi and fantasy in the 80s:)

18 minutes ago, Brian Peck said:

I WANT!!!!!!!!

Best page from Rick and  Al's run on the series.

By far the single most asked about piece in my collection.

A strange theme I found in my collection was trying to collect art from artists that don't sell their work.

1) Todd McFarlane

2) Rob Liefeld

From Locke & Key: Keys to the Kingdom #1, pg 3 by Gabriel Rodriguez and Joe Hill.

13 hours ago, gumbydarnit said:

With this new tax greatly impacting the way people upgrade through trades... would fewer trades mean that there will be more competition for straight cash sells, driving up prices OR will it take the wind out of collectors sails, and the loss of the trading aspect of hobby slow down enthusiasm and drive prices down OR are the future prices unaffected by the trading tax all together?

I suspect the changes will mostly affect auctions and cause people to be a little more thoughtful on pulling the trigger on any high-end pieces where they'd need to sell art to finance it. It'll have to be must-own stuff, as opposed to nice-to-haves.

On the flip side, trading I'd expect to increase, especially three-party trades where someone wins an auctions only for the purpose of trading it to someone else in a prearranged deal.

3 hours ago, delekkerste said:

This thread makes me sad.  

1 minute ago, Jay Olie Espy said:

Yeah this has bummed me out all day too. I have a considerable modest collection compared to you all, but it’s one I’ve put together “upgrading.” I ask myself now, what’s the point? Or I think that maybe I should wrap up this circus especially as my toddlers are growing and new costs are arising. I’m small potatoes but this sure doesn’t feel like a hobby anymore.

I'm sorry if I bummed anyone out by starting this thread:( I certainly wasn't trying to...

I was simply hoping to understand the changes to the tax law and make sure I don't shoot myself in the foot.

Upgrading and trading are how I built my collection over the last 20 years and the last thing I want to do is accidentally stick myself with a costly tax bill because I swapped one piece for another without realizing the repercussions:(

8 hours ago, delekkerste said:

Regarding the deductibility of losses, if you held the collectible as a personal asset, losses are not deductible at all. However, if you held the collectible as a capital asset (investment), losses can definitely be netted against your collectibles capital gains (I am not sure if it can be deducted against other non-collectibles capital gains or up to the $3K limit against ordinary income - check with your accountant).  If you are buying big ticket items from auction houses, it's pretty easy to make the case that you are buying capital assets. 

This is a very helpful tidbit!

But it reminds me of another aspect of claiming a collectible as an investment - isn't there a stipulation that says in order to claim it as an investment you must be willing to sell it? I seem to recall a caveat that if you squat on a collectible indefinitely (and refuse to sell it even when profitable offers are made) that you are a collector, not an investor.

Theoretically at least, it seems like if you're a black hole and never sell, then you couldn't claim art as easily as an investment.

8 hours ago, delekkerste said:

 As for the 1031 exchange, yes, it is gone for collectibles. I know at least one prominent collector who never declared capital gains on his sales in the past, as his argument was that he was doing like-kind exchanges when he rolled that money into other art. The problem, of course, being that he didn't actually file the paperwork for a 1031 exchange when it was valid, so, that's not going to hold up under the scrutiny of an audit.  That said, most 1031 exchanges are when you sell an appreciated asset for cash (thus triggering a realization event for capital gains) and then use that cash to buy a like-kind asset (then file the paperwork so you can carry over your basis and defer the capital gains tax liability). 

"Triggering a realization event" is a great phrase:)

This goes back to my original concern - the ability to upgrade a piece or chase a grail that ends up on Heritage where trading is not an option and you are forced to include a cash step.

But your point about the paperwork is spot on (and somewhat hysterical) - I can't imagine most folks ever did that! So as far as life in the trenches, maybe nothing has changed if you didn't file the paperwork in the first place? 

8 hours ago, delekkerste said:

But, now I am reading online that people seem to think that, after the recent tax changes, it is taxable? If so, I think that is TERRIBLE tax policy. First, if I trade you a Miller Daredevli page for a Byrne X-Men page, seriously, the govt. can just sod off - philosophically, I don't see how it's any of their business to collect thousands of dollars of taxes (assuming a low cost basis on both) when no money changed hands and the items were substantially similar.  Generally speaking, in tax law, it requires the exchange of cash to trigger a tax liability (with the barter exception, though, that is not trading like-for-like).

There are lots of things that are terrible tax policy, but I don't think we're allowed to opt out because we don't agree with them 

8 hours ago, delekkerste said:

Second, if I trade you a page for a page...what price are we using to ascertain our tax liability (since no cash actually changed hands)???  Let's say both of our cost bases are $5K for each page, and that FMV on each is $20K.  So...we each have to pay tax on $15K in gains for swapping the pages in our portfolio?  What if we just said they're worth $5K each?  What if we claimed they're worth $2K each and both took $3K capital losses??  It's just stupid, unfair and ultimately unenforceable in most cases. We should be dealing in reality - wait for cash to exchange hands. Regardless of what the law says, that *should* be the trigger to realize capital gains so you don't have this arbitrariness that I just described.  It would be wholly inconsistent if ABC company can buy XYZ company for billions of dollars in stock and not trigger a penny of capital gains tax liability but two friends can't swap one Miller-for-one Byrne page in an art portfolio without triggering $30K in combined capital gains.  

There are a lot of stupid and unfair things in the tax policy that don't match up from one side of the room to the other.

The whole idea that like-kind exchanges applied to real estate and livestock is laser-focused and seems specifically lobbied for by those folks. Part of the argument against it applying to collectibles seemed to be that real estate and cows helped encourage commerce, whereas collectibles do not (which is absurd when you consider how many people Heritage employs). That same argument seemed to be why they don't allow offsetting losses.

Yet gambling does. You can go drop $10k in losses at a casino one night, then use that to offset $10k in gains the next night. So gambling is somehow something that helps the economy, but art collecting doesn't? Silly. 

In fact, I even talked to a friend yesterday asking whether one could argue that art collecting itself is a form of gambling:) Certainly seems as addictive...

8 hours ago, delekkerste said:

I'll ask my accountant when I talk to him later this month to see if he knows. But, regardless of what he says, I don't see how it makes any sense to report gains on trades where no money is changing hands.  Make sure you report every penny that gets paid to you in an art deal if it hits your bank account - the first thing the IRS will do in an audit is go over all your inflows and make sure you have accounted for every cent of it.  But, a trade deal?  C'mon. So when my 13-year old self was trading Wade Boggs rookie cards for Cal Ripken rookie cards, I'm meant to have been filing a Schedule D on my parents' tax return? I don't care what the laws are, that is absolute effing nonsense and no one should comply with such stupidity. 

Please ask and post as I'm sure your accountant is much better than my accountant:)

10 hours ago, The Voord said:

If deals are done in private, why declare anything . . . who's to know?  I live in the UK, so don't profess to know how the American tax systems work.

The concern was much more about when cash is involved; for instance winning a piece on Heritage and then needing to sell things to pay for it.

I was recently Googling around about the tax implications of selling a costly piece of art to finance another one, and was surprised to discover that as part of the 2017 tax changes there was a provision that stopped allowing collectibles to utilize the 1031 Like-Kind Exchange law to trade art for art.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesfinancecouncil/2018/06/04/the-art-of-the-tax-free-exchange/

As I understand it, this is how collectibles(artwork) are now meant to be taxed:

- You pay taxes on any profits from your base price, even if you are trading it for another item of equal value. 

Example: I buy a piece of art for $100 and keep it for a decade. Its value rises to $1000. I trade it for another piece of art by the same artist from the same book that is also worth $1000. Even though this is an exchange of two pieces of equal value, I am now expected to pay taxes on that $900 in gains.

This is in addition to what already existed:
- Collectibles do not have the benefit of long term capital gains, but are instead taxed at 28%. (UPDATED: Taxed at up to 28%, depending on your tax bracket.)
- You cannot declare losses against collectibles, but must pay taxes on profits. (UPDATED: It sounds like valuable artwork may be classified as a capital asset, in which case you can offset losses.)

Example: I bought two pieces of art for $1000 each. Piece A dropped to a value of $1, while piece B rose to a value of $1999. Together they are still worth the $2000 originally spent, but if I sold them both, I'd be expected to claim none of the losses on the piece dropping $999 in value, while I would be expected to pay 28% taxes on the $999 in gains, meaning my $2000 sale would only net me $1720.

So first off, am I reading all of this correctly? Are there any tax folks in the crowd that can confirm this is accurate?

And if so, what the heck does everyone do now that you can't sell art to offset new purchases without incurring tax liabilities? 

Are they no longer selling art? Are they only doing private trades? Are folks declaring themselves dealers and marking art as investments?

This seems like a huge change to the hobby that will stifle art swaps and upgrades.

The extreme example would be winning something off Heritage for $20k and then needing to sell $26k in art to cover the tax liability. (And if you sent Heritage the art to sell, this means you'd need a final price over $30k to offset Heritage premiums and taxes.)

Any thoughts?

-j
 

(NOTE: I updated this post based on comments below so as not to accidentally lead anyone astray if they didn't keep reading. Also, please remember this is a chat board and not a forum of tax professionals, so take it all with a grain of salt.)

Three nice pages from Linda Medley's Eisner-winning series Castle Waiting are listed on Heritage's Sunday Auction this week. 

All 3 pages are from Volume 2 of the series and come with prelims. All pages are signed by Linda.

As a fan of the art form, these are very unique pages since Linda would overdraw the panel, then digitally add panel borders and crop them. This means the originals have more art than actually appeared in the published book! Very unique.

If anyone's been after a page, here's your chance to get one:)

https://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic-art/linda-medley-castle-waiting-v2-7-panel-page-and-preliminary-original-art-with-printed-image-total-3-/a/121909-11166.s

https://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic-art/linda-medley-castle-waiting-v2-7-panel-page-and-preliminary-original-art-fantagraphics-200-total-2-/a/121909-11167.s

https://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic-art/linda-medley-castle-waiting-v2-7-panel-page-and-preliminary-original-art-fantagraphics-200-total-2-/a/121909-11168.s

Thanks everyone for your thoughts! I appreciate it! 

Sounds like we're all generally on the same page.

Hopefully Heritage is willing to listen:)

-j

42 minutes ago, vodou said:

Is it production or original? Better yet, show us...

It’s original art that comes along with a color guide.

I could post the art, but this was meant more as a general question and not specific to one auction/example.

Based on your comment it sounds like you’d approach each piece on its own merits?

If that’s how most people view Heritage that would answer my question and make me confident that it would be given a fair shot.

My concern is whether there are others who won’t even look at anything with the word production in it.

-j

Howdy gang,

While the whole 'production art' topic has been beaten to death with regards to eBay, I'm curious if people's attitudes extend to places like Heritage?

I gave them a piece for an upcoming auction and they are insisting on using the word 'production' in the title, which to me is a huge red flag that will scare bidders away, thereby ensuring a lower hammer.

The attitude from Heritage is that they have never heard a complaint about this term and see no reason to change it.

So what are peoples thoughts? Does the word 'production' scare you off on Heritage as well? Or are people more forgiving with Heritage and it's only eBay that gets people's ire?

-j

22 hours ago, Bird said:

well Happy Birthday to you! Mark Bright? Somebody get me a doctor! 

Doc' Ferret here, happily looking for more Mark Bright Iron Man art! And Bright Iron Man covers from 200-230s! Ping me if you got em!

1 hour ago, aardvark88 said:

Does not make any sense at all. wtf.

I won it. Today is my birthday and I really like Mark Bright Iron Man art:) It’s not easy to find great examples. The only thing in the entire auction I targeted.

Anyone got a Mouse Guard Fall piece they'd consider selling? If so, ping me:) 

Linda Medley's glorious Eisner-winning series Castle Waiting has been going strong for more than 20 years, a tale about the castle sleeping beauty abandoned when she ran off with the prince, and the people who now live there.

Linda recently opened the vaults and sold a couple of complete chapters of original art off to fans to split amongst themselves. A couple of us bought Volume 2, Chapter 8, a very Chess-heavy story and picked out some of our favorite pages. The remaining ones we're offering up to everyone else:)

Linda's later work is very unique in comics - she draws bigger than she needs. You'll notice on all the below pages there are no panel borders; she add them later as she crops and shifts things around on the page.When you compare to the printed page you'll often see the original contains lots of extra art!

Additionally, all of these pages come along with the full pencil prelim she drew!

All the below pages are $150/each. IM me for info.

Page 8:

Page 9:

Page 12

Page 13:

Page 14:

Page 16:

Page 17:

Page: 18:

Page 19:

4 hours ago, Carlo M said:

The easiest is the third one: quality of page.  4/4 of an interior with the main character (or characters for team books), action, costumes, etc. makes it to A.

I don't think this is quite so cut and dried. I'm very much in agreement with MichaelDouglas that there are far fewer A pages than people think. And oftentimes it's about the content more than costumes or action. The KJ page with Joker shooting Barbara has no costumes in it and the Joker is wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Another example would be the Punisher 10 cover by Whilce, an iconic and memorable A-level cover, but it's of the Punisher's back.

Take Art Adams' 3 issue run on Fantastic Four 347-349. Excluding covers, I would argue there are only 4 A-level pages, 1 B+ page, and then 33 in the B/B- range. The B pages would mostly fall into the description of 'costumes, action, etc', but they're also all roughly interchangeable, and whether you get this B piece or that B piece, the merits are splitting hairs. But those handful of A-level pieces stand out so much, that if you gave 100 people first pick of the art, the vast majority would take those 4 pieces.

My view has always been that there are A-level pieces for every artist, every book, every title, etc. - but that they are few and far between and not always worth anything. There are absolutely A-level pieces from Quasar and Ravage 2099 and Darkhawk, but they aren't in the same financial world as A-level pages from DKR.

At the end of the day, it's a stew made up of a variety of factors, each of which can weigh strongly in different cases. In one case it's weighed by the title, in another the artist, or another the impact. There may be 10 factors we could combine to create a complex algorithm of page quality, but there would always be unexpected exceptions and times where that horrible title and bad artist and weak character somehow churn out an A-level piece, or when an amazing artist on a great book with iconic characters somehow has nothing but B pages.

7 hours ago, PhilipB2k17 said:

All that said, I still didn't buy it because the asking price was too high (in my mind). I have no doubt that heavy hitters like Gene (understandably) don't think this page rates. Gene is collecting Dave Stevens covers, and the like, so his standards for what constitutes A level and B level are at a different stratosphere from the ham and eggers like me. A Killing Joke page - ANY killing joke page - is an "A" page to us, because it's way out of our league. Now, in the hobby as a whole, maybe that's not true. But it depends upon where you sit.

In any case, that's just my two cents. Your mileage at vary. 

Killing Joke as a 'book' is an A-list book.

But that does not mean every page is an A-list page, regardless of your finances.

If the best you can afford is the worst page from an A-list book, that does not make it an A-list page.

It's almost a combination lock, right? This page that just sold was an A-B page, meaning an A book and a B page within that book.

By comparison the Cap Annual piece that was posted may be a C book but a B page, so it's more of a C-B piece.

The Joker shooting Barbara page from Killing Joke would be an A-A piece.

You could even go a step further and include the artist as well.

Page 1 of KJ could be an A-B-A piece if you consider Bolland an A artist.

The Cap piece may be C-B-D.

And so on...

2 hours ago, Bronty said:

no one is asking for a description of what a comp is.

You put the word in quotes, which seemed to indicate you were unsure of the word's meaning or doubtful of it's authenticity.

2 hours ago, Bronty said:

How about any description at all?   Some of these pieces have almost nothing said about them.

Sure, of course a more detailed description would be nice. Agree 100% and I'd love to see one.

But isn't that the case for most dealer websites? Here's an $85k piece on Albert's site with the same amount of information and no description: http://www.albertmoy.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=15039&ArtistId=503

2 hours ago, Bronty said:

As for the Escape piece, that's all well and good IF you notice the date as I did.   And if you don't, and mistakenly think its vintage?

At what point is the responsibility on the buyer? Struzan didn't do a movie poster for Escape, so why the assumption it's vintage? If I see a Byrne Wolverine drawing I don't automatically assume it's from 1980, right?

6 hours ago, ESeffinga said:

It's the usual "buyer beware". But like I said before, given the prices involved on most of these, you'd think they'd post a bit of their own due-dilligence and list some of what these things are used for. There's only 2 explanations for not intentionally doing it that I can think of. 1. Laziness. 2. Hoping some dope with big bucks comes along and thinks he's buying THE art for the original releases or whatever, and drops the dosh thinking he's the smartest guy in the room.

I agree that the buyer should be doing their homework before buying expensive art, but there are plenty of other explanations beyond laziness and deceit. As mentioned above, many dealer websites do not list descriptions, so they could have simply looked at existing art websites and followed their example. There could also be limitations in how their database was designed. Maybe they didn't add a description field initially and the title field is capped at 100 characters?

My point with all of this being simply that there is no reason to suspect the worst of people. The Struzans took down most of their artwork years ago and it's never been listed through a gallery before. Enjoy the opportunity, limitations and all:)