RabidFerret

He's on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/dan.green.16940599

The Walking Dead page ended at $3400 during the outage. Do they honor it? Or is there a super happy buyer and a super unhappy seller? 

Just now, malvin said:

The psylocke was re-used as a variant cover. Now I want to figure out if I can extrapolate the value of my sabretooth card art, which was also used as a variant cover from that finish 

 

Malvin 

Ahhhhhhh, that strangely makes sense.

$7900 for Jim Lee card art of Psylocke and Captain Britain seems insane to me. Especially with an Allstar Batman page going for only $2500.

4 hours ago, ESeffinga said:

I have a 40" x 40" Dave McKean oil and mixed media painting from his Nitrate series in a frame near my front door.

Dave did the original frame himself for these pieces, but after being on the wall for a few years, it started to warp. Now, for anyone not in the know about Dave's work, in certain pieces he likes to add stuff to the face of his pieces. In the case of my piece, it has sticks and dried leaves from his garden, as well as dimensional plaster, and whatnot. And the base are is actually about 3/4" thick board. So the piece is actually more like a 4" deep box frame.

At 40" x 40", the piece of regular museum glass was ridiculously heavy, and oversized. I ended up upgrading to the highest grade of oversized museum plexi on that piece I could get. It's been a bit of a test case for me, because I wasn't 100% sure about how it would do, given the high traffic area, and potential for scratching. FWIW, McKean had plexi on the original pieces as well, but he was also shipping them around the world for exhibitions, and again, the plexi is half the weight of the glass. I understand they can also present some cleaning challenges if one isn't careful.

Normally I'm ok with museum glass on the pieces that warrant it. I don't bother going that route on pieces that are interior walls with no windows or lighting that will cause glare. in those cases, just good UV glass is fine (for me). But this badboy gets a fair bit of glare on it, and you'd never even know anything was there. It was pricier than the glass for certain, but worth every penny. Maybe even more glare-free than my favorite museum glass. And the new frame job looks fab. Before, the original plexi was all glare, and made seeing the details of the work a challenge. Now it's like there's nothing between the art and the eye. I love that about a good museum plexi/glass.

That said, it's still a very very heavy piece, so I ended up hanging it with a z-cleat instead of the usual hooks and wire. That way it could go right into the studs with zero flex, or possibility of it being bumped off-level.

I could have sworn I had a picture, but I guess I don't. I can take one later if anyone is interested.

Very insightful! Thanks much! 

And thanks to everyone else who's been posting! This has been an extremely helpful thread.

I'm definitely going plexi now and I've pinged a few different framers to compare prices, even asking the Tru-Vue folks that make the nice plexi to send me a sample(free via their site).

Might be a few weeks until I get it done as I now have to decide on a frame and matte and find the time, but I appreciate the community for chiming in on this!

3 minutes ago, delekkerste said:

I recently had a major home renovation done that required moving all my art out temporarily.  One box fell over during the (temporary) move and the glass completely shattered on one piece (I bought that one framed, and mistakenly thought it was plexi and not glass).  Glass shards came within millimeters of damaging the piece.  In fact, the mat ended up scraped/damaged, but the piece itself survived intact - but just barely.  I was very, very lucky.

I've only ever gotten plexi for my framed art before (the only glass I have is from pieces that I bought already framed).  And, after this experience, I can tell you that I will never deviate from getting plexi on any future framing jobs.  I also once owned a piece that was damaged before I ever owned it (I no longer have it).  It had been framed in glass and hanging on the wall.  The owner and his (eventual ex-)wife got into a heated argument, she threw something at the painting, it fell, the glass broke, the piece got damaged.  

Bottom line:  earthquakes are not the only risk to your glass-framed pieces.

Excellent!! This is the kinda insight I was after(the fail stories more than the success ones). I'm definitely concerned about anything that could damage the piece, and I never even considered violent arguments as a risk. 

And the fact that you go with plexi in the first place is good to know. I feel like it's an expensive, but potentially worthwhile, precaution.

Thanks!

Howdy gang!

I know there are a few threads buried on here about framing but none of them seemed to hit on my concerns, so I wanted to reach out.

I got a new piece that is an absurd 30"x40" in size. It's painted with a bottom layer of gesso, layered with acrylic airbrush and colored pencil. 

It was a bit pricey so I want to frame it as best I can. 

The artist mentioned they always use museum plexiglass when they frame, in part because they live in California where they don't want things shattering after an earthquake.

I'm not too concerned with earthquakes, but I am nervous that at that size glass itself is more likely to break from normal movement(or if a bad wall anchor gives unexpectedly since this will weigh a ton).

The price difference is $250 for museum glass vs $750 for museum plexi.

It seems like both types provide good protection for the art, but I'm curious about real world experience.

Has anyone else framed something this big with either glass or plexi, and if so, were there problems over time? Has anyone used museum plexi and found it worth the 3x price?

Thanks for any thoughts:)

-j

48 minutes ago, delekkerste said:

I've won the majority of my auction wins by putting my max bid in ahead of time (usually a couple/few hours ahead) and letting it ride.  Most of the time, I can't be arsed to have my schedule revolve around lot closing times.   

90% of the time, it works every time, because most of the people who don't have a good handle on what to bid will have already tried to accelerate price discovery prior to the final few hours before the auction ends.  As such, the risk of someone bidding you up, walking away, having second thoughts and then coming back to bid more is minimized, because most people by that point are looking to snipe.  And, frankly, the bidders most likely to do so are probably not going to be in a great financial position to run something up on me anyway - it again comes down to someone being prepared to pay or not. 

I know people who are extremely paranoid that the auction houses will run up your max bid if you leave it in their system early.  These people, including some very close friends of mine, will literally not bid on an item if they can't be there to snipe (CLink) or bid live (Heritage) on a lot.  Yes, they would rather do without!  Personally, I trust the auction houses not to do so, and have won numerous lots well below my max bid.  Sure, I've been pushed to my max a number of times as well, but, I've often later learned who the underbidder was or otherwise have not discerned any pattern that would lead me to believe shenanigans are going on.  I have to believe that, at least for the Big 3 auction players in the hobby, they are not stupid enough to risk their franchises (plus civil suits, jail time or even physical harm) to do something like that.

That is my take, anyway.  

For me it comes down to how much I want the piece and how important it is. And which auction house it's on.

For the vast majority of art, I do exactly what Michael Douglas suggests, sometimes even throwing in my high bid on day 1 and letting it ride the whole auction. I've won quite a few auctions by being the first bidder and folks giving up early and moving on because they can't beat my day 1 max bid. But that's only for lesser stuff.

The big stuff I want, the real targets, I'll wait. For Heritage I'll bid live and plan my day around it. For Comiclink, usually in the last hour I'll throw in a bid. On eBay I'll use a sniping service and set my high bid earlier in the week.

On 6/10/2017 at 7:04 PM, cmaeditor said:

I wonder if it was the "cover published in Marvel Age right before Liefeld started on New Mutants. Rather than Cable, it introduced Cougar, who was later used in Youngblood.

As of last year McFarlane had that in his collection still.

2 hours ago, delekkerste said:

Hulk is on the ground on the cover.  

And it's not the Bruce Banner Hulk either - it's the Rick Jones Hulk. He had a different design from the later Banner Hulk with a thinner body and long hair.

It's been listed forever too, longer than 4 years. I recall this being up for a while before the Shamus auctions even.

2 hours ago, Bronty said:

Deadpool is an okay example too.    I don't know what the NM98 cover is worth now versus before the movie, but its gone up.    The seller can rightly point to 700m box office and show that this is the first appearance of a character that will have legs.

I actually tried this last year on the theory that the movie would help the art. I was wrong.

I had the opening DPS of NM98, a double page spread of Cable. It was one of the biggest Cable splashes Liefeld did in the series. Weak backgrounds and no huge guns and sadly no Deadpool, but still the only DPS in NM98.

Lesser Cable pages were selling for $2-3k for a page, a terrible DPS from XF1 sold for $9k, a decent Cable page from XF1 $4k.

I figured this piece being from NM98 would get a bump from the movie so I threw it into CL, timed to end after the movie opened. I figured this would go $4-10k+. CL agreed, even giving me an advance of $5k.

The movie came out, set crazy records, turned out to be really good, and even included an end credits scene where they say Cable will be in the sequel. How could you get a better situation than that??

The page sputtered and sold for $4k. Total faceplant. I had to send money back to CL.

Would a page with Deadpool on it have done better? Certainly. But given the timing and success of the movie, and the mention of Cable heading to the big screen, I would have thought a solid bump was likely.

Oops.

2 hours ago, NelsonAI said:

Wasn't Harley Quinn's first appearance a WB Batman the Animated Series cartoon?  Shouldn't all you speculators be chasing down the hundreds of animation cels that comprised her first showing? 

Cheers!

N.

I find it equally odd.

There were 5 Batman episodes HQ appeared in over a 1 year period of time before the comic came out. So the comic is Harley's 6th appearance, a year after she first appeared.

And to Michael Douglas' point, it was not drawn by the creator.

On top of that, it appears Harley may have appeared in a variety of other print and merchandise before BA12, including the Batman Adventures Coloring Book, the Batman Adventures 3D Game,  and Batman Almost Got ‘Im book: https://comicbookinvest.com/2015/07/16/harley-quinn-rarities/

It feels like the investment market wanted a first appearance to exist and forced one, even though the character was already well established.

Ok, I'm sorry but i have to argue against this "cornerstone" concept:)

A cornerstone can only apply to art you already own. The entire meaning of the word is that its part of the core foundation of something that already exists. You don't say "here's my list of wanted cornerstones". Nobody builds a house and then goes cornerstone shopping!

The word grail is often used to indicate something wanted as much as something owned. "That piece is my grail I want above all others. Bob has my grail. That's a grail-like piece. My grail is listed on Heritage." 

It sounds silly to say "That piece is my cornerstone I want above all others. Bob has my cornerstone. My cornerstone is listed on Heritage". The only one that could fly is "That's a cornerstone-like piece".

I'm firmly in the camp of there being "one true grail". The single piece I wanted above all others, more than every cover, pinup, complete book, and absurd piece of art on the planet.

You could offer me the art for Action #1, AF15, FF1, or any other truly iconic piece and I'd pass. I would(and did) pay an obscene amount for it that didn't connect to any real market value. And by the same notion, it's something I will never sell no matter the price. It's a piece I will hold for life and have in my will to donate to a museum afterwards.

That said, I've always thought there needs to be a term for the tier below that. The pieces I would still love to find, the crown jewels I covet above all the little diamonds and gold baubles of the world. Those pieces I'd pay far over market value for, but there is a limit to their value, and they could certainly be pulled away for truly obscene amounts of money.

My grail is priceless.

Thank you!! Much appreciated:)

I have the Soethbys hardcover and love flipping through it on occasion. I was briefly tempted to buy this outright, but then realized it would likely just make me sad to see all the great art!

The lot I was trying to find out about was #49, the Rob Liefeld X-Force piece:) They list the sale price but no picture. 

http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot/rob-liefeld-an-early-splash-page-depiction-2329367-details.aspx?from=searchresults&intObjectID=2329367&sid=17e9fb27-e036-4e34-bef7-0f565de8f330

There are a handful of great old Liefeld's I've never seen surface and am now curious if this is one of them:)

Does anyone have a copy of this catalog around? October 1992 Christie's. There was one lot I was curious about, but Christie's website only lists the title, not the image. Not worth buying the whole catalog on eBay for curiosity, haha.

If anyone has this and could snap a photo for me, please PM me:)

Thanks!

Anyone out there seen these around or got any? He did like 25 covers and I never see any of them...

56 minutes ago, Overthetopinc said:

Why do people only associate Todd's writing with 14 issues of Spider-Man. What about the 200+ issues he wrote of Spawn! That stuff is amazing!!

My larger concern isn't Todd's writing as much as how bad the original movie was:)

17 minutes ago, Ironmandrd said:

What methodology did they use to determine what goes on Thursday vs Friday?  At a glance, I saw two Featured pieces by the same artist for two different titles and they are on different days (and they are actually from the same consignor).  And it wasn't alphabetical by title as the one later in the alphabet is on Thursday. 

Based on my tracked lots, I'd say money.

The most expensive stuff seems to be going first. The Fritz the Cat, the unused Byrne 137, the Frazettas, etc. The 5-6 figure pieces.

Everything I'm tracking on the 20th seems like 4 figures at most.

I just realized that this art auction is split over 3 days! May 18, 19, and 20. I don't recall ever seeing that before? And with the Sunday Auction following, this means we have 4 straight days of art auctions closing on the same site.

So convenient...

12 minutes ago, Bill C said:

The 1990s were an interesting decade to me comic wise, as 1990-1992 were some of my favorite years for comics. So many books that I loved were going- but by 1993 there was a sharp downturn, and most books (with specific creative teams) I was into stopped going for various reasons. 1993-1999 has almost nothing of interest for me.

Exactly! Could not agree more.

What I saw was Image starting the 90s with all this excitement and energy coming off great stories on X-Men and X-Force and Spider-Man, but the Image crew couldn't deliver consistently or with good stories, so the readers flailed.

Marvel and DC were foolishly trying to mimic Image and used gimmicks to try to regain readers instead of good stories.

So the industry simply lost those readers to other hobbies with better content.

Also likely why things like Bone succeeded, because it was the rare good story put out consistently.

1 hour ago, WoWitHurts said:

The first Image books were basically published and colored (except Spawn which was done by Steve Olif using Codd-Barret) through Malibu comics.  Malibu ran some ads for their books.  Flip through some Dinosaurs for Hire and the like.

Oh cool! I forgot about Malibu! That's a great idea to dig into. That would be that first year too. Great idea, thanks!