Because COC19 is the only decent comp, its also hard to handicap whether it did sell cheap last time. Certainly its striking to see a 174k sale for the original art in 2020 next to a 102k sale for a 9.6 in 2021 (and later a 72k sale on a 9.2 in 2022). The margin of the art's results over the result of hg copies is so very slim.
That doesn't mean anything is wrong with that if that's where the supply and demand falls, but it does suggest that perhaps the 2020 sale was a bit soft. Or maybe not, we'll see, but I'll stick with 500 for now. That cover is one of those covers that jumped out at you when picking up the Photo Journals for the first time, and I'm guessing that translates into some additional bidding for the OA, but this is a very very difficult piece to predict. It could be 200 and it could be 650 and it could be anything in between, IMO.