John E.

Another reason why “Complete Stories” should be a CAF “Best Of” category.

Here ya go his asking price on Facebook is 2k

I saw the live action on that V cover. Wow. I was an early bidder on the Kupperberg Spider-Ham. If I’m not mistaken didn’t that sell on eBay late last year? I was hoping to get it way under sale price but when it came up all the proxy bids kicked in higher than my max and before I could even focus—whoosh—bidding closed. Big lesson learned. Funny how all the other lots move slow af until mine comes up

Sorry! That was meant to be tongue-in-cheek!

I read the first two volumes but I don’t remember names (which character is named Manhattan, by the way?) The character whose head is a skull in a jar seems to fetch a premium.

Thanks for bringing this up. A lot of art from the roster seemed to have been sold at once. These were pages published around 2013-2015. A lot of these were pieces sat on the site for a while before the site got hot, so I remember a lot of the asking prices. Some pieces performed well like Tradd’s Ghost Rider cover and Aaron Conley’s Battleworld Wolverine pieces. Other took losses but not too badly. Like $200 pieces going for $120. Ultimately, what didn’t help was so much was everything being sold at once. And it doesn’t instill confidence in new art...buy what you will still love in 5 years folks. There’s nothing new I’m saying here, in fact, I think someone here recently said that the persons involved in the first sale of art are probably the ones who will ever make the most money out of it. Lastly, that was a lot of Manhattan Projects pages sold at once which didn’t help with prices and there’s still some in the current auction. As an addendum, I was never interested in MP original art and I didn’t pay too much attention to original prices or the hammers. Maybe these current ones broke even, maybe they made a little bit of profit. It just didn’t seem to me like they sold for multiples of the original price

Grape! An SSB 2 winner has come forward and is holding a press conference right now!

This 👆🏽

My freshman year college roommate would invite his high school circle of friends to come down and party with us every now and then. One of their friends was nicknamed “Twan.” So I’ve known the score since day one 😉

Not all art, and I’d err that most framed art, is framed in a conservation manner. This is to say that you don’t know if the art has been glued to the matte (with a non-archival glue, I’m sure) and on a acid matte and now you have 1) damaged art; 2) art that is troublesome to reframe (because now you’re stuck with a cheesy matte) 3) a conservation bill you weren’t expecting. Many (most, all??!) sellers don’t disclose how the art was framed in their listings, or just don’t know at all. Then you have to pay a premium to have that cheesy, bulky frame shipped to you.

1. Price 2. Framed art

I saw that posting, too. I thought, “Isn’t that the one Malvin was selling dirt cheap? I don’t remember it being attributed to Dillon. Maybe it’s not the same one.” No way that’s Steve Dillon. I don’t buy that it’s his line work without provenance or an editor confirming it. That’s the thing, with Steve gone you can’t get a confirmation, which can also be exploited.

Fire that editor.

Very nice! Congratulations!

For painted commissions, $5k. I only know that because I clicked on the CAF link yesterday.

I read Identity Crisis too in 2005 and enjoyed it. That said, I have no desire to get a page. I don’t think that event has an impact on DC today (though I can be wrong). IIRC, I was looking for some pages and someone had some for sale from a key issues at ridiculous prices. Something like $3k a page. Pricing like that isn’t going to create a market. Ultimately, if an IC page isn’t properly labeled I don’t think I would recognize it if I see it.

This is exactly what I’m talking about. Once, I sent the entire payment via PayPal and it was refunded to me after 5 minutes stating there was another guy who said, “Hey, a long time ago you said you’d sell it to me if you ever let it go!” This was my grail and the new buyer just added it to his bucket of pages from the same artist and run. Putting it in writing and PayPal don’t mean a thing. As far as cover, I don’t believe in outing ppl as a knee-jerk reaction, but trust me, word gets around.

That Knuckles jumped didn’t it? It very low throughout the auction. On July 7, it was still at $1,250. So deceiving.

True, true. I used to see this happen on eBay frequently, though not too often lately.

One man’s D*ck Dillion is another man’s Steve Dillion. I was confused too, thought he was talking about Steve, until I figured it out. Doesn’t help that you can’t spell kciD without getting flagged. And every time I see “KJ” for Killing Joke I think we’re talking about Kelley Jones. “Batman KJ” doesn’t help either.

There's no hard fast rule but you have to be able to read the room too. If someone APPROACHES YOU with a piece asking for $3k and you say, "Well, can do $2800," then I think that's reasonable (although that doesn't guarantee a done deal). If YOU APPROACH someone on CAF for a piece that's NSF and they say, "Ok, $3100," and you counter with $3k, I think that's reasonable, too; however, you also risk killing the deal. They are not at all obligated to sell to you. The bad manners in this case would be if you offer half. Because currently the market is hot (or perceived as hot, because not everything is) you have to understand what you're willing to spend on a certain piece and if you're to pay a little extra over your comfort level to secure it. Here's the thing you're not considering: you cold call a piece; the seller says I'll sell for $3100. You say, well I can do $2800, but I need a month to pay (or whatever). The seller agrees, but now has time to think about the deal. They may 1) renege on the deal and you leave with nothing; 2) shop it around and if they find a buyer that is willing to meet their original price or beat it, they will sell it behind your back. This has happened to me and my friends more than once. So, you really have to consider if it's even worth countering, but it goes back to being able to read the room.

I got that email too. Pretty disappointed too. I do wonder why. I can’t help to think that bids weren’t high enough but who really knows. I thought they were where they should be given recent comps.

I don’t know anything about the cel market (though a little bit about the Simpson art market), but I will say that the Mr Plow episode is a classic. If someone held a gun to my head and asked me to name all the classic Simpsons episodes Mr Plow would come in at #2 or #3 But at $24k? Wow. Wonder what an actual Mr Plow cel would fetch?

There is an active thread right now called “Buying Something You Don’t Like” that either legitimizes FOMO or completely voids it. I can’t tell which.

Come to think of it, this happened to me too. I won, I think, one bid increment under my max. 🤔