John E.

2 hours ago, SquareChaos said:

I don't really see the owner having an impact here - I mean, it isn't as if the authenticity of the piece is in question 

If provenance does have an effect, it's a tiny slice of why someone would bid high. No one is questioning the authenticity; I think jaybuck's point is that the piece has been pretty much in the hands of the creators all this time and the winner will be up there with "the royalty." It's kind of like buying the house that Frank Sinantra lived in.  But I'll restate, I have no idea how the original looks like and if it's an all pencil piece that's going to have a bigger influence than "provenance."

5 minutes ago, jaybuck43 said:

That's my understanding yes.

That's interesting. Yeah, I wouldn't know how the provence would affect the value. It may work in Kyle's favor to photograph the art hanging in his office and post it online. That might stir some emotional bidding. I don't know what Middleton's process is, but I'm dying to know how the artwork looks like. I mean if it was just a pencil piece, that might affect the final hammer price more on the lower end regardless of provenance. 

On February 26, 2017 at 9:07 PM, Hal Turner said:

I do wonder if the hobby might be a simpler joy for me if I only collected one character (i.e., Strong Guy), or one artist (say, Bruce Timm) or a limited series (such as 100 Bullets). It would focus my wandering eye, that's for sure. 

I've got all kinds of baskets. My OA diversification has nothing to do with investment value, though. There are probably three Strong Guy collectors in the world; enough Bruce Timm material out there that I'll never get back what I paid the dealer; and 100 Bullets has, like so many limited series, slowly faded away. I'll lose money when the time comes to sell, but so what?

It's been great fun.

 

I've entertained the same idea...to focus on one artist, like Bruce Timm or Alex Ross. And I really like your analysis and what would happen if you did.

I have an acquaintance that I run into at cons and with whom I talk art. He told me he had something like 12-14 pieces by Chris Bachalo. It seemed like he had various examples by Bachalo and was considering picking up something from Doctor Strange until he caught himself and said, "Well, maybe I have too much of him. And the market is beginning to soften." That's what got me thinking: how much is too much of an artist? I don't know the Bachalo market but if he bought pages for $1400 and could "only" get $1100 from them, then at a dozen he'd have $3600 loss. But that's in theory. Sure, the value of some of those pages might soften, but if he had one or two "Death" pieces, then those pieces are likely to pick up the slack. So at first, my misperception was that there is such as a thing as having too many of one artist; but if the artist is worth collecting, and you've started collecting him since the beginning, then pages from the artist's most popular/historical title is where all the equity is made. Unless you're dozen pages deep in an artist's worst work from his worst title, your portfolio is just as diversified as it would be collecting many different artists.

Just as an aside, trading a dozen pieces for one piece is similar to "putting all your eggs in one basket" I believe. Second, most art collectors have different interest and tastes and favorite, that I also believe that hardly anyone puts it all in one basket. Bill C. has an extraordinary collection of GOTG but he has other art, too.

5 hours ago, ESeffinga said:

Maybe I shouldn't have sold the old Deadman commission piece after all... hah!

John Pound does commissions??? 

58 minutes ago, jaybuck43 said:

No not yet.  I wonder if the provenance helps the price a bit.  Basically it's going from Joshua Middleton's Pencil to Craig Kyle (the "creator" of X-23) to the winner.  

So Craig Kyle is the current owner/cosigner?

Simpsons Comics #67 (2002), title page.

Wolverine and the X-Men (X2 film parody).

Graphite/blue pencil by Phil Ortiz

8-1/2" x 12-1/2" on thin animation paper

SOLD

If the original cover art for NYX #3 and NYX #4 sold within a year of each other, it wouldn't surprise me if #4 matched or exceeded the final hammer price of #3.

I'll certainly be following the auction.

8 hours ago, romitaman said:

seeing that i took it at 500 trade recently in a big deal I did last week...the markup is ZERO...Thanks

I should've been clearer to say that I don't assume it was you, Mike, that won the auction and is trying to resell it, as it could've been another buyer who could've taken it to you for consignment; that's why I wrote that it's on your site, but not that you did it directly, but I'll give you that my last sentence makes that assumption. Besides, that David Mack piece was in a recent public auction not forgotten by anyone who was watching or bidding. The sales history is still available on eBay. Anyone who followed the auction and sees it now on your site will draw the same conclusion, not just me. 

Can I hijack this thread a bit? So I've never traded art with a dealer, so I'm wondering who determines the value of your piece? Since I've never traded with a dealer, I imagine that the trade is usually lopsided in favor of the dealer. The one exception might be that $20 page you bought at a con 40 years ago that's now worth $2000. But what if we're talking about modern art? I guess that point I'm trying to get to is that if you trade in your $250 piece of modern art for $200 in credit, then what's the advantage of trading over just selling it on your own?

I just noticed that a really nice David Mack "Kraven Last Hunt" commission that (under)sold on eBay for $145 on 1/22/17 is now up at Romitaman (2/26/17) for $500. That's about a 3.5X markup.

Azrael #38, page 4.

Bane injects Azrael with Venom.

Pencils by Roger Robinson, inks by James Pascoe.

11" x 17".

SOLD eBay Link

Hi, everyone! 

I just pulled the trigger on my most expensive piece yet and I'm looking to sell some art to pay off the balance. These are all eBay listings with international shipping, too (If I didn't designate int'l shipping in the listing, let me know and I'll arrange it.) I'll be posting more work as I get to them!

Legends of the Dark Knight: Batman: Jazz #2, p. 7 by Mark Badger - SOLD

Sketch cover: Wolverine by Darrick Robertson (colors by Gaz Gretzky) - SOLD

Death Rattle with Eric Draven (The Crow) remark by James O'Barr - SOLD 

Thanks for looking! 

35 minutes ago, JadeGiant said:

Thank you! I don’t think it was the first book I read as I was reading (or looking at the pictures) a lot of comics from a very young age every month when I went to the barbershop with my dad. I also bought the 3-packs where the covers had been removed. As such, I would have read earlier issues but this was the first I pulled off a spinner rack and purchased. I remember leafing through it and before I realized what was actually happening in the issue it appeared that Hulk had killed the Avengers, wrecked Iron Man’s armor, and destroyed Thor’s hammer. I read the cover off the issue and appreciated it even more for the story and great art by Sal and Klaus. 227 through the early 230’s and the Cap crossovers are all-time favorite issues. Would love to track a page down in the Cap issues with the Hulk on it.

Ah! That issue sounds like a lot of fun. It's no wonder. I think I'll track down that issue.

Nice write up, Dave! The Hulk focus makes a lot of sense now. But why 227? First Hulk comic you ever read?

1. Alex Ross

2. Sam Kieth

3. Kelley Jones

4. Mike Allred

(I was going to put in the Hernandez Bros in the #4 slot, but I didn't because I just recently started to appreciate them. If I couldn't cheat, I would've chosen Beto over Xaime.)

2 hours ago, staffman said:

Haha.  Yeah.  I didn't think about that when I wrote the response.  Waiting 6 years or more is not really a "flip".

"Flipping" to me was always a fluid term. How fast must you turn a piece around in order to consider it a flip? A day? A week? A month? 90 days? A few years back I saw an eBay auction for an 11x17 illustration of a character who was going to appear in a Netflix show drawn by an up and coming artist. I thought it was something someone might want later. I put in a bid for $25 and it ended at $20 plus change. When that Netflix show aired, I resold it for $100...over a year later. So to me, flipping doesn't have a short timeline, but rather it needs two criteria: 1) intention to resell 2) for profit. Now I concede 6 years is something else. That's not a flip, that's an investment.

i think you can flip auctions, but you need prescience and patience. $20 isn't anything, but $200+? If you're already a budget collector that's a lot of money to lock up for the long term. 

Very nice piece! Congrats! Mike still has it...

Ha! Of course! Like Michael wrote, I used it to build my collection. Every once in a while I run into something under priced at a show that I can flip, usually from a comic dealer who doesn't know the OA market, but that's the only way to make the flip worthwhile, buying low and selling high(er). If there is an absurdly low BIN on eBay and you're the first to see it, then you can probably make some profit from it later. 

Generally, flipping is quite hard because you're likely to sell on an auction site and the fees will kill your margin. If you started now, you'd be paying a lot in "tuition" figuring out what sells and what doesn't. When you get it right you'll see that the returns are okay, but not life changing, and that you were better off just saving the money for the piece you really want. That's why I left that game. It's break-even. Maybe in the end, as I got better, I was 10-15% in the black?

You might be better off digging through comic long boxes at a show looking for overlooked gems if you're thinking of flipping. A comic already has a market--an ASM 300 already has a line of buyers with cash in their hands. An original page from the Green Team, not so much. 

Malvin must be working overtime to bring the haters out.

 

There are more than 60 unsold pieces of Jae Lee Bats/Supes art on AlbertMoy.com alone, and that only encompasses selected pages from a small handful of issues from the series. There must be thousands of unsold Jae Lee pages out there in total (not all on the website obviously) from all the series that he's worked on. Yes, the art is cool, but there's more supply than demand can ever meet. Like I said, you could incinerate most of it and few would even realize the art was missing. No one is going to miss one or even a hundred random pages that are inked over and no longer exist in their original form.

 

If anyone wants a good pencil-only Jae Lee example, there's more than enough to go around for everyone for now...and all of eternity. :whatthe:

 

You're speaking of Jae's work as a group and not really focusing on this one, unique, impossible to replace page such as most of the rest of the people here are. Sure, there are a lot of pages out there unclaimed (their list price may have something to do with that, just saying, but that's another conversation), but it doesn't change the fact that this page, that someone did buy, has been modified beyond repair.

Yes, it's impossible to replace that page, but it's not the only "Batman vs. Catwoman" Lee piece created, and if a collector is looking for an example, he or she can find another. I think Gene's point is that if you're looking for an example by Jae Lee, there's plenty out there with more than 60 pages available on Albert's site (albeit no A+ examples). Realistically, altering one Jae Lee page isn't going to cause ripples in the supply. Similarly, if I can add to my previous point, objections are raised because collectors entered the hobby on the premise that each page is unique and one-of-a-kind. In this respect, yes, what the OP did was sacrilege. But to Gene's point, this is one altered one-of-a-kind piece among a million one-of-a-kind pieces in the hobby. Is it really that special?

I think Gene makes a very valid point, but only if putting the cost of the inking (or coloring) aside. Run them side by side (unmolested vs. molested actual cost basis) for ROI...who knows. I'm not sure the OP will recover that premium (at the same ROI rate) on the pieces as it's now "enhanced", same as I'm not so sure the Conan situation would either. Maybe it just makes it more liquid?

Yeah, I'm reading two different conversations (like most threads). One is the ethics of altering original art; the second is how must is the value affected by the alteration.

Like eeewnuk pointed out, the market for Jae Lee's work is strong and this is a strong piece. If the owner decided to auction the page off tomorrow and I had to place a bet as to whether is would make money or lose money, I'd play it conservatively and bet that it'll lose a little bit of money because that's what modern art (art created in the last month to three years) does. But fifteen years from now...or fifteen years after death...I don't think the alteration will matter and the piece would end on a hammer price higher than the original "investment."

I feel that the reason so many objections are raised is because the OP had so many options to go with than to alter the original. I agree with this and thus why I would err on this side. But like Vodou pointed out, I'm not sure if I care so much to embellish something I already own. If I bought that pencil page, it's because I liked the pencil work on it. And I would certainly put the brakes on anyone trying to ink an original Kirby pencil piece; but this isn't Kirby we're talking about.

Great discussion. I choose not to be a hater and agree with Gene below.

[so, if someone wants Jae Lee to ink one of his countless penciled pages, the bottom line is who is really going to give a...hoot. All these guys create hundreds/thousands of pages of art. They may be nice, but, unlike in the vintage era, none of the pages are likely to be particularly memorable to the extent that anyone is going to be upset because it no longer exists in its original form. I say, no sacrilege here, knock yourself out - the inked page looks great/better and nobody's going to miss not having the original penciled version around.

For the record, I, for one, care about resell value, so I would rather err on the side of not touching the "original." I think 99% of collectors--the "Purists"-- fall in this camp. In his recent Felix Comic Art podcast, David Mandel stated that he hates it when original art is messed with. On the other hand, Andy Robbins, another respected collector in the hobby, retouched this page from Five Ghosts and I think it's an improvement. FIVE GHOSTS has its followers, but I hardly doubt this title, much less this page, is worth the tizzy over altering the original.

I'm a fan of Jae Lee and I'm waiting for the right Jae Lee piece to come along. I read his run on Batman/Superman. I saw when Albert Moy debuted those pages. When he did, the asking price of the choice pieces were $700-$800 (excluding splashes). That's a lot of money for a pencil-only piece. I can imagine what the price would be if they were published as inked pieces. $1200-$1500? If you read that run then you know that book was done in mostly silhouette or shadow and pure pencils just doesn't do justice for the collector. So I don't blame the OP for wanting it inked, especially if it only cost him $200 on top of the original price (would be curious to know what Jae charged to ink it). Again, if you're a Jae Lee fan, you know how masterful his brush strokes are...I really don't see how this page would lose value; and if it did, it wouldn't lose anymore value than any modern art sold at auction. If I were bidding on this piece, I'd be thanking the seller for doing something I couldn't bear to do myself.

Most of us here are familiar with the "penciled page/inks only" debate. The more liberal collectors argue that the "inks-only page" has value because that's the published image. The Purists will retort that it's not that valuable because the penciler never touched the page. Then the liberal collector will counter that you can't see the pencils on a vintage page anyway. For which the Purist will rebut, "But the original pencils are underneath the inks!" In the case of this Jae Lee piece, are the original pencils not underneath the inks?

These ads always make me want to cry. Especially when I see my personal Grail for sale for $125

Thank you for posting though. It's a great resource.

Wow, I remember that GPK! Cool piece despite the lousy resto job. I can't see it being worth anywhere close to the ask though.

 

$10k is a pie in the sky price, I think it's closer to $2-3k probably, in part due to the general valuation of trading card art coupled by the major damages (the missing COA isn't a factor).

I was a little stumped as to why you wrote $10K, but I see now the seller bumped the price from $7K or $8K that he originally had. I'd like to learn more about the GPK OS market but $10K seems really high just as $7K seemed high as well (for something that's been shredded to pieces And are those missing pieces?). I get that when you sell on eBay you already have to pony up 15%, but $10K seems like a nonstarter. If he really wants to get rid of it, then maybe $1K starting bid.

EDIT: I see now that those aren't pieces missing, but rather the reflection on the glass.

It is my understanding that Pedigree is very experienced in auctioning comic books, so I think they have the potential to become a viable source of art. But I am disappointed to see this auction play out so similarly to the last one. I'm hoping that Randy & Doug read this thread & address these issues internally.

 

Personally, I don't want to see an auction with marked up dealer inventory. I'd rather have a 30 lot auction filled with real items without reserves. If you want to make it more of an event thing, keep some of the marquee pieces (like the FF #23 splash) at crazy prices. But there shouldn't be more than a handful of lots like that per auction. Not if you want me to take you seriously, either as a seller or a buyer.

 

Believe it or not, I will be following some lots tonight. Not bidding, but following. The Allred Bats 66 cover is a nice example & currently it's at a buyable price. And that DD #1 page is pretty expensive at 90k, but I wouldn't be stunned if someone wins it. It's a real piece of comic history.

 

I agree; it's probably one of the top three in the series. It's a nice cover reinterpretation with a nice twist to it. If I had the money for it I would've done cartwheels knowing that it's on Pedigree and no one wants to bid on principle. For anyone who has the money, it's there for the taking. But alas, I don't have that kind of cash to spend

Great topic – love zipatone. I was entranced by zipatone when I started reading comics. I wanted to be a comic artist (as most of us probably) and always studied the art carefully. I had no idea about zipatone and thought that the artists were actually doing the shading by hand. It was both fascinating and demoralizing as I could obviously never duplicate the technique myself. Layton used it a lot in his early part of the Iron Man run with Romita Jr.

Plus one!

I think Eduardo Barreto uses it to great effect for the grip on a pistol's handle on this Batman page

John Severin use adds to the comedic effect on this Punisher satire