John E.

Thank you for this. I was wondering myself but didn't know where to start. It'd be great to have a "Highest Paid" list for comic art all the way to Top 100 like they do for Hollywood films. I'm curious to know what art is in the $300k Club, etc. Has anything sold in the $500K range? Where does that DKR splash that Dave Mandel bought fall in this?

Heck, nobody even knows who the inker on that page is

For that price, Heritage better get on a plane and hand it to me at my front door.

It seemed like two bidders to me. Someone correct me if I misinterpreted, but when the lot got to around the $1.5M mark, one bidder would hesitate going to the next increment, then when they decided “screw it, let’s do it,” the other bidder didn’t hesitate at all to raise them. They did this for a while. It just seemed to me that the eventual winner had no spending limit and was going to go as high as it needed to go.

I'm so glad I stuck around to see history in the making. Secret Wars #8, p. 25 worth more than an Action 1 6.0. I wonder what the ripple effect will be for OA?

You pretty much got the collage elements in panels 3 and 5 right. They appear to be photocopies glued to the panel. The V in the last panel looks like original art to me as the gray tone doesn’t match the tone in the collage elements. “Matted out” means it has a matte ready for framing, but HA is primarily using it to describe the size of the “art.” According to their description it is the matte that is fading. However, if ambient light was able to fade the matte, I would expect that the live area of the art be a different tone than the margins if you removed the matte.

It’s hard to give a valuation without knowing what is on the page. It could range anywhere from the low four figures to low five figures. If you’re looking to move it, your best bet is at auction. A couple of Jill Thompson pieces from Sandman #41 just sold in the high four figures and low five figures.

I would have opted for the cover of GI Joe 21. Otherwise, I’m guessing it’s because it’s part of “R.I.P.”, the classic Grant Morrison storyline. To me those covers, done in the late 2000s, were the last of the good covers by Ross. I do not dig his Marvel Now covers from the 2010s. And, y’know, it’s Batman. I believe the highest paid Alex Ross art was the Batman cover to “War on Crime” for about 100k last year (it also broke the record for the most expensive head shot). Maybe HA is thinking lightning will strike twice (Batman Art by Ross is highly sought after after all)? But it should be sitting in the low 5-figures by now. And lastly, Alex Ross artwork is meant for covers and it’s pretty nice to see a blown up version on the catalog vs the smaller standard cover.

Per usual, a lot of stuff I’m tracking is deceptively low. But what’s hard for me to believe is that the Alex Ross Batman 677 cover has been sitting at 3300 despite making the cover of one of the catalogs.

It worked. Thanks!

Can I get a link to your CAF? I’m interested in character-focused galleries.

Luckily, the complete art for AF15 exists Next time I’m in DC I’m for sure going to the LoC and get some use out of my tax dollars!

I imagine that $900 in shipping is the result of the heavy weight of the statues but that number still sounds criminal. I have considered moving on to more affordable, less stressful hobbies other than OA, like putting together a collection of vintage Joe figures or Transformers, etc. l then stop to think about the clutter, the weight, and what kind of art $1000 could buy me.

Thank you. That makes a lot of sense.

I with you on this. I read quite a few financial articles on the 1099-k and read what the IRS has on the website. I understand it, but I don’t understand it. So even if you deduct expenses like mileage and shipping costs, does that mean you can’t take the standard deduction? How can you use the “Yard Sale” rule on an eBay 1099-k? How are you going to differentiate between the sale of a used household good (which should be excluded from taxation) and a collectible (which, if it made profit, should be taxed like a liquidated stock) made in the same 1099-K? Why can’t the money used from a sale of art be rolled over into more art so it can have a tax protection status like real estate? The only scenario l see is paying full taxes on the gross. I know people here have deducted expenses, but it sounds like a headache for the hobbyist.

Up until yesterday I was a regular seller on eBay for 8 years selling a mix of collectibles and household goods, and man, it has really affected the way I see the value of things. I don’t consume a lot because l understand the lack of resale on a lot of this stuff. Whereas in the distant past l used to justify frivolous purchase because if it didn’t pan out I could always throw it eBay. Now I look at something at the store and estimate it’s resale value and how much it costs to ship and just put it back on the shelf. Case in point are DVDs (don’t hold value) and bulky toys (not cost effective when it comes to shipping). Also men’s dress shirts (for starters they flood secondary markets like thrift stores and chic second-hand clothing stores). That’s how I justify the money I dump into OA; outside of that I don’t buy a lot of junk. It makes it that much harder for my wife to shop for me for birthdays etc because she doesn’t see me buy things.

UNPUBLISHED Pre-Knightfall Bane (2014). Art by Travis Charest.

PUBLISHED Sandman Mystery Theater #42, p. 16. Art by Guy Davis

PUBLISHED Batman: Saga of the Dark Knight, card #84 (Skybox, 1994). Pencils: Graham Nolan; inks: Scott Hanna

Thank you. That was quite helpful.

How does the Fed accomplish this? Tax hikes?

Sold something on eBay today! Thank you, thank you all for coming, but the party is now over!

This is more like a Year in Review for 2021. The upside to the rise of OA is that I'm getting more out of my pieces when I sell and since most of my acquisitions are under $1k and I can really make that stretch. Selling at both Comic Art Live shows has been integral at that. I acquired 16 pieces this year. Of those 16, I've publicly posted 7, which are: After 8 years of searching, I finally acquired a Knightfall page with Bane on it. Art by Jim Aparo (also my first Aparo). I finally got a published Bane piece by Graham Nolan (well, sort of) featuring the Breaking of the Batman. I think this may be my first trading card art, too. I added another Bane sketch by an artist who worked on him before or during Knightfall. It is also my first Travis Charest. So pretty much this was the year of Knightfall for me, with that stuff getting harder to harder to find (outside of HA) these days. I have a lot of nostalgia for the Golden Age Sandman from Sandman Mystery Theater and I can't believe the ease I went through to get one. Finally a Darwyn Cooke Catwoman piece! This one had my name written all over it. I love Gilbert Hernandez's art but I've never found a L&R piece of his that I'd drop money on. Oh, but his story in Sensation Comics feat. Wonder Woman has long been on my checklist. I finally got one off Comic Art Live. The years 2004-2005 are nostalgic years for me and I finally got a Marvel page from that era. Just in time for the character's alter ego appearance in the movie universe! What I haven't posted includes: Two Marvel title splashes from 1991 4 Marvel interior pages from the 90s A copper age Marvel page I traded a dealer for during November's CAL A DC page from an issue #1 from a 1988 mini A Black Panther specialty piece by Billy Graham We all have OA collector-friends who enable our addiction and are integral to getting art that we otherwise couldn't without an assist, and this year, friends have helped me out a lot. Those friends include Roger K. from whom I acquired the SMT piece and the Cooke sketch. Turns out we live not far from each other so it was easy-peasy pick up. On that note, after a year of isolation in 2020, it was nice to have lunch with @Weird Paper(Roger K.) and @MyNameIsLegionand head out to Roger's house for an art pick up and view his amazing collection. Another great friend has been Jason S. who let me exploit the labor he put in finding art and pick up a few pieces through his deals. He also brokered another sale between The Billy Graham Estate and me. But lastly, this is what he did to help me get some art. There was an eBay auction for two pieces of art inside one huge museum-quality frame. The seller wanted $200 for shipping. But according to his location, Jason lived "only" 45 minutes from the buyer and offered to pick up the art for me. So I contacted the seller and he agreed to a local pick up if I won. Well, now I had a $200 advantage over all other bidders (sucks that it has to come down to that unfair advantage) and this thing was mine to lose, which I didn't. Jason did the pick up, took the art (and comic) out of the frame, and safely shipped it to me. I spent about $50 in the costs for shipping. Such friends! The downside to 2021 was that I received two separate art pieces that were damaged during the shipment. On one of them, I only received a fraction of the insurance claim. The other was sent Priority Mail without insurance. Also: first the good, I was in contact with a well-known dealer in the U.K. giving him art estimates, when it turned out he had a grail cover from my childhood and offered it up to me for "only" $12K. I really wanted it, I should've been its caretaker, but ultimately I don't swim in the 5-figure pool. Sure I have the art to cover it, but I'd have lot of 'splaining to do to my wife and the triggering a tax event would only cost me more. Sad about it, but it is what it is. Maybe when the kids are older and I can pull the trigger on a gun like that. I'm one of those collectors who rely on eBay and PayPal to fund my HOBBY (OA is not my business). With the new 1099-K law it'll be interesting to see what art will come without the funds I'm used to spending.

This is the year that I start chasing those leads I've always been afraid to. I'm going to continue shaking more trees, doing a lot more trading, and just get more creative raising funds for art. I'm going to have to stretch out that dollar so this may be the year I go all-budget pieces and not pick up anything for over $1k.

Just seeing this thread now. I’m rooting for Gene. I don’t think you need to sell anything to grab this one, Park. I think you can swing it. I know it’s easy to spend someone else’s money, but as a G.I. Joe art fan this one is going to be about $350k.