Michael Browning

Nah, Rich people look at $1000 like I look at my payday. They don't just throw money away with abandon. It's how they stay rich. ;) Believe me, if something happens and you NEED to sell, you are NOT going to want to sell below what you have in it.

If anyone says they buy art and don’t look at it as an investment or say they don’t care if they get their money back when they resell it, they’re lying. Original art costs too much cash to not consider it an investment.

Sorry, repeat post.

As far as investments go, in my opinion, Skottie Young art is the Beanie Babies of OA collecting and Tradd Moore art is the Funko Pops.

Tradd’s art is pretty neat, but I cannot see any of these pages reselling for a profit or at break-even in the future. I’m my opinion, it will take years for the art to mature into what people are paying. I have had this opinion for many years: new art is a bad investment. Once the heat dies on this series, I think people are going to sit back and wonder to themselves “what the heck was I thinking?”. Kudos to Felix for being a great artist rep and helping the art sell out. No one can ever doubt his marketing ability.

How can you say that or even compare Frazetta’s originality with Warhol and Lichtenstein? They didn’t do sword and sorcery/fantasy and he didn’t do work even close to what they did.

Huh. Again, and then there was Lichtenstein. (Look at all that background detail!)

My oil doesn’t have pencils under it. He did a lot of prelims. I have a pencil prelim and a watercolor prelim and it is colored over the pencils.

I have read this a few times and, no matter how hard I’ve tried, I just can’t understand the dislike you have for Frazetta’s art. It seems your dislike is so strong that you do your best to convince others that his art is hack work and all swipes. It’s just not so. In my opinion, and, after having read it numerous times before I decided what to say, it just drips with the “I don’t own a Frazetta so I don’t like Frazetta” sentiment. I understand he’s not everyone’s favorite artist, but I’m sure more people like his art than don’t - and those who don’t usually are in the “I don’t own a Frazetta” camp. I mean no disrespect to you and it’s your opinion, but you attempt to make your case so strongly that it seems like you’re bitter against his art for a reason.

Huh. And then there's Roy Lichtenstein.

In my opinion, C-link running an auction that starts a month early is like putting something on eBay with a Buy It Now price and it sitting there for 30 days. it loses its urgency. It's also like a 10-day auction on eBay versus a seven-day auction. I think an auction that long loses its urgency and collectors forget about it or simply lose interest.

I have always agreed with this sentiment and even argued with people about how "fresh to market" doesn't affect sales prices -- until these auctions started heating up and I saw people getting so excited about art they hadn't seen in year or at all and watching the prices go sky high as a result. I think there is a bit of excitement around a piece that comes up for auction that hasn't been seen in years and it maybe pushes the results a higher.

I feel like there are improvements C-link could make that buyers really want that would help their results, but they either are too stubborn or too lazy to make those changes. I also know a few collectors who said C-link wasn't interested in auctioning their art and then I look at the junk in the second half of their auctions and I am completely confused. The second session of a C-link auction night almost always looks like they raided the amateur stuff on eBay for their listings.

Dang, man, I enjoyed the market research post.

Exactly. I love CAF, but it doesn't have the selling power of HA with its massive audience. I told a guy the other day after he listed a cover on eBay three times -- and putting in the listing that he has an offer for $2500 on it so he listed it as the starting bid -- that I'd almost bet he doesn't have that $2500 offer now that it hasn't sold in a month and three listings. Now, I think he'd be lucky to get $750 out of it because it has sat for weeks UNSOLD at a price he said he had an offer and it creates doubt in collectors' minds and it is about as fresh to market as a month-old salmon at a fish market.

I'd say it hits $15,000. It's a page from a key book by a famous artist and those pages are highly sought after, no matter what.

I think that still nets several thousand.

I thought this went really high and is probably as much a Stan Lee drawing as all the “real” Bob Kanes on eBay.

I haven’t followed Suicide Squad art closely for awhile, but I sure didn’t figure pages were this high. I used to have more SS covers and pages than probably the artists and I don’t think I ever got more than $150-$200 per page. 🤦‍♂️

And here are some I thought went really low. The Destro trade paperback cover was THE bargain of the night, followed by the Tales of the New Teen Titans cover and the William Johnson and Mike Mignola Master of Kung Fu page. The Sonic cover was also a bargain.

It was a typical C-link auction. Here are some pieces I thought went a bit higher than I expected.

Wasn’t me that said it.

When I find them, they're usually in a hidden box in the back room of a comic shop that hasn't seen the light of day in years. The Scooby Doo #1 Gold Key was on the wall at a comic shop for $1000 and I got it a little bit cheaper. I'd never seen a copy in the wild before then and I've only ever seen one other copy, which was in G- condition. At the same shop, I found runs of Akira and Miracleman. I bought both of those, too, but not nearly as cheap as the Sonics and Scooby Doos.

Several years ago, I found a near-complete collection of Archie Scooby Doo, along with a run of Harvey and DC Scooby Doo and a few Charlton and Gold Key, in a 50 cent bin. All the Archie and DC were unread and VF/NM. I sold them for $3 apiece to Lone Star Comics probably three years ago. I felt like I made a good profit on them, but wish I'd kept them now. Same with Sonic. I found a dealer with almost a long box of Sonic issues that were bought and stored away when an old shop closed down. I bought those for a buck apiece and, again, sold them to Lone Star for around $3 each. I now buy all the Sonics and Scooby Doos that I can get cheap. I've got a Scooby Doo 1 Gold Key in VG/Fine and a couple other Gold Keys, a Marvel #1, a Charlton #1 and an Archie #1. I also have two Scooby Doo original art covers - both by Dan Spiegle - a Gold Key cover and an Archie cover. I recently found another long run of Sonics starting with the miniseries #1 and then the regular series #1 and about 30 issues thereafter for a buck each. They sell very well.

The 13th and 14th printings are the rarest. I'm sure the 9th print is pretty scarce, too, though it's definitely not as rare as those last two printings.