Michael Browning

So, does he work with a digital component with inks on blue line pencils?

Investing in his other work should be very cheap and an even worse ROI loss than his Marvel variant covers. The question isn't what you should invest your money in, the original poster is asking if he should invest his money in Skottie Young artwork. My answer to that is no. Creator-owned series like "I Hate Fairies" isn't something that people will be paying huge amounts for in the future. We're not talking about The Walking Dead artwork, we're talking about "I Hate Fairies" artwork.

Another problem I have with investing in Skottie's art is that his covers are cute, but I'd think that the audience for these "cute" covers is very limited. They're always variant covers and never the main covers and variant covers hardly ever perform on the secondary market as well as the regular cover (not as many people ever get them because they are "limited"). In my opinion, I don't think that there would be much ROI - at least for a few years.

No, in my opinion, it would not be a good investment. His art is priced too high to ever get a good ROI and it would take so long for the art to grow into the price you’d pay today that it wouldn’t be worth it. I say this as a guy who has been there and done that with buying art from artists I like and THINK their work will increase in value and I’m still sitting on Artist X’s work that I bought five years ago and still can’t get the $500 out of it that I put in - after my appreciation for their art has waned.

Yeah, but there wasn't anymore art. It was a fluke that the art was there to begin with; the guy selling it didn't have a clue what it really was.

There are batches of art out there to be found and I've got a story about four pieces found at a flea market for $20 total. Back earlier in 2019, a guy called me and said he had gotten my number from the local comic shop, where the owner knew I bought original art. The caller said his daughter's uncle found some pages of what they believed to be original art at a flea market in southeastern Ohio for $5 per page and, although she wasn't into comics, her uncle knew she liked to draw, so he bought them for her. He took them to the comic shop to try to sell them, but when the shop owner said he didn't buy original art, he suggested the dad call me, which he did and he asked me to take a look at them and make an offer because she wanted to sell the art. The very next day, I drove nearly two hours to look at the art she had - which turned out to be four pieces of published Mike Gustovich art - three splashes and what they thought at the time was an unpublished cover or pinup. The dad showed up with the art and we met at a McDonald's. There was the cover to Marvel Age 139, a splash page from Warlock and Infinity Watch 42 featuring Warlock fighting Maxam, a splash from Fantastic Four Annual 27 featuring the Thing in a trench coat and a splash to Icon 8 that was penciled by Mark Bright and inked by Gustovich. The dad told me that the Marvel Age cover was unpublished and they knew this because they'd researched it (turns out it really wasn't but was actually the back cover to Marvel Age 139 when they were doing flip covers). He knew what the other pages were and the characters because he and his daughter had researched them to try to come to a price. He asked me to make an offer and I made him a very solid offer. The offer was so good, the dad seemed very pleased and surprised. He changed the subject quickly and said he and his daughter had gotten tickets to see Hamilton, and she wanted some cash to spend and didn't have anything in the pieces, so she figured she'd see what she could get. I told him I'd increase the offer by $200 just to sweeten the deal and to ensure that I got them. He said it was a very good offer from what they had researched and he would confer with her and call me back and let me know if she would take the offer. He said he felt sure she would sell them to me and that, if I wanted to hang around town for a couple hours, he would let me know as soon as she got out of school. So, I stayed in the town for several hours waiting on him to call me back. Finally, I called him back and he didn't answer so I texted him. No answer. Eventually, late that evening around 8 p.m., I got tired of waiting and went home. I texted him that I would increase the offer if that's what she wanted or for them just to give me a price and let me see if I could afford them because I really wanted to buy all four. He finally called me back and said that she had decided not to sell them because she was really into art (but not comics) and thought she'd hang onto them. If she sold them, he said, they'd give me first option on them and would let me know. He said to give her a couple weeks and that she'd probably be ready to sell by the time they went to see Hamilton. Well, after they went to see Hamilton, I called to check in and he said she had a great time at the play but still wasn't going to sell the art at this time. Again, he told me that they'd give me first option on buying the art and to keep checking back. I waited several weeks and texted to see if anything had changed and didn't get an answer. When I didn't hear from him a few months later, I had a suspicious feeling that I'd been used to develop a price point for them to sell to someone else and went online and, sure enough, there they were for sale on a buddy's site. I texted the dad again and asked if she had decided to sell (knowing they were already sold to a dealer, but I wanted to see what he'd say) and never received an answer. I didn't get upset that the dealer had bought them; heck, I'm sure he had absolutely no idea that I had been trying to buy them. But, I was very disappointed in the man and his daughter for being so underhanded with me.

In all the dollar boxes I go through each week, I never see ANY issues of Kid n' Play.

But, I could show you some pics of one place that does...

Doesn't the typical collector last about five years before burning out or just quitting the hobby altogether? I know several who have dropped off the face of the earth - one of which I tried to contact tonight and who I have tried to contact several times over the last few years. I'm about to give up. Finances usually have a lot to do with people leaving the hobby; It has gotten very pricey over the last few years. In a lot of cases, life takes different turns and collecting art just isn't a priority. I'm sure there are others who have passed away and that art will never be seen again.

If they cared enough about customer service to read this thread, they could spend that time calling people back/shipping art on time.

See, this is a bad business practice - lying to your customers.

Or maybe they’re just stalling?

I had this exact same thing happen to me the last two times I bought from Heritage. I've always been able to get it redirected to my local FedEx office. Of the last two, the first one showed on the site that it had been redirected to the local office and even showed me it had arrived there, but when I drove over to get it, they said it was delivered to my home address. I drove home and it had been delivered there. The second time, the site simply refused to allow me to redirect. My FedEx office can't figure out what is going on with it, because they say it's not their site. It is extremely frustrating.

Let us know, please, how long it takes to get it.

The majority of his Doom Patrol art burned up in the fire, too.

I have to admit that I don’t understand this website at all, couldn’t navigate it and finally stopped trying a few weeks ago. Very confusing and I’m just not as patient as I used to be in trying to learn new things.

After the one really bad interaction, and, after several previous years of great transactions with Mike Burkey, Tom Fleming, Will Gabri-El, Anthony Snyder and others, I don’t ever plan on trying to buy through Cadence again. Just too much hassle and too much runaround to get a simple piece of art. And, In hindsight all these years later, I’m thankful I didn’t get the art because I’m not a fan of the way Frison draws - one piece in pencil and another piece inked over a xerox (or whatever kind of printed-out copy it is that she makes) of the pencils. At the time, I didn’t really understand how I’d grow to feel about that type of art; it really made a difference to me later on. So, I feel like I dodged a bullet and I am very glad that I got my money back.

That one was mine and I sold it for what I thought it was worth. I'll be honest, it's up to the buyer what they do with it after I'm paid and it arrives in their possession. But, I was surprised to see it pop up on CAF for sale IMMEDIATELY after I sold it.

Here’s something I found in a long box of independent comics: M.A.I.N. Magazine Volume 2 No. 1 featuring Dave’s Vampirella art. MAIN stands for Mature Audience Industry News and this magazine is as much about comics as it is adult trading cards. Has anyone ever seen this before? I can’t find any photos or information about it online - anywhere. This magazine had it all: comics news, adult trading card news and ads, cartoon news, a Sabrina the Teenage Witch pinup by Dan DeCarlo, Adam Hughes Ghost and Vampirella coverage, a Stephen King interview and even WCW pro wrestling news! The back cover is an Elvira photo cover. It’s such a weird magazine, but I’d never seen it before yesterday.

I was ambitious when I started collecting. I bought my first big piece in 2001 - Miracleman 4 cover art by Jim Starlin for $800. I found an Australian collector who wanted it and traded it to him for the cover to Ghost Rider 25 (my very first trade). Then, a dealer from whom I had been buying golden age comics convinced me to trade it to him - because Ghost Rider art wasn't very popular then and wasn't a very good investment for me, he said - for the Steve Ditko Ghostly Tales 120 cover art - which he said was a much better investment. I ended up trading that toward the Crisis on Infinite Earths 6 cover art and got a huge offer of a LOT of art for the Crisis cover, so I traded it away. Those are the pieces I miss. Every single trade was carefully executed to build my collection to what it is today. I also traded away a great action page of Daredevil and Wolverine from Daredevil 197 that I miss.

I went back and looked at the 2013 attempt at buying Jenny Frison art from him and he responded very quickly and I bought the art. He promised he'd ship the very next day, 2-day priority mail, but I never received a confirmation for two days after that. I emailed and he gave me an excuse that it was the tracking numbers. I let it go four more days and still nothing showed up on the tracking and, had he shipped it 2-day, it would have made it to me by that time, so I asked him for a refund. He argued with me and I filed a paypal case to get my money back. He said he shipped it, but, a day later, he said he had the art back from the PO (it had supposedly shipped five days earlier, so how did it never make it to me, but was returned to him? Yeah, right.) and he agreed to refund my money with this message: "Jenny and I do not want future order requests or inquires on ANY kind." After 12 more days, I finally got my refund and was done with him.

Marvel Knights Millennial Visions 2001 looks like it has a Ghost Rider/Punisher character on the front cover. Is this the real first appearance of Cosmic Ghost Rider?

More than $33,000 with the fees. That’s a strong result. Hakes does well with Star Wars. I was wanting it, but fell asleep, and when I woke up, it was way out of reach.

I used to get commissions from all my favorite artists until a couple of them turned out really, really bad. But, no matter, I paid for every single one of them and never complained at all. I commissioned an artist who had the best reputation for doing commissions and he turned in the second worst Jonah Hex commission I ever bought. Instead of the great closeup of Hex that I asked for, he gave me a full-body shot of Hex from far away and he drew it in pencil and didn't ink it. After I'd paid, he said he just didn't feel like inking it, but, if I wanted to pay him an extra fee and mail it back to him, he'd ink it. But, again, he said he didn't really want to ink it. But, an artist friend of mine who had done great commissions for me, took way too long and drew for me the absolute worst commission I ever bought. After that, I decided to just buy published art. Since then, I am very particular about getting commissions. I always have very specific ideas in mind when I commission an artist and I detail those before we agree on him doing the piece. When I commissioned the late, great Ernie Chan to do a Jonah Hex, he drew it while we were on the phone and sent me the almost-finished prelim via email. It turned out to be the best Jonah Hex commission I have ever seen. The only commission I ever paid for without detailing an idea of what I wanted was from Steranko. I just told him to do a Captain America for me. It turned out so great that Marvel used it as a variant cover and it got Steranko back in at Marvel.

"Patience is a virue."