Michael Browning

On 11/25/2023 at 4:24 PM, OtherEric said:

Found at half price books today.  It's no longer crazy hard to find like it was back in the day, but I had to grab it for old times sake... I remember when it was hard to find since it hadn't been reprinted.

True story: I bought a VF/NM collection of Cerebus #8-#300 two weeks ago for $50.

On 11/24/2023 at 4:34 PM, steve9999 said:

No. Just an acknowledgement that they'll most likely come my way, because that's
whatat least half the of the comments seem to be about as opposed to appreciation of an 
artist's work or lauding a specific page. It's mostly porkbelly talk, which is disappointing
if you're like me and buy the work because you're a fan of the artist or title of the book
and not what your "return" is going to be. To each, his own.

I mean, these are the CGC boards, after all, so all the talk should be about returns, right? 

On 11/23/2023 at 9:50 AM, Aahz said:

Honestly, I wonder how to enjoy a collection of that size.  No criticism of those that may have a collection of several thousand.  I just wonder how you can get your arms around a collection like that and appreciate each piece.

I love all the art that I have. I don't have much framed and hanging on the walls. I have a Frazetta oil and two Frazetta drawings, a Tom Yeates Saga of the Swamp Thing cover, the Mike Okamoto Lost in Space 1 cover painting, a Teri S. Wood Swamp Thing painting, another Okamoto cover painting, a He-Man and the Masters of the Universe Magazine comic page and, my favorite piece in my collection, the Bob Larkin Crystar #1 cover painting. The rest all stay in portfolios that I look through quite often. I like to take time to look through them, enjoying each and every piece from time to time.

On 11/23/2023 at 2:58 PM, gumbydarnit said:

On pieces like this where it seems like a good price and good art, but I have no interest in the subject, I almost always let it go, even tho Im tempted. I’d rather pass on the bargain and save that money for a piece that fits more my collecting focus.
 

Ryan is a good artist, but he’s not one of my favorites. If one of my guys produced a similar piece, at that price, it would be a different story. I would have taken it down.

I will usually buy any cover at this price, but, it's not a good cover designwise, and then tiny Punisher in the background and, the third strike is that it's a modern cover that's bad and has a tiny Punisher.

Steranko probably still has the cover to #1.

On 11/22/2023 at 12:35 PM, Unstoppablejayd said:

You haven’t???? 

🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

Oh yeah, I have made a trade this year! My apologies! We made a great trade that was good for both of us and I am so appreciative of you doing that! (Man, my memory is terrible.)

I haven’t made a trade with a dealer this year, though. 😉

On 11/22/2023 at 10:19 AM, Dr. Balls said:

Very true. I imagine it also depends a lot on what you are trading for with the dealers. I appreciate everyone's input! I've got a small pile of pages I'll probably be looking at parting with next year, nothing monumental, but collectively they are sellable pieces - just stuff that doesn't fit my collecting focus in hopes to trade for one piece that does fit my focus, and I have never done a art-for-art dealer trade. I've dealt with Mike and Anthony frequently with great results, they'd probably be my first approach.

Keep this in mind: Dealers say it's easier to sell one big piece than it is to sell several lower-priced pieces. That's been told to me several times over the 25 years I've been collecting and, although art I've tried to trade up for has sat for many years on some dealers' sites while my smaller pages sold almost immediately upon me putting them up for sale, that's generally the rule they go by.

Here's another tip: Dealers don't often like to trade one, big piece of Marvel art for a bunch of DC art. I know there are those who don't believe Marvel art sells better and higher than DC art, but it sure does.

When making a trade with a dealer, you also have to give a little extra, because, unless your piece is a Todd McFarlane ASM cover and you're offering to trade it for a Murphy Anderson Mystery in Space cover of equal value (is that even possible? Nah, I'm just saying, is all) a straight-up trade rarely works. They're not in this to trade piece for piece and dollar for dollar. So, think about what the incentive to trade with you would be for a dealer and go at it from that angle.

Nowadays, dealers aren't easy to trade with. Back in the good old days of the late-1990s and early-2000s, dealers were a lot more fun to deal with and they were often open to trades. Now, not so much.

Trades can be a lot of fun. I get the itch once or twice a year to try to make a trade, and have made many trades in the past, but I don't think I've made one at all this year.

On 11/22/2023 at 8:02 AM, jjonahjameson11 said:

1.  As much as I tried, I simply couldn’t find a decent cover at a price I was willing to pay.  I should clarify by stating that I was offered several nice covers, but I wasn’t willing to mortgage my house in order to purchase one.  A seller can ask whatever they want for their artwork, but I see a lot of them now as fisherman rather than sellers

2.  So I was offered a McSpidey cover this year.  It was a solid B+ cover from the adjectiveless run but the seller valued it far beyond rationality.  I understand these covers are rarely available and I was just happy to have the seller reach out and offer it to me.

3. EPIC. FAIL!  While I have been selling stuff throughout the year, I’ve actually accumulated 6 full portfolios of OA through purchase and trade.

4. Changed the format: small gatherings of 2-4 local collectors at restaurants, sharing artwork pickups/for sale stuff.  Worked out much better than larger gatherings where you can’t really have a good chat with everyone 

I filled six portfolios last year, but only four this year. I bought my wife a car in late September and it took a chunk out of my war chest. But, I wasn’t buying like I had in the past few years. In 2022, I filled six portfolios and found some decent deals; this year, the deals were all dried up.

I didn’t buy too many major pieces this year because I’ve mostly got what I wanted and collectors who paid way too much in 2021 and 2022 for art were looking to make a profit and it was at prices I just couldn’t afford. Even when I had the cash for a piece like the Ghost Rider #70 cover by Budiansky, I didn’t want to pay $21,000+ to get it back (I owned it 20 years ago). It’s a great cover and I’m the biggest Budiansky fan, but, if I needed to sell it, getting my cash back would have been nigh impossible and I don’t take selling at a loss lightly. (I dropped a quarter in the checkout line at a Books-A-Million back in 2006 and was talking with a guy in the line and forgot to pick it up and I still have nightmares about that lost quarter…)

I never set any goals for the upcoming year. I just buy what I like and what I can afford. There are still deals out there and I hope to buy my 2,000th piece of art in 2024, but, I still don’t have any goals to meet.

BTW, I love the idea of smaller meetups. It’s more personal and you can talk and enjoy the time with other art collectors and wheel and deal a little. I would love to do that with some of my Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia friends.

On 11/21/2023 at 10:35 PM, tth2 said:

HD&L Junior Woodchucks #48 cover.  Bought this in 2007 and it was up on my daughter's bedroom wall for many years.

That’s a really cool cover because the artist snuck Woody Woodpecker into a Disney Ducks cover. Could this be the first-ever crossover of the characters? 😉

On 11/21/2023 at 10:21 PM, tth2 said:

Without knowing how realistic the estimates were, it's hard to judge whether your friends should really be disappointed or not.  Did they make a decent return on their original purchase price?

They have the right to be disappointed, no matter what they paid for the art. The estimates given were realistic, but the market is in a bit of a downturn, and I told them both that. I watch all the auctions and I see the trends. I won’t sell right now, unless I’d absolutely have to.

Collectors seem to be holding onto their cash. I do think that a lot of buyers paid way too much for art in the last couple years and are getting scared (rightfully so) that they won’t be able to get their money back. I’m pretty sure some of them saw certain artists’ pages and covers selling very high and paid higher prices as an investment who are now not able to get even close to break-even on those pages.

I’ve got several friends who have lost money on art they’ve consigned to Heritage and C-Link that should have done better, but didn’t.

You can point to pieces selling higher than you thought they would, but that happens in every auction. It doesn’t mean the market is still as hot as 2021.

For every piece you point to that sold high, I can show you 10 other pieces that sold much lower than they should have, if the market was still on the rise. I don’t think there’s a “Great Crash” happening like some of the grouchy old doomsday prophets who regularly post on these boards. But there is a bit of a cooling off or a plateauing of prices.

On 11/21/2023 at 10:27 PM, bellrules said:

Gotta love dollar bin Dave Stevens and early Blossom appearances 

Nice finds. A couple years ago, I found nearly an entire run of Cheryl’s appearances - including Betty and Veronica 320, her first appearance - at a shop for a dollar each. I couldn’t hardly get the cash out of my wallet fast enough. All of those early CB appearances are tough to find and usually expensive when they do pop up.

On 11/21/2023 at 5:25 PM, jjonahjameson11 said:

Just to add my two cents into the mix…

1.  The GL 195 is not a good comp for the Guy Gardner #1 cover.  It is a significant issue whereby Guy Gardner is chosen as the Green Lantern of sector 2814 (Earth) by the Guardians, and it’s a role that Guy maintains for many issues.  Additionally, 195 is a Crisis crossover, which may not mean much to you personally, but it was one of the major mini-series/storylines of the 1980’s and still means something for some collectors.  

2.  If you look at other Staton GL results on HA, they are not strong at all and further to point #1 above, the 195 result is an outlier

3.  When I think of Joe Staton’s career, the first thing that comes to mind is his lengthy work on Scooby Doo, followed by his whimsically wonderful work on E-Man, and then his work on Green Lantern, Huntress, and finally his work on Guy Gardner

of course, your mileage may vary

While I am a fan of his E-Man, Huntress and Green Lantern, I never could get into his Moe Howard-crossed-with-triangle-head-Sub-Mariner-looking Guy Gardner. It looked very silly and cartoony and I hated the cowboy boots DC had Guy wear in his new costume.

I did love the Beau Smith run. First and foremost, it was a lot of fun and the art is great. Then, it doesn’t hurt that Beau is a native West Virginian and lives not too far from me (I run into him frequently).

On 11/21/2023 at 2:50 PM, Will_K said:

It's not my money to spend but my rationale for Guy Gardner 1 cover finishing lower than the Green Lantern 195 cover is:

* it isn't from the main Green Lantern series

* even it it is a #1 cover, the series only ran 16 issues

* the cover doesn't play up the fact that Guy Gardner is a Green Lantern. If fact, if you look up the cover the only green you actually see is the DC logo and the "first issue" blurb.

https://www.comics.org/issue/51871/

* weird hairstyle

Actually, the series ran 44 issues, a Zero issue and two annuals and has a strong cult following for the Beau Smith-written #0, 17-44 and two annuals half of the run. 

I think that, despite the Liefeld Cap art selling so high, we are definitely not in the same market as we were in 2021. A friend had more than 60 pieces in the auction and he told me the end results were $50,000 lower than the HA estimates. Another friend was given a $6,000 estimate on a really early strip he consigned to HA and it only got $3,600 and he was very disappointed. He has three more coming up in the next Wednesday auction and he’s worried they’re not going to do well at all. I asked him last night if we plans to consign more to them and he was unsure. He has several more strips to auction, but he fears the low results of the big piece in this auction and the low bids on the ones in Wednesday’s auction means the other strips will sell even lower.

On 11/21/2023 at 8:02 AM, -m said:

Agreed.
I’m not sure why this went low. Staton, 90s cover and #1 issue. I probably should have bid on it.
Hopefully it went to a GL fan and not end up for sale again in a month at $10k…

I think it will most likely be up for sale on a dealer’s site, but I think it will be priced at $12,000-$15,000.

They’ve disappeared from all the Walmarts in my area. I’ve checked all of them in my 10-county travel area and one of the people who stocks that aisle in a local Walmart said at least that store no longer carries them.

This sold this weekend. I don’t think it did as well as some people thought it would. In a better art market, I think it could have hit $5,000, but things are a bit down at the moment. I hope the seller made a profit on it.

On 11/18/2023 at 9:07 AM, PhilipB2k17 said:

Based on the upcoming heritage auction it’s probably not that highly priced. It’s a really good example of a Buscema Rom page. If I was prioritizing one, I’d probably figure out how to make a deal for it. 

I have one of the better pages from Rom #1.

On 11/16/2023 at 4:04 PM, PhilipB2k17 said:

There was a really nice ROM page that Anthony put up. 

Yes. I saw it. He put it up on the second day, but it was twice the price it should have been.

On 11/12/2023 at 8:26 PM, Benedict Judas Hel said:

I bought 1 piece from super cool Fisch that was right up my collecting alley and allowed me to check another artist off my list to get a piece from.

I had some sellers reach out for reduced prices on pieces I had saved but those were fall back choices in case I didn’t buy anything.  However, since I did buy something I really wanted, I didn’t respond (except 1 for a modern cover hoping for a larger reduction).  I haven’t heard back from that one so I assume it’s a no-go.  But at the end of the day, I am perfectly happy with the piece I did get.

Fisch is a good guy.

Just to be clear, I have no problem with people buying art at low prices and then putting it up for sale at higher prices, but I hate it when someone buys art for $750, says its their "holy grail" - and I'm happy for them! - and then puts it up for sale for $5,000 right around a year after acquiring that so-called "holy grail."

The prices are very high in this CAL, but, hey, it's your art, so price it as high as you want. I don't begrudge anyone for trying to maximize their profits and I will never blast someone in that sour-grapes-from-bitter-old-jealous-collectors thread about the flip of the day. It is funny to see people post in that thread and then put art up on CAL for multiples what they just paid for it recently in some auction or that they snagged in a bargain eBay sale. ;)