Hockeyflow33

At least comicconnect has the ability to watch an item. Makes it much easier to purchase at auction

1 hour ago, vodou said:

I disagree. That dude just lost $300, that's all. Everyone else sees it but him

The only crime in this case is that "for not wanting to go negative" nobody tells said newb how badly they got reamed and to never do business with "whoever" again

 

In a vacuum yes but when two or three new people are overpaying it sets a new benchmark that everyone else is now living with. 

Not trying to be rude but there's never been a time with more resources available to everyone and anyone to research original art.

Not directed at you specifically but people want to know everything immediately and don't want to put the time into the hobby which in my opinion, has caused the lower-end market to blow up. Pages that should be between $100 and $300 are going for $200-1k+. You'll see them posted in different groups where people are excited to have their first page, and that's great, but when you're paying $400 for a page with similar sales of $100 it's just hurting this hobby. 

Ian Churchill has a few pages for sale on his website. 

https://ianchurchillart.com/?portfolio=uncanny-x-men

I bought something from him awhile back and they were very good through the whole process and did a good job with the shipping. 

3 hours ago, vodou said:

Yes. Weigh this fact, against the venue. Many of us will not do business with ComicConnect (for various reasons). That reduces both the competition and liquidity in their sales. But if you will do business with them, then you should be prepared to bid appropriate to a clearly thinner bidding pool (meaning gappy results -highs and lows- are to be expected, the opposite of the highly liquid marketplace of others Houses, say...Heritage ).

@Rick2you2 is correct - bid of at least $300 is still on the low side of FMV for anybody that really wants to take it home. Just the way it is. Now Anthony may still have won it (by bidding over $300), but you would have made him work for it. And that's proper too  

If we were talking about a no-name seller mislabeling a piece on ebay then I would agree with you but when it's one of the largest comic auction sites I have a hard time justifying the argument "not enough of an audience".

Time will tell I suppose but I'd be shocked if that piece sells any time soon. 

16 minutes ago, Rick2you2 said:

To be candid, he got it too cheaply. If I had really wanted it, I could have easily gone for double the sales price without missing a beat. The raw dollars are low.

We'll need to agree to disagree. Is there a better indicator of price than an auction? Unless someone was bidding the same amount as me, all the interested collectors in the auction tapped out at $150 which led to a "sale" at $155. This happens all the time so I think a good portion of the auction sale results are bad info because the sales are going to re-sellers who hold on to pieces for years. 

6 hours ago, fmaz said:

Hey folks - I'm probably closing on a large vintage sketch this weekend, and my son and I briefly discussed whether or not I'd want to consider commissioning someone to ink/color it.

My strong inclination is to let the sketch speak for itself, but I've seen some stunning examples of going the other way... but there certainly are risks involved, additional cost, time, potential damage to the art, etc.

Just curious if people have had personal experience with this choice and acted on it, and your thoughts.

Regardless of the fact that I feel pretty sure I'm going to leave the sketch alone, I thought a resource of opinions/examples for others on the fence might be really helpful as this is a pretty common dilemma I imagine.

Send a scan of it to the artist so you can keep the original pencils as a separate piece. I did that with a Wally Wood sketch and had Joe Rubinstein ink and color it. 

Another piece that could be with a collector to enjoy, (mostly mine), and will now sit unsold for eternity. I remember losing this at auction thinking who is the person outbidding me on this?

With the post office, as soon as the delivery date has been missed and tracking hasn't been updated in a few days I file a help request through the USPS website. That always seems to jumpstart the tracking again.

https://www.usps.com/help/missing-mail.htm

I don't understand waiting more so long and letting your package sit in limbo 

9 hours ago, comix4fun said:

From experience...Good Faith is as Good Faith does. 

Really, an ounce of putting themselves in the owner's shoes, and not only thinking of "I like piece, so I must have piece, bend to my desires" as A LOT of people roll in with as an expectation, would go a long long way. 

"Good Faith" is usually shown by treating as one wants to be treated. If someone rolls into a NFS piece as if it's a garage sale, or if someone starts a conversation thinking the owner has no idea what the market is or how it's changed....well, it's not going to go well. 

Lots of people get it right, most of them I'd say. 

I usually try and save my compliments for after we've agreed upon a price but it's never acting as if the world will fall apart if I didn't get it. 

3 minutes ago, timguerrero said:

Hopefully these changes won't affect eyes on pieces as I am thinking about sending my first consginment.

As a buyer I hope no one notices for as long as possible haha 

If it wasn't for this post I wouldn't have known. Interesting that there isn't a banner or mention in the usual Sunday/Monday listings. When I looked a few days ago I thought it was weird that there weren't any pages in for this Monday and just assumed it was due to the big auction going on now. 

18 hours ago, Rick2you2 said:

 Maybe too many suckers have been suckered enough.

Seeing what new to the hobby people are paying for some of these recent pages through Facebook groups and live sales and I just wonder why people jump into something without doing research. 

I sent an email on Thursday because it had been over three weeks and received an auto-generated email back saying they were delayed because of volume. 

2 hours ago, vodou said:

I maintain that nobody takes on extra work without extra pay, unless they have to. There is an inventory issue with all these players.

Is it possible The Hobby has completely run out of ignorant widows and disinterested children to take advantage of? Could the result be that some dealers have been paying "full market" too often on things that weren't worth "market" to begin with? If so...karma.

$75 pages sell for $200 through auction houses and then get listed in various classified locations for $400 and sit unsold. 

3 hours ago, aokartman said:

Those catalogs are cool, and are limited to high rollers these days.  I have a bunch from years ago when they were widely distributed.  They will likely go in my yard sale this weekend after I find the ones I actually bought from and consigned to.  Thanks for reminding me of another project! (NOT).  David

If I received one they aren't limiting them to high rollers

Does this count? 

12 hours ago, jsylvester said:

Am I the only collector that only buys what he loves and have an attachment to my art? 

They're not mutually exclusive. Not everyone loves the same thing and not everyone is spending $1k+ on a page. For those that limit their spending to a few hundred bucks per page you really need to search out quality art at an affordable price. 

11 hours ago, sfilosa said:

????  That's the goal of investing..... not collecting.

Of course we would all like to buy our collectibles at a 30% discount, but if you can do that a lot, maybe what you already own is worth 30% less than what you think.

 

 

To me it's the difference between buying collectibles and just buying stuff. 

12 hours ago, KingOfRulers said:

 

2) I said, "While these days my objective isn't to flip art for a quick profit, I'd like to have the reasonable expectation that if I had to resell immediately, that I could break even." No reference was made to the future.

 

I've always thought this was the goal of collecting anything. Every now and then if something really wows you it's okay to overspend but whether it's comics, art, statues, etc who wants to keep chucking money out the window? 

Nothing is better than getting a really nice piece you like for 30% under market value! 

7 hours ago, Bill C said:

In the last few years or so there were at least a couple comic creators (writers and/or artists, IIRC) that went to the public looking for blatant handouts, citing hard times. These are people that I am pretty sure (strongly sure in one such case) have lots of valuable collectibles that could have been sold to make ends meet. But rather than do the responsible thing and start selling their non essential (collectible) possessions to survive, they just asked for free money from the fanboys. And why not? they got it,

That's definitely a pattern with low-level artists, (not an insult), in Facebook groups where they'd have a commission sale and market it with some horrible life tragedy and nearly every time you would see posts a few months later of people saying the artist ghosted them 

If you were really hard up for money, (not you personally but in the general sense), and you had a $2,000 commission that you were able to get for $100, wouldn't it be fiscally irresponsible to not sell that to pay your bills or to save for a rainy day?

At cons Jason and his staff are always very helpful with questions and helping you get stuff signed. From their site, they ship out quickly and pages are shipped carefully  

4 hours ago, Nexus said:

Thanks for the clarification. I didn't know which reps you were referring to, but when I see this

especially, I know it's not us. But to someone just skimming this thread, it could mean any rep as far as they're concerned. So again, thanks for confirming it's not us!

Sorry for the confusion! It seemed way too negative to just name who it is but in hindsight I can see how me leaving it vague would leave it open for interpretation. In my mind the offender is so notorious among con-goers that I thought it was safe