delekkerste

1. No one builds a great collection without overpaying for art - it's often the only way you're going to get great pieces. 2. That said, I do believe you can pay so much for a piece that it can affect the way you view it. I have overpaid (at the time) for many pieces in my collection. And have done trade deals where the other party made out better. Most of the time, the market bails you out over time; yesterday's overpay has become today's bargain. That said - without naming the pieces in question - I have made some bad buys where the market hasn't bailed me out over time and which has affected the way I see the art. Not that I was buying for investment, but, no one wants to feel like they made a bad purchase decision or think about what else that money could have bought instead.

More like people priced out of Liefeld are probably looking at alternatives at this point!

People priced out of Ditko and Romita ASM art ====> People paying up for Ross Andru ASM art People priced out of Byrne X-Men art ====> People paying up for Paul Smith and John Romita Jr. (did you see the CLink results last week??) X-Men art People priced out of McSpidey art ====> People paying up for Erik Larsen and Mark Bagley ASM art And if it's not people being priced out of the former, it's people feeling the latter is relatively attractive price-wise compared to the former.

Hey now, let's not get crazy here.

I have picked up a number of MOKF pieces recently, but, the Zeck splash wasn't one of them. Thought it was very reasonably priced but it didn't really strike my fancy.

I guess people are setting the prices from which prices will now crash!

I used to post almost everything on CAF up through around 2013/14, but, then took a lot of stuff down and have posted relatively sparingly since then so that now I have under 30% of my collection shown publicly in my gallery. Why not post everything? - just don't feel the need to anymore; I enjoy all the art I buy and that's enough for me (though, of course I do like to share certain pieces and remain active socially in the hobby) - I like that people don't know everything that I have...a little mystery can be fun. Love the "wow, I can't believe you have this!" and "You've had this for how long and haven't posted it??" reactions I get when people do find out that I have something that is not posted publicly. - also don't think people have to know everything I've gotten rid of either - like it or not, freshness is a factor, both when buying and selling. There have been pieces in our hobby that people got sick of seeing either move around all the time or that sat unsold at too-high a price and can benefit from time out of the spotlight. And if you sell or trade a piece, the element of newness and being a "shiny new thing" can definitely work in your favor - also don't necessarily want people to know everything I'm buying because I don't want the added attention/competition for what I'm looking at - and I don't necessarily want to be held for ransom - "e.g., I'll only trade you this piece if _____ in your CAF gallery is part of the deal" - or pestered by offers and inquiries on a lot of pieces and most importantly - You cannot be a real Cabal member if your collection is an open book and people know everything you own. It's in the bylaws somewhere.

After a positively monk-like 2020 (6 buys vs. 15 sales) and 2021 (5 buys vs. 1 sale), the pendulum definitely swung the other way for me in 2022 (94 buys and still rising vs. 2 sales this year). In 2023, I definitely need/plan to be more focused. I don't regret buying all the pieces I did in 2022, as I had probably sold/traded too many pieces over the past 5 years and definitely enjoyed/appreciated being able to re-expand the breadth of my collection this year. And, while I'm not going to stop buying smaller, fun pieces, I will definitely buy less of them in 2023 and save my dry powder for the roughly dozen or so bigger and more meaningful things on my list that I would like to opportunistically add (should any of them become available next year at a price I can live with).

I won two sub-$1500 lots.

6 pieces posted...and only 3 of them were from 2022. I have only posted a small sliver of the past 8 years' worth of purchases.

@Scott Dunbier just sent you an e-mail with a few scans so check your inbox - LMK if you can use any of them!

I decided recently to follow your lead and make up a "hit list" of things I'd like to get (that are still potentially within reach). I suspect that 2023 will be focusing more on "the list" while buying fewer "fun" things. In fact, one item on my list is coming up for auction this month so I'm hoping that'll be my last chunky purchase of 2022. That said, it'll be hard to go cold turkey and stop buying the bite size stuff completely, especially since so much cool stuff (including at lower price points) keeps hitting the market like never before.

Bought 91 pieces. Sold 2 pieces.

Didn't work - 2022 might have been my biggest year ever in terms of # of pieces acquired (91 and the year's not done yet!) If you combine the multi-page/strip lots, double-pagers, etc. together, then it's "only" 55 unique transactions, but, that's probably about 50 more than I was expecting to make. Granted, only about 10 of these buys were "chunky" sized buys, with the rest being sub-$5K and often sub-$1K. But, that's where I'm finding the best balance of interest, quality, nostalgia and price. It's no fun at all playing in the deep end these days - you either have to pay through the nose to win, or, you end up being disappointed when you bid crazy money and still get outbid (as happened to me in the one mega-sized lot I pursued this year - I'm actually happy to be spending that money instead on a lot of less expensive lots instead). Not going to give away my trade secrets on specifically what or where I've been doing most of my buying, but, in broad strokes, it's roughly: - vintage comic book art (1970s-1990s) - 29% of buys. No, you're not going to buy any Watchmen or Byrne X-Men on a budget, but, there's actually still a lot of really nostalgic stuff I'm finding that's available in the $1-5K range. A-level nostalgia can still be found in B and C-level runs & titles at semi-reasonable prices. Sometimes you can even find A-level art on a budget - my 2022 haul includes, for example, 3 prime-era Michael Golden pieces, 2 of which were very (IMO) reasonably priced. - comic strip art - 29% of buys. Again, no Calvin & Hobbes or Flash Gordon or Krazy Kat bargains here, but, there are sooooooooooo many well-known strips that are available for not that much money. I mean, the market is flooded with Caniff Terry & the Pirates and Davis Garfield strips, just to name two, but, that's literally just the tip of the iceberg. Many of the strips a lot of us grew up with can be had for 3 figures. - European comic art - 23% of buys. Again, not going to find any budget Moebius or Herge or Gibrat here, but if you look past the top handful of names, a lot of what's left is often very good and surprisingly still very cheap - modern/ultra-modern art - 19% of buys. There's so much of it out there that a lot of cool stuff, even from very memorable runs/storylines, from 2000-present that can be had for low 4 figures or even 3 figures if you're willing to look past just the most coveted examples. It's easy to be discouraged by the bank-account busting prices at the high end, but, there's still a ton of cool art out there at the lower end.

Thanks, Harry! The 3-D "Blood of My Blood" and geometric layout just reminded me of Steranko's X-Men #51 splash ("The Devil Had a Daughter!") and some of his S.H.I.E.L.D. work, personally. I can see the Eisner vibe too, though - good catch! Thanks, Mike! I agree with you that the mid-range was overall very strong this auction after a mixed Platinum Session which had some notable underperformers.

I guess it was a case of beggars can't be choosers...there's only a trickle of Simonson Thor art in the wild so prices are inherently going to be higher than what you think for what you're getting (I didn't buy either page but thought about going after one of them). I unfortunately just missed out on the lot I wanted the most (not going to tip my hand as to what it was for strategic reasons). Not having a sales tax exemption (like dealers) or workaround (like some collectors have set up) is just brutal in this ultra-competitive market. Without the tax, I would have had at least another 1 1/2 bid increments left in me and let's just say that the bidding pattern suggested that this probably would have been enough to topple the winning bidder for this lot. I did at least win two lots. The first was the insane Gene Day Master of Kung Fu #116 DPS with the amazing design/composition. Check it out in the HA archives if you missed it, it's awesome...I get like a Steranko meets M.C. Escher vibe from it (not a literal parallel, just a vibe). I also won the Antonio Prohias Spy vs. Spy from 1965, which I had foolishly passed on in person at a show in the early-to-mid-2010s and then underbid when it was in the January 2022 Heritage Signature sale. This time I set phasers to kill and took it home (albeit at a record price ).

Who in their right mind would pay $25K for a Paul Smith X-Men page...anyone who would do that should be institutionalized. (no, I didn't buy nor even pursue this particular page...it was two other crazies this time!)

At $57.6K, I guess people thought it was a WandaVision birth cover. I coincidentally just re-read that mini-series recently and that's when the pair leave the Avengers and move the 'burbs like in the Disney+ show.

That Sale DD DPS in the Platinum Session was breathtaking. $36K for that and $57.6K for the cover...prices were very strong I thought.

$72K for the first lot of 22 Batman #426 pages $78K for the second lot of 22 Batman #426 pages Looks like some fatigue absorbing all of this Death in the Family art in such a short time (Batman #428 22 pager went for $288K in June and #429 22-pager went for $156K in September; granted, both of these are more important issues, but, still a lot to like in #426 for fans of this storyline)

I actually thought that, on the whole, prices were more reasonable than the last time out, and ended up buying 3 pieces (all in the $1-3K range). I also considered some other pieces that I thought were either priced to sell or at least priced potentially to sell.

What the what? According to this, there are Signature Auctions in November, December and January, plus the weeklies and other specialized comic/comic art auctions.

Yep - there are a lot more high-end buyers than there used to be, but, let's face it...the air still thins out very quickly after a couple/few hundred grand for a single piece, especially if it's not uber-mainstream. That said, I would think that Swampy #1 cover is big enough that it should be somewhere in the 2.5 to 3.5x range after 6 years. Though, since the owner is Jim H., I'm sure his motivation to sell is low-to-non-existent.

#Boris4Lyfe

Wasn't this one recently available privately for a 5-figure amount? In any case, it was closer to $100K than $1 million. Well, we know this one recently changed hands, since Tom Fish posted it on CAF a few months ago. It sold for a big price, but, not anywhere near $1 million. Batman #423...no way IMO. Batman #619 recently sold at auction for $504K - big price, but, nowhere near a million. The $1 million mark remains a significant hurdle when it comes to Copper Age comic art.