delekkerste

You do realize that nadir means "the lowest point", right?

At the end of the day, there is always money out there - it just boils down to whether people are willing to spend it. Even billionaires will throttle back if their portfolio tanks from $7 billion to $3 billion. If there is widespread misery, many will throttle back simply because "it doesn't feel right" or because they have other things occupying their headspace. You said that prices didn't drop or flatten at the start of the pandemic, but, if you had tried to sell a bunch of art the 2nd week of March 2020, how well would you have done? Probably not as well as you would have done 2-3 months earlier. I think this gets lost when looking back in hindsight because we know that the lockdown dynamic very rapidly spurred a huge societal shift into goods vs. services since everyone was locked down at home with nothing else to spend their money on, and unprecedented monetary and fiscal stimulus threw gasoline on the fire. But, now we are in a macro environment where liquidity is being systematically drained away to fight inflation, and every month that passes more and more asset classes get ensnared in what is morphing into a vicious bear market that may still only be in its early or mid-innings, while the Chinese and European economies are rapidly deteriorating before our eyes. I don't expect people to be able to say "it's still going up" about anything for much longer. And, remember - no less an authority than Jim Halperin explicitly cited market conditions for what many felt was a disappointing result on the DKR #1 cover sale. Well, guess what - after a fake-out dead cat bounce in July and August, most asset classes have plunged back close to the worst levels of the year. Tens of trillions of dollars of paper wealth have been wiped out already globally. I think it says something about the extreme nature of current market sentiment that people think it's crazy if someone suggests that prices might - gasp - take a breather soon. A breather at record price levels 200% above 3 years ago. Shocking!! We're at a point in history where people believe that OA is safe as CDs with the upside of the Nasdaq in a bull market. Even if prices gallop higher from here, you can't tell me that people are being realistic about the actual levels of risk in the market. At the OA meet-up the other night, some voiced the opinion that they were confident in prices because the OA market is so deep with buyers these days. While I think it's undeniable at this point that a lot of fresh blood & money has entered the market, I think this hobby is still niche enough where if you took 1 or 2 bidders out of the running on a lot of pieces, you'd see vastly different results (and you could always lose some bidders at the margin in a bad macro environment). For the avoidance of doubt, a "flattening out" <> "a crash". Most high-end art is in strong hands who will just sit on their collections through any downturn. But it's what happens at the margins that will be interesting to see.

If 99.9% of the market is crashing, but 0.1% isn't, it's a crash. It isn't just the speculative junk that crashed in cards, most blue chip cards have also tanked from peak levels. Just because there are a handful of uber-wealthy guys duking it out over Justin Herbert RPAs (rookie patch autos) doesn't change that fact. And trophy sports memorabilia pieces is really a separate market entirely. Also, it's not like the only options are "raging bull market" or "crash". Do I think the OA market will crash soon? No. Do I think that that prices will flatten out in light of the bigger macro picture? Very likely in the coming months IMO. Last night we had a huge OA meet-up in NYC. I think it's a little concerning that the only two possibilities that most people there seem to be entertaining are "raging bull market" or "slightly less raging bull market". Even a flat market is viewed as highly dubious and people will look at you as if you have two heads if you suggest anything worse than that. The past month has seen FOMO buying on a scale that I have never before witnessed in this hobby. People were spending like money was burning a hole in their pockets. I have many friends who got caught up big time - it's like everybody decided to shoot their wad at once. I can very easily see the market start to flatten out, with certain segments starting to correct over the next 6-9 months if the macro environment continues to deteriorate, as I fully expect it will.

There are some fools at the tippety-top of the hobby still throwing around insane money on an ever-narrowing number of cards. Most cards peaked in Q1 2021 and are well off their highs (50%+ in many/most cases). High end cards largely held up until this year but every month that has passed has claimed more victims to the ever-growing bear market. That Mantle card undershot many peoples' expectations at $12.6 million. In many of these insane sales, you're seeing pent-up demand for rare objects that have not been available for sale for decades and so of course you're going to get huge prices. That said, in many cases, the prices would have been even more 6-12 months ago, so, arguably, values have already declined. Case in point, and taking it back to comic book art - a piece sold at auction at Heritage back in 2019. Earlier this year, the same piece got an offer of $X through Heritage's Make an Offer system that was turned down by the owner, who ended up consigning it to Heritage where it actually sold for less to a friend. That buyer from earlier this year was no longer at that level.

Oh right, heard that the Vince Oliva collection was consigned to Heritage recently (which is where this one is from).

I know several guys playing in this sandbox now who were much more active in vintage mainstream art, say, 5 years ago, and I suspect a lot of that because of the relative value proposition (though, that has been narrowing in recent auctions).

The value proposition isn't there right now, and it's just not comparable to previous markets when prices were pennies and nickels on today's dollar. We're in a market where even some C-level pieces are fetching what A-level pieces got in very recent memory. I can kind of understand the price inflation for the true quality pieces, but, it's gotten so indiscriminate over the past couple of years to the point where so much drek is getting prices no one ever dared dream of, with FOMO buying and people priced out of better material bidding up lower-end pieces to levels that would have seemed absurd 2-3 years ago and bidding up B/B+ medium-end pieces to hard A-quality levels from that time as well. As one very longtime collector noted to me the other day: "This isn't going to end well, is it?" Pretty sad that this is where we are these days. But it's also why I've had so much more fun and bought so much more stuff in other collectibles verticals (trading cards, sealed record albums, RPGs, event tickets & programs, signed books, etc.) the past few years. Even at the inflated pandemic-era prices in those sub-markets, the price points are rounding errors compared to where most OA is nowadays.

Nostalgia isn't limited to just the stuff that came out while you were growing up. It can also include/extend to, among other things: - characters you loved growing up in material that may have pre or post-dated what came out when you were a kid. For example, you may have grown up on Death of Superman, but, in your older age, that nostalgic interest may drive you to collect Curt Swan Superman or Frank Quitely All-Star Superman - things you read as back issues or reprints but pre-dated what came out while you were a kid. For example, I read the Ditko and Romita ASM reprints in Marvel Tales, the Neal Adams X-Men run in the X-Men Classics reprint series from 1983, Byrne and Cockrum X-Men from Classic X-Men, Barry Smith Conan from Conan Saga, Tomb of Dracula from picking up quarter bin books at my LCS, many EC stories in the Gladstone reprints of the late '80s, etc. As such, I have nostalgia for all of this material today even though it was all published before I started reading comics in 1983. - received wisdom when you were a kid. It's not like when you start reading comics that you're only limited to reading what's coming out then and going forward. You learn from reading and word of mouth what are the important books and runs and characters and who are the important creators and so that stays with you for as long as you are collecting - the thrill of finding new comics to read and art to enjoy as an adult may mirror - nostalgically - the thrill you got doing the same as a kid. And that can lead you back in time or back to the future, as it were. So, basically, I'm saying that nostalgia manifests itself in various ways... As for those Andru pages, it's Spider-Man, it's Bill Everett, it's a character with a long history who is as relevant as ever today, penciled by one of the top 10 artists associated with the character (Ross Andru) and inked by one of the all-time greats in Bill Everett.

That's not his arm.

I don't think time is necessarily on our side as the median age of vintage OA collectors is probably not that much lower than the median age of vintage OA dealers. Somebody sent me a YouTube link recently of one of the early NJ Comic Art Shows from 9 years ago. Boy, did we all look a LOT younger back then. I do think you're right that, eventually, without successors (and without a pipeline of young vintage dealers coming up to replacement, especially without the benefit of having gotten in on the ground floor like the old guard), a lot of the art they hold will get sold and I've already mentioned that it's probably a ticking clock as to these guys giving up the convention side of the business. That said, they can certainly keep going strong for a long time with their websites and social media-based sales. And I know some dealers will end up passing much of the art down to heirs, even if those heirs don't continue their dealing businesses, so, the art could actually take a very long time to disperse back into the marketplace. If the mass liquidations of their collections don't happen for another 15-20+ years, a lot of people who care now probably won't then, as we'll all be AARP members ourselves. There will, of course, also be lots of selling of Gen X collections in time, which could very well ultimately cause a secular tipping point in the OA market. That said, since it'll be my generation eventually cashing out, I'm not counting on still being young enough to care by the time those pieces do hit the market at lower prices than whatever the secular peak ends up being.

"He responded that he never raises prices on things he had bought." This is what I was referring to. I'd definitely like to get Bechara's side of the story because I can't believe that any dealer would claim to "never raise prices on things they had bought" - that is what I am saying is easily disprovable, every dealer does it all the time because that is the business. That had to be Bechara misspeaking, being taken out of context or some other form of miscommunication. As an aside, even if dealers perpetually keep pricing art just out of buyers' reach, those pieces would be screaming buys at some of the levels of previous price hikes. OA ain't refrigerators and countless pieces in this hobby end up selling for more later on after people passed on them at (much) lower levels.

3 main possibilities IMO: 1. Would rather be the clear standout in a weekly auction than just one of 892 nice pieces in a Signature sale. Look, it's even more or less gotten its own thread on the Boards here as a result! 2. The @tth2 theory that maybe the consignor can't or doesn't want to wait for the next Signature sale after missing the cut-off for the current one. 3. Maybe doesn't want to risk the market cooling off by the time the next Signature sale comes around.

100% The notion that anyone would claim to never raise prices from where they first offered something after buying it for resale makes so little sense that I'd definitely want to hear Bechara's side of the story before jumping to any conclusions. Seems to me like this is far more likely a case of him misspeaking, something being taken out of context, and/or some other kind of miscommunication. I mean, even if he said it, I would bet he didn't mean it quite like the OP thinks he meant it. People can think whatever they want of Bechara, but, one thing he isn't is stupid. The Bechara I know would never say something so easily and immediately disprovable by anyone with an IQ over 60 with the intention of getting one over on someone. Unless he thought that person actually had an IQ under 60, which I don't think would apply to anyone here...

Found them

For a close-up shot of 3 characters, I think the 9 x 11.5" image size works fine. It didn't strike me as feeling small or sparse; there's just a little extra space up top which could easily be filled up with word balloons if one felt so inclined, as I've seen @Phill the Governor do with some of the pages he owns. I would have guessed low $1000s (like $1100-1300) on this one. No, it's not great and is not going to be everyone's cup of tea given the gun-in-the-face theme and lack of zombies*, but $780 seems like it slipped through the cracks for a Rick splash from the first 10 issues of the run. * That said, I think there are plenty of great zombie-less pages in the run.

It's a fantastic page - I was hoping it would fly under the radar, but, it obviously didn't. Congrats to whoever picked it up.

The art here is less about the lines on paper and more about Miller creating one of the most remembered, enjoyed and influential comic books of all-time and collectors wanting a piece of that.

The comic ended in 2019. I think there has been a lot of Walking Dead fatigue the past several years...many stopped watching the show when the quality declined 4-5 seasons ago (it has arguably rebounded, but, many people never came back), the show's spin-offs added to zombie fatigue, there was just so much supply of the art available at all times, and the comic series ended. That said, I believe in the fullness of time, people will eventually miss it and look back on the franchise very fondly. It was, after all, one of the very biggest pop culture phenomenons of the past decade. I own quite a bit of WD art and continue to add pieces here and there.

It's easier to be uncorrelated or even contra-cyclical when prices are a lot lower. The whole myth of collectibles contra-cyclicality arose initially from when comics - as an entertainment outlet, not as a collectible or investment - decades ago provided a cheap source of entertainment (especially as they could be read by more than just its owner) in difficult economic times. That has zero bearing on how a multi-million dollar piece of art like the DKR #1 cover will fare when it hit the auction block at a time when stock and crypto markets were both in freefall. Which is not just my opinion, but, what Jim Halperin - the most influential person in the comic art market - said explicitly on the latest Felix Comic Art podcast. He flat-out said on the podcast that it would likely have done better had it been auctioned off even just a few weeks before or after, suggesting not only a sensitivity to what was happening in the broader macro environment, but a high degree of sensitivity at that. On the other hand, back in the day when it was, say, a $2,500 piece instead of a $2.5 million piece, it probably had very little sensitivity to broad external economic factors. But, let's say you're right and comics and comic art just continue to grind inexorably higher as they have for most of the past few decades. By your logic, past results *are* indicative of future results and prices will basically never go down. But we know that markets do eventually mature and then become more cyclical. And if you wait around long enough, you can even get a secular trend going in the other direction. As for betting that it's different this time, given the countless unprecedented things that have happened in markets over the past 15 years where it really was different this time, I, for one, am retiring that maxim because it no longer has a very good track record. It might not be different this time, but, at some point, it will be, because changes have been and are occurring at an unprecedented pace these days. Again, this is not a call for a crash or bear market. This is a call for a realistic assessment of the risks out there at a time when it is widely believed that risk has disappeared (you seem to suggest that it never actually existed at all) and that prices will only ever go up.

Not at all. Even the junkiest cards went up during the early 2020 to early 2021 boom. The rising tide literally lifted all boats. Until it didn't. Great, so I'm going to pretend that my Fernando Tatis Jr. rookie cards serial numbered to 3 (I own two of the 3) are still worth what they were a month ago (pre-80 game suspension due to testing positive for steroids, for those who don't follow baseball) since we haven't had a public sale of my two cards or the third one out there. Impairment of value does not require public comps to prove it has occurred. (For the avoidance of doubt, no such impairment has yet occurred in the OA market, just speaking hypothetically).

No inevitability of crashing prices or doom and gloom from me, that's just straw man posturing on your part. My only points are that (1) comics and comic art are not this magical pixie treasure that can only ever go up with zero downside volatility as you are making them out to be and (2) it's waaaaaay too soon to say that comics and OA have emerged unscathed from the current macro slowdown when the slowdown may just be getting started. That said, the fact that we've reached this kind of late stage thinking that says prices can only ever go up with zero pullbacks because comics and OA are immune to real-world factors is...troubling.

If you think this is just speculation/theorizing, you are not dealing in reality. "Never"? Like, literally at no time, ever? Really? Is all of this some huge reverse jinx?? We know that crypto and card bro money went into big keys - heck, we saw Ken Goldin himself buy a Tec 27 and an Action 1. I know other card guys who spent millions on GA and SA keys. Without the high end pulling everything else up, does everything else do as well as it did? I don't think so. The card boom was impossible to ignore in 2020 and 2021. News stories everywhere, from local news stations covering the run on Target and Wal-Mart stores to cards being featured regularly on ESPN to celebrities and influencers showing off cards all over the place...if you were only tangentially aware of it, well, let's just leave it at #OKBoomer Dude, Japan crashed the entire global fine art market in 1990-1996. Comics did well in the post-dotcom bubble period because the micro-factors (introduction of third-party grading with CGC and the Internet spawning new sales platforms and increasing reach/access and transaction efficiency) swamped the macro factors. Your hatred of backwards cap wearing card bros is causing you to lump the whole card market together. While it's true that much of the sports card market peaked around Feb-Mar 2021, it was mostly the low-to middle end of the market and some not-so-rare high-end cards (e.g. the 1986 Fleer Michael Jordan) that fell off a cliff. Much of the really high end of the card market kept on rising until just a few months ago, when the reality of a deteriorating economy and tanking markets started to set in. Then it was like someone flicked a switch and things started reversing quickly out of nowhere. We may be seeing something similar starting to happen in a lot of real estate markets as well now, another market where you have been whistling past the graveyard while the red flags continue to pile up. And although crypto peaked last November, NFTs kept rising until May 2022 and the year/year crypto gains were still so big up to that point as well that the drawdown only really started to have knock-on effects regarding crypto bro spending in other markets after things really went into a death spiral soon after. So, there hasn't really been much of a lag at all, and it remains far too soon to say that we will get no dip in OA prices just because we haven't seen one yet when we may still be in the early innings of this economic & market downturn. Again, not saying that it will or has to happen, just that I think people are being far too cavalier about the potential for a downturn.

Sure, but, in the Bizarro World of the OA hobby, as Felix quite rightly noted to Halperin on his latest podcast, the consensus is that things like global recessions and stock market crashes don't have much of an impact on the OA market. And there are some who are already spiking the football that OA has emerged unscathed from the recent economic and market weakness when it may be that we're still only in the very early innings of a more prolonged downturn. Not saying we definitely are, but, there is no shortage of pundits these days who are arguing that the recent rebound in markets has been a huge fake-out and that the Fed has already done enough to put the economy on a course for recession (and Europe is a total disaster right now).

And yet prices of Picassos tanked between 1990 and 1996 along with the rest of the fine art market. A while ago, I saw a couple of old Sotheby's catalogs for sale at The Strand bookstore in NYC. One was from 1989. The other was from 1991. The previous owner had written the realized prices in the two catalogs. The 1989 catalog was full of numbers that were above estimates. The 1991 catalog was only partially filled with numbers because so many lots had passed (i.e., reserve not met). Of those that sold, only a tiny number had beaten the estimate. Seeing the greatest works of Western civilization plummet in price in the 1990s taught me that nothing is inherently immune to larger economic and market considerations. Some things may be more insulated, but, nothing is so inherently awesome that it can't lose money if valued too highly under a different market regime.