delekkerste

Tens of millions of dollars of original art traded hands at the peak of the market's fervor in 2021 and 2022 and yet you consistently make it seem like everybody bought a long time ago and is unaffected by the softening witnessed in certain swaths of the market since then. And this is even when we've already seen numerous examples this year of 2021 and 2022-purchased art being resold at steep losses. You can say it's their fault for re-selling so soon or paying so much in the first place, but, it certainly suggests that there's a lot more art out there that is effectively underwater and that those owners would sell at similar losses if they had to liquidate now. And people have every right to be disappointed when their mark-to-market gains have fallen substantially from theoretical peak highs. Most people mentally mark to market their gains and losses to at least a certain extent and get joy from unrealized gains and feel pain when those gains evaporate. The fact that they may still be up, even substantially, from their cost basis, or that the market is merely correcting an unsustainable 60-degree advance, does not alter the fact that some segments of the market are down and that real disappointment or even pain is being felt by some sellers. I'm sure the guy who consigned the DD #169 and Ronin #1 pages (it was the same person) does not share your cavalier view of what does and doesn't constitute justifiable disappointment in this market.

Wow roundtripped to 3 years ago prices after going up 2.5x during the pandemic. Par for the course for sports cards, but, not often you see that for comic art.

That 1st Legion page from New Mutants went nuts. Cool page, but...$93K? DC gets no respect...can't believe that sweet Swan/Adams Jimmy Olsen/Supes cover only went for $15K. Didn't see until now that the Tec 395 page by Adams/Giordano only went for $12K. Not an A page but some cool poses, splashy panels. If I was in the market for an Adams Bats page, I would have been very happy to pick that one up at that price.

Not with that attitude! (I kid, I kid!)

Well, $25.2K in 2020 probably means a theoretical peak value of low-to-mid-$30Ks at least (since that sale was a bit later in 2020 with some price appreciation already behind it), and then coming back down to $24K. So, yes, down 5% from 3 years ago but probably down 20% or more from the theoretical highs of 2021/22. I know the Hush cover was far from the best in the run, but, I agree - $55K seems VERY light. I don't think it would have done double a year ago, but, certainly higher than $55K. It went so low that one of my deep-pocketed friends - who has no interest in Jim Lee Batman art, but, knows a good deal when he sees one - almost swooped in to bid at the end as it seemed too cheap to him. Regarding the best Bane page, I heard from various sources that it was offered by Nolan directly for either $100K or $200K (it sold for $90K). That Frank Miller DKR statue art seemed well bought to me at $15.6K, though, I was told that there are other versions of it (depicting different angles). The Daredevil #169 page was...unfortunate. Pretty sure that one will go down in the record books as one of the biggest hits someone has taken on a blue chip, mainstream piece of original comic art. I used to own the Kirby Avengers #5 page - that one went higher than I thought it would. I thought the McSpidey Marvel Tales cover would go for more. Same with the Byrne X-Men page yesterday. But, I guess the market is becoming more discriminating on pieces not deemed to be top-level. I thought the Watchmen #1 and ASM #22 pages yesterday went about as expected, maybe slightly on the lower end but really only because we've grown accustomed to being surprised to the upside. The Bolland Superman Annual cover seemed like a bargain compared to where Dredd covers are nowadays! I know of numerous sales both yesterday and today where the consignors are not happy. As one auction house honcho told me a couple weeks ago, he's seen clear weakness in B/C level art, to the point where consignors are grumbling about it, being stuck on 18-months ago pricing. Probably will hear more grumbling after this HA auction I suspect (I'm already hearing it talking to people who have consigned to this auction!) Overall, I think the market is still very firm for the best stuff, but squishiness is definitely seeping in as you go down in quality. I think that is a very realistic assessment of where we are now (with the caveat that there will obviously be exceptions).

The Spy Who Loved Me, For Your Eyes Only and A View to a Kill all had Roger Moore ski fighting sequences. But it was For Your Eyes Only that had one at a resort that most resembles the Punisher cover.

My guess is that HA tripped their own (high) reserve early to give potential buyers enough time to think about going even higher rather than catching them off-guard the day-of or the day before.

For me, Frazetta art is all about the "three Cs" - Conan, Conan, Conan, in that order.

The Astros suck.

That piece is Royale with Cheese, if not Le Big Mac. $35K feels spot-on for this market, it's a Baller(tm) piece.

Is that strong? The two dailies I saw that sold in 2022 (one at Heritage, one at ComicConnect direct sale) both cracked $4K.

Everybody got massacred on the Ploog-on-Ploog WWBN page.

I don't want to have to toggle back and forth between My Bids and My Tracked Lots. Would rather see everything in one place.

#DefenderOfTheFaith

That's only comparing our Federal income tax rate when most U.S. taxpayers pay a state (and sometimes local) income tax rate as well (plus a 3.8% Federal surcharge on investment income if you are in the top tax bracket). If you live in NYC, your top marginal income tax rate (excluding the investment income surcharge) is 51.776% (37% Federal + 10.9% NY State + 3.876% NYC).

Dealers are exempt from sales tax if they are set up as resale businesses and apply for a reseller number.

The one suggestion I would have for Bill is to make it possible to see more than just the 18 or 24 or however many listings per page there were on CAF Live (you can see up to 54 pieces on one page on the regular CAF site), as it was exhausting clicking through the 169 pages of listings for the Saturday drop. On Sunday, I resorted to just searching by art type so all the commissions were excluded, which helped cut down on the search time, but, it would be great to have less pages to click through next time around.

No one has ever accused me of being an OA market pumper, so, let me just say that I was pretty impressed that more than 600 pieces were sold in the span of just two days, including dozens of pieces above $5K (it's actually more than just the 47 number; I know of at least 3 more >$5K pieces, including one I bought, that were purchased as a result of CAF Live but were not listed among the totals). I really don't know what more people could have expected - not everybody has time to look through 5,000 listings over a weekend (my wife was pretty annoyed that I spent as much time looking as I did). And, while there was certainly a good deal of aspirational pricing, especially at the higher end, there was also a lot of stuff that was priced to move. I bought 3 pieces from one seller (all very close to his cost basis judging from either direct HA sales data or market comps) and a fourth piece from another seller. Other things caught my eye as well, but, even at FMV, I was only ever going to shell out so much dough in one sale. The only negative to my CAF Live experience is that I placed an order early Saturday for one piece, didn't hear back from the seller, followed up with him a couple hours later, still didn't hear back from him, and then saw the piece was marked SOLD on Sunday and I was never informed about such. My guess is that the seller either preferred to ship within Europe (hinted at in his listings) and waited to see if any offers came in from such, and/or his virtual booth was unattended on Saturday and he just sorted through all the offers he got later on (maybe Sunday morning in Europe). I feel like if you set up one of these virtual booths, you should have the courtesy of letting someone who fills out a Purchase Request form know that they did or didn't get the piece within a few hours. Or at least the same day. Or how about at all - that really shouldn't be too much to ask for.

Echoing a recommendation from President Joe Biden's administration, the Supreme Court focused on the specific use that allegedly infringed Goldsmith's copyright - a license of Warhol's work to Conde Nast - and said it was not fair use because it served the same commercial purpose as Goldsmith's photo: to depict Prince in a magazine. Andy Warhol Foundation President Joel Wachs said the foundation disagreed with the ruling but welcomed that it focused only on the Conde Nast license and did not "question the legality of Andy Warhol's creation of the Prince series." Pretty clear that this was only very narrowly deemed to be infringement because it served the same commercial purpose as the original photo, whereas the series itself was deemed to be transformative enough to fall under Fair Use. And both Kagan (L) and Roberts (R) dissented here, as did other attorneys and legal scholars. Even Sotomayor, who wrote the majority opinion, specifically distinguished this case from Warhol's other works ("The Soup Cans series uses Campbell's copyrighted work for an artistic commentary on consumerism, a purpose that is orthogonal to advertising soup" she said), choosing to construe the infringement very narrowly as opposed to the broad-ranging interpretation of the 2nd Circuit.

This page just sold for $10.8K on March 29 in a Heritage weekly auction. Now it's getting insta-flipped in the June Signature Auction:

That is so sweet that I could easily see it fetching millionaire prices.

Did you happen to catch the price for this??? Amazing.

I still have the Aston but it's no longer kept in NYC. The other car got sold so I've been sans wheels here for the past few years.

A lot easier for those of us who are well-served by public transportation into Manhattan, but, the consensus I've heard from those living in NJ/Philly/Maryland/Virginia/D.C. is that they prefer driving to the NJ show than having to drive into NYC. I really hope this show continues on, as it's a lot easier for me, personally; I haven't been to the NJ show since I sold my car almost 5 years ago.

Others: 1. Betty & Me #16 Cover "I Had to Beat Off Three Other Guys!" 2. Perez New Teen Titans page with a tearful Starfire screaming "I Love D .ick ! D. ick! I Love D. ick!" 3. Michael Gaydos Alias - the infamous buggery page with Luke Cage and the DPS of JJ, um, fantasizing to a Johnny Storm poster Here are two of the 13 panels of the infamous DPS from Alias #22 that I can actually show: