Skizz

14 hours ago, GreatEscape said:

Obviously, Walking Dead and Deadpool were not around in the 50s-60s...so not covered by my comment. 

I thought Deadpool made a cameo appearance in the last page of Fantastic Four #1 cover date Nov 1961

10 hours ago, Rick2you2 said:

No, I went from the comics to the OA. Too many stories are variations on the same old themes, stretched out through multiple issues, and breaking far too many rules of physics, chemistry, law and common sense to stay focused. OA gives me the chance to enjoy the nostalgia of my uneducated youth.

It's nice to be 10 again, if only for a few minutes.

 

That might be difference right there. I never read the comics as a kid. Only came to them as an adult. So I can see the Silver Age key comics as quaint yet charming collectables. 

I dunno, maybe I’m just talking out of my inter-gluteal cleft to justify spending around $1,000 on comics that I could have spent on art instead. 

14 minutes ago, GreatEscape said:

In terms of collectability, 60's Marvel art is less tied to generational factors than the characters/titles that remain popular today.

Do you mean that Kirby/Ditko drawn Silver Age characters like Spider-Man, Thor etc will have a longer cross generational appeal than art of popular characters like Deadpool and Walking Dead? 

If so, I am inclined to agree. But I don’t think random Bronze Age Marvel/DC covers bought at premium will retain their inflated value once collectors who were teenaged during the Bronze Age move on. 

I think delekkerste gave a really good example in one of earlier pages how ‘The Correction’ might happen. 

2 hours ago, zhamlau said:

If you strip away the notion that "its just funny book drawings" and really appreciate it as a piece of narrative illustration art with significant cultural and historic importance...comic art of the era might actually be a steal.

Anyway, just another way to look at it.

It’s a very optimistic look, in a glass definately not completely empty kinda way.  But just for posterity, I would note that, outside of being IP farms, unfortunately comics have very little cultural significance in any greater sense. I say this as someone who writes comics (although admittedly only at a small press level; so take it with a pinch of salt).

As an example from my own life, most of my friends are voraciously readers and consumers of fiction. And whilst a large percentage of those who watched and liked the Game of Thrones TV show went on to read the novels, literally no one who liked The Walking Dead show went on to read the comics, even after I offered it to them.

That said, I do hope you are right. 

3 hours ago, comix4fun said:

I was talking to some friends the other day and it was about covers and how it almost doesn't matter any more who drew it, or what the characters are, as long as it's from Marvel or DC there's a huge bump upwards on the floor of any Bronze/Copper cover. 

I reckon that at the time of ‘The Correction’, these pieces will be the first to be corrected. 

On 25/02/2018 at 2:39 AM, tlatner said:

Definitely not the case for me.  I actually moved from collecting comics to art around the time CGC was being started -- once condition became paramount and you could no longer touch/read comics without impacting value.  I love the fact that I can actually hold a page of original art in my hands without having to worry about that.  

It does appear that OA collectors are put off by the obsession with grade/conditions required in collecting comics. I myself prefer old looking low grade books as long as they are presentable; As an aside, I feel that that my non OA/comic collecting ‘civilian’ friends are also more impressed by lower grade books as they exude more antique quality. 

On 25/02/2018 at 2:39 AM, tlatner said:

I do love collecting art to key issue comics when possible though.  Most of the major ones are out of my price range, 

That’s the main issue right there. Any key comic or first appearance (Original X Men, Black Panther, Silver Surfer, Thor - basically Kirby characters), the possibility of getting OA from those is simply nonexistent.

So what the cheaper alternative? I suppose I could get art from modern comics with these characters. But then it would be art by Kirby. Hence the comics themselves as something instead of nothing. 

This is a page from my second favourite issue of Moore’s run on Swamp Thing, featuring the ‘Green’ Lantern Medphyll and Swamp Thing’s consciousness.

Buying this page on eBay was a new learning experience for me as to how PayPal deals with complaints. When the page arrived I noticed that the last panel is mostly a stat. This wasn’t disclosed during the auction and at the time, I don’t know/think to look for stats.  

I rose the issue and the seller’s response was:

“This is the original art used in production. I don't have the art in hand, but I suppose in one portion of one panel, the artist used a stat. This does not diminish the value as the page, as it is still the one of a kind original piece used in production”

PayPal said they would offer a full refund if I returned the page. But being based in the UK, return postage that I would have had to bear myself would have been too high and I would have been out-of-pocket, without even any art to show for it. So I decided to keep the page 

Ultimately, a few good things came out of the experience:

1. I have a page from one of my favourite issues of Moore’s run. I previously had a page by Totleben/Bissette and now have one from Veitch/Alcala.

2. I now know how PayPal deals with complaint for the future and it’s good to know they will provide recompense if ever I received something that was fully a fake. 

3. I feel like can better recognise stats now and know what to look for in the future, even when they are not disclosed.

4. Hopefully, having to deal with the complaint will be enough to impress upon the seller the importance of disclosing stats and allowing buyers to make the decision to buy a page with stat or not.

22 hours ago, delekkerste said:

I bid $22K hammer back in 2013 and was the underbidder.  The winner bid $24K hammer.

Fast forward 5 years and I am no longer collecting Kirby or FF, so my $22K bid is gone.  The winner is gone too, because now he's the seller.   

A very interesting present day case study of what you have said is to come 20 years in the future. 

Has the bubble burst yet? 

It appears to me from reading the message boards and listening to Felix Comic Art Podcast the the typical path for OA collectors is start with collecting graded/key comics and then move onto OA.

I had never collected single issue/key comics. But after having started collecting original comic art just under a year or so ago, I’ve started dabbling in key comics recently.

It’s mostly because of Kirby. I would really like a piece of Kirby Silver Age OA, but there is no way I can afford it. But I figure I can still get first print/first appearance Silver Age comics like FF 48 to 52 in mid grade for a few hundred $ and those things do tend to hold their value. 

So I was wondering if anyone else here has branched into collecting key comics from collecting OA.

In case the question is if these are worth anything, my answer would be that they can be pricey to buy but ultimately worthless and with little resale value. Obviously. Maybe!

10 hours ago, Rick2you2 said:

The problem with that approach is that you can lose to someone who hit the 20% mark first, and you could win at 21%. 

I think you should just go with what you can manage, based on how much you like the piece. 

I think the 20% above recent comp auction approach was suggested, not so much as a strategy to win a piece, but more as a way to orient your own mind prior to an auction as to what you should be looking to pay at a minimum, if you wanna be an active participant in the auction. 

4 hours ago, Panelfan1 said:

The mistake here - is one I have made too and think is common.  We use the price before live bidding (or just before closing on a fixed time auction) as a level against which we make our final bids.  The mistake is not figuring out actual value and using that. The before price doesn't mean anything.  But we give it meaning irrationally. 

Somebody here recently suggested a simple yet excellent way to set ones expectations before an auction - check what things similar went for recently and add 20% to it and decide if you can manage that. 

On 06/02/2018 at 7:00 PM, malvin said:

As collectors say to each other, you like what you like.  It's always good and bad when your max price is 7x the final hammer price.

Good to win it for so much cheaper than what you are willing to apy

Bad that you are willing to pay 7x above market.

Either way, congrats!

Malvin

Thank you Malvin.

For what it matters, at the time of the auction I didn’t even know what the market value on a page like this was. It wasn’t until after the auction that I looked into the values and realize how much higher I had estimated it. 

If it came up today, I’d still go after it but perhaps a little more conservatively.

I was able to get a page from one of my favourite issues of Tom Strong, ‘Memories of Pangaea’.

Although, it went for a fairly reasonable price in the eBay auction, emotions took over in the final moment and I bid way way way over (like 7x over) the final hammer price as my max.

If there had been an underbidder who was anywhere near as crazy as I had been, I would have had to pay through the nose for this page.

http://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1451076 

It’s stretching the moment to heighten the tension. It’s done in films all the time and the use of this is comics is along the lines of comic book storytelling being more cinematic now. 

Wait, so the guy wasn’t looking for “opions” on value for insurance ? 

5 minutes ago, malvin said:

Its been discussed many times, archival glue stick is fine.  I think I did a few early on, but haven't bothered to do so since.

Malvin

Thanks for this.

pardon my ignorance, I don’t really know what archival glue is.

I punched it in Amazon and an item came up with the description 

“Craft Bond Repositionable Glue Stick. Repositionable bond, acid-free, photo safe and non-toxic. 40g”

Would this be deemed archival glue?

1 minute ago, BCarter27 said:

In OA, you don't snipe or bid live at the last minute. Instead, you bid insanely right at the start of the auction and then go back to your main job of melting the polar ice caps in order to uncover more oil.

 But is that a difference between OA and comic collectors or between the two systems of eBay and heritage.  

To me, eBay is ripe for sniping either for OA or comic as it ends at a specific time. Whereas on Herutage the auction goes on until there are no higher bidders (at least for more a number or seconds at the end), so sniping isn’t really much of an option. 

4 hours ago, Panelfan1 said:

my suggestion is - if you really want to snag one - look at recent sales , add 25%-50% and ask yourself if you still want it at that price. that way you have a comfortable limit/margin. still no guarantees. hopefully you will get it below your max, but the point I am trying to make is to have a max # that has a chance of winning.

This seems like a very good course of action. Seems obvious now that you say it,  it hadn’t occurred to me before. Thanks. 

16 hours ago, tth2 said:

The bidding habits of OA collectors are so different from the comic guys!

I’ve only recently gotten into both OA and comics.

just out of curiousity, in what way are they different. 

16 hours ago, cstojano said:

I contacted a well known restorer about this issue and the quoted costs for a standard size page were 450 to clean the old glue off and remount and 75-100 to do a single bubble stat replacement. 

The difficulty is that the page itself isn’t worth more than $150 - $200.  So spent $75 for a speech per bubble seems a bit disproportionate.

Has anyone here satisfactorily re-glued falling bubbles/stats themselves. Or is that a no no and would that cause too much damage in the long run. 

The glue on this page is drying up and the speech bubbles are falling off.  The parts where the glue was has yellowed.

Would anyone more experienced give any advice on attaching these back. 

Am I okay to use normal glue stick to add these back or would that damage the art further.  

Any advice would be appreciated.

The glue on this page is drying up and the speech bubbles are falling off.  The parts where the glue was has yellowed.

Would anyone more experienced give any advice on attaching these back. 

Am I okay to use normal glue stick to add these back or would that damage the art further.  

Many advice would be appreciated.

I’d say you should be able to get at least 70% on the retail price on eBay.