Rick2you2

Where is the wish list on CAF? Is that the same as the Want List?

Since you will clearly never want to sell it, go with your heart's desire. Value becomes irrelevant, in this situation. Although, I also agree with some of the other comments that it shouldn't effect worth. That's a nice Gil Kane, by the way. Usually, I don't like his work (the faces, in particular, are too sterile for my taste).

If you are this worried about the price, and feel you are being taken, don't buy it. That's different than a piece which is just naturally high priced. The former is something you will always think about when you look at it. There are things I have loved and regretted not buying, but there are also things I loved, didn't buy, and eventually, didn't particularly care about the loss. Also, some of this stuff is a lot more fungible than other stuff. You want a Curt Swan Superman because you love the image? Wait awhile; another one will come up. There is also the question of how much pain in real dollars is at stake. I prefer the low end of the pool, and would not spend the money for a good sized downpayment on a car for artwork no matter how much I loved it. I would buy something cheaper and remind myself of an old song: "If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with."

Interesting. I do the opposite. I love asking an artist to do a Phantom Stranger he/she has never done before (and I loan them some collected stories from DC to get a sense of the character). If they have, then these days, I try to at least come up with something off the beaten path regarding a scene or pose. It puts their artistry to the test instead of just their illustrative skills.

They will if you run them through the washing machine.

So if someone were willing to pay for a piece of art through Paypal, and sent you the money, you would still be skeptical? Not too long ago, someone started a thread about why they don't post things in their gallery--they did not want to be bothered by people who wanted to buy things which weren't for sale. Having two galleries is a bit weird though. I wouldn't mind giving my eBay name as an alternative, as the next post suggested, however. If your view is prevelant, however, I may have to post some low level bits (which I also have, as do most of us I suspect) just so I don't lose out on potential opportunities.

Why would an empty gallery be a red flag? I don't post anything from my collection on CAF.

For protective purposes, I doubt it really matters. My personal preference is to put it in a top loader and then drop the top loader into an Itoya. That's not always doable because the largest Itoya's I can find are too small to hold the largest top loaders (and sometimes the piece won't fit into a top loader either).

While I primarily collect Phantom Stranger art, I haven’t been quite that diligent and have passed on quite a number of pages where I just don’t like either the art or artist. Likewise, I will sometimes buy other things. But, I really do like style comparisons, not just the total image, and focusing on a single character also helps control my spending. You can’t buy what you can’t get. Some pieces have gotten “better” as I have aged; others have headed in the other direction.

I would probably get them away from the cardboard. Depending on how moist the situation, they might absorb moisture and harm the art. Get more bags and top loaders.

Robert Dennis is excellent. Don’t know the other two.

Where are you storing them that would lead to pests and vermin? If kept dry, and in a place where mice won’t go, like an open shelf or inside furniture, what is the concern?

What annoys me is how sellers don’t always list the characters on each page. I’m currently building my own list of all Phantom Stranger appearances, at least from the sources I don’t already know and may want.

Honestly, I'd buy whatever I could find that looks good.

Instinctually, that sounds right, but from an intellectual perspective, it doesn't make any sense. I would generally buy the inks, but sometimes, pencils have a tonality which I don't think is captured with straight inks.

I think I want to add a caveat to my earlier response. Sometimes, the pencils are simply “better” than the inks, so I may go for the pencils. Sometimes the inks are better, but that’s the presumptive selection so it doesn’t matter.

I buy to the character, no matter what the source. To me a comparison of different artistic styles is interesting, while creating continuity to the collection. Why pass up a nice piece of art which just happens to come from a different title? There were also some artists who wrote stories for the Phantom Stranger books I don’t buy because I don’t like the style of art (or it is too expensive, a bad image, or some other reason)? Likewise, I also commission pieces with the character from different artists. Aside from a different style, I get to “write” the content by adding secondary characters, scenes or twists geared to the artist. In one case, for example, I asked a woman artist well-known for her advocacy of women’s issues and a subject of abuse in the industry do a female Phantom Stranger and selecting her own interpretation of what the character should look like.

Reminds of an incident many years ago where someone used the word "niggardly" and was jeered for using a racist term. I guess a lot of people are parsimonious with their time when it comes to using a dictionary.

Inks. It's like getting both for the same price. But, if it is a different penciller, probably the pencils.

I think you are indirectly confusing OA with fine art. OA is quite literally production art, and you are seeing the artist doing his production. When you are invested in this kind of art, that's a benefit (Although, I don't care for paste-ups used to modify the original drawing, which are an analagous subject, and don't seem to affect the value either). Fine art is "finished art", so you shouldn't see it.

For all it’s worth, I have reason to believe the AF project is dead.

Thanks, but the real prize doesn't come until next month. I was asked to keep it a secret, so I will.

I think the value of money hasn't gone up quite as much as this stuff. I did pick up an inexpensive page from him yesterday from one of his books. I bought it mostly for the bottom panel. THAT is a kiss.

I saw Howard at the East Coast Comicon yesterday and told him what AF 1 went for. He had heard it, but his general reaction was amazement people would spend that kind of money for this stuff. I agree.

In Coletta’s defense, the Kirby biography mentioned that to meet deadlines, he sometimes churned out as many as three pages per day. If Coletta was expected to keep pace with anything like that, no wonder he had some less than great product out there.