Stefanomjr

Some Capullo style Batman/Bruce

Green Arrow

Another (little) one

Saw Amy Reeder at a very small, local, con a few years ago...watched her do commissions all day and came home and free handed this off reference. Her (variant?) cover to Red Sonja

I'm uncomfortable with the stock market analogy. Both in terms of asset valuations as well as cash flow needs. First off, there isn't enough of an active market with quoted prices for similar assets or other inputs which can be corroborated by observable market data. In other words, original art is less like Apple stock and more like private equity. Secondly, if you're valuing your collection as part of your "portfolio" of assets, OA would have the same liquidity and overhang concerns as private equity. Meaning, in a downturn it would be the LAST asset class you'd look to sell. I used to collect wine. Original art seems to have more in common with the wine collecting hobby than anything else. Quantities are limited. Vintages are to individual issues, and cases of wine from that vintage are like individual pages of an issue.

I'm new here so my art is all modern, and alas, sans dialogue. Has there been an instance where the dialogue took away from the art? That you were drawn to the sequential storytelling, then paused to read and found the page less appealing? SInce, so far, all my OA is modern, I find I am drawn to OA that can stand alone without the word balloons and captions. Where you can infer the scene from the body language and facial expressions and mood. As for future purchases, I think any purchases that have dialogue... I'd judge the dialogue with equal weight as the artwork.

I started reading comics in 1983, when my classmate brought an old Conan comic book to show-and-tell....I was hooked! I gave up on reading/collecting comic books around 1994. Prices had ballooned, comics as an investment proved to be a bust & stories weren't as compelling. In May 2014, feeling nostalgic, I visited my local comic shop, the owner still recognized me, and while chatting, I flipped through a Capullo Batman issue and got hooked all over again! Capullo/Snyder lead me to Snyder/Murphy and The Wake. I started following Sean Murphy on Twitter, which lead me to his art dealers website. Turns out Sean's agent was 5 minutes from my office...thus I got my first taste of original art. I made my first purchase in 2015 & have since committed to making one or two "meaningful" additions each year. I see lots of mature collections with pieces that don't seem to fit within a larger context of a collectors main focus. I'm trying to avoid that. My focus has been Sean Murphy artwork, I love his ability to create depth and his ability to spot blacks. I enjoy buying pieces that are visually interesting, that can stand alone as good art or good sequential storytelling. I'm looking to add meaningful examples from a few other artists I appreciate. http://cafurl.com?i=23225 Thanks for reading and thanks for visiting my CAF

Love the working title: Joker: White Knight of Gotham

Recent addition to my CAF From Sean Murphy Batman White Knight - issue 4 page 16 http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=1465832

5x FMV seems to validate the experience I just posted about.

Great thread. I am new to all this and find the task of having to price a piece (to make an offer) on the secondary market daunting. I'll share my limited (one) experience: In January, found a piece I wanted on CAF that was NFS and reached out to the owner - asked if he'd entertain an offer. Was told "maybe" - that it wasn't a must-keep, but he wasn't looking to sell it for "yard sale" prices either. We left it that I'd get back to him in three months, once some cash inflows were resolved. In the meantime, I said, if someone made an offer or he found himself in need of selling...let me know. He got back to me little over two months later saying he was raising cash for a purchase and if I was still interested, he wanted $X. I had done my due diligence. Had already looked at Ebay and Comic Link (nothing on HA) and concluded, when the time came, I'd offer him approx 45% more than what I was seeing (recent) historical prices. In fact the pages I was basing my pricing on were action pages and this page was not, so hypothetically my premium was higher! Unfortunately, the price he wanted was almost 3x recent sales prices. So I offered him 2x historical pricing - still 28% less than his asking. He opted to put it up for sale on CAF instead and sure enough it sold for "pretty close to asking." My thought process, at the time, was this. While I really loved the piece...1) it wasn't superior to examples I already owned and 2) I could use that money and allocate it to something better. The other side of the coin though was this...if it sold for what he was asking, if it ever turned up for sale in the future I'd have to pay even MORE to own! Or, even worse....maybe the new owner would vault it, never to be seen or sold again! It goes to show that when you're dealing with NFS art - "normal" sales data, through HA, Ebay, Comic Link, etc only hint at the direction you need to price the art in order to make a compelling offer. Look forward to more dialogue on this topic, Cheers!

In terms of inks over blue line vs inks over original pencil....I think it's trickier than that. Assuming there isn't any fraud involved and you've got a willing buyer and seller on each end of each sale.....other variables factor into desirability/price. Who worked on the page, was the OA part of an epic run or moment or intro of a character....seems hard to quantify. Which is preferable? Suffice to say it boils down to personal preference? Example: If you're a big Batman fan, all else being equal, do you prefer Greg Capullo pencil page AND Glapion inks over blue line? Or Glapion (or Miki) inks over Greg's pencil?

I'm glad my OA is Sean Murphy art where he pencils and inks it all. Pondering the pros and cons of inks over pencils vs inks over blue line is making my head hurt. Is there any historical data (sales) that show that one is preferred over the other?

Very new to the boards and to the hobby. Appreciated the votes and more importantly the time everyone took to post their own great art purchases. Was great getting to go through them all. Already looking forward to next year.

My only purchase in 2017: Batman White Knight (Sean Gordon Murphy) issue 1, page 21 - there is a Bernie Wrightson quality to this piece http://www.comicartfans.com/my/LowryPieceDetail.asp?Piece=9314

Selling Batman Beyond 2.0 vol. 1 Rewired prelim cover on 11x17" paper for $1,200. Chance to own SGM Batman art, as prices and demand for his work continues to increase. Comes with postcard sized prelim/concept ideas Sean had before he decided on what would be the cover art. Sean's Batman White Knight prelim cover to issue two recently sold for $800 & issue three prelim page sold for $1,500 with the variant cover prelim selling for $1,200!!!