bluechip

On 5/27/2020 at 1:52 PM, Wayne-Tec said:

The T206 came out in 1909-1911. How many collectors today had the opportunity to watch him play live?

 

I wouldn't be shocked to see Action #1 remains No. 1. But for that to happen, all of those collectors born after 1980 are going to have to say "No, I prefer to spend just a little more on a character I didn't grow up liking that much."

People have not grown up liking Honus Wagner for about a hundred years now.   They've grown up hearing it's a holy grail baseball card based on criteria that long, long ago ceased to be pertinent(most collectors in the early 1900s were completists, and the Wagner card was sought after not because he was the GOAT but because they wanted to complete the set, which was hard to find, so it cost more).  But the "grail card" sheen continues to shine brightly, long long (oh so very long) after collectors sought out the card based on his importance and appeal as a player.

On 5/26/2020 at 10:37 AM, woowoo said:

Like a more-fun 32 missing back cover you'r saying

5 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Indeed. See also 'Doctor Who'. 

Yeah.   They're talking now about whether to bring back Tony Stark to the MCU and between the multiverses and artificial intelligence they have plenty of options for doing so without even having to retcon it.  Of course, no matter how much it fits within their established reality and its rules, many fans will cheer but some will cry "hack" (and let slip the dogs of war).      

But to those fans I would point to the Gwen-f##ked-Osborn story and say it could be worse.  They could reveal that while Tony was away, Pepper f##ked Thanos and the big bad is the actual father of the Stark baby.  

On 5/22/2020 at 1:12 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

That's quite the in comic lately that one. A great cover with Osborne sweating away there in the background at the thought of the impending nuptials. And given the (horrific) JMS storyline that was to come, an oddly prophetic cover to, as it turns out. 

I heard that Joe was basically assigned that story and apparently wishes he could retcon it from his experience.   

As to whomever assigned it to him, I understand the need to find something new but when you retcon a beloved character that horribly, it seems a far greater sin than it would have been simply to retcon her death scene and bring her back (a la "she only seemed to be dead"...)    

"Jumping the shark" is too tame a phrase for that story.  That was humping the shark and teabagging it. 

2 hours ago, grapeape said:

My point about the 20 K (TOS 39 sold for $23,000 + just last year.) is that these art works at auction we’re meant to

1) make a little money for the artists

2) create an exciting auction event for collectors

At one point after changing hands I believe the Amazing Fantasy 15 asking price was $80,000 from a dealer.

No way Kirby was thinking that these pieces were one day going to become desired for that kind of money.

The point....Again is whatever they are selling for today privately or at auction it’s imperative potential buyers know that  there are questions about the amount of work Kirby actually contributed.

Presumptively the seller who bought this recreation late last year for $23k has it up for sale now and last I checked bidding was just under $4 K. 
Will that person get their money back?

Will the ComicLink winning bidder a week from now understand they bought art that is considered by many to be suspect?

All sellers must disclose now that there exists questions about the art.

These covers originally estimated for a few thousand dollars. Today they potentially could sell at auction or privately for quite a bit more.

I bid on them in 1994 and a couple times on the ones that showed up again but I never won one so I guess I didn't value them as much as someone else did.

2 hours ago, The Voord said:

And my guess was that Jack laid down some basic outlines and said to his assistant, "Over to you", which is pretty much akin to those times he did layouts for other artists to follow.  You idea is that Jack added some finishing touches.  We're not exactly poles apart as I do think Jack's involvement was minimal. I don't have a problem in the world with you having a different opinion, it's just that earlier on in this thread you were too heavy-handed in your dismissal of contrary opinions to your own.  For example, your exchanges with Bluechip guy which he called you out on.   You can respectfully disagree over opinions, which is not quite the same as telling the other person, "You're completely wrong." 

I think he dialed that back very magnanimously.

Not sure who made the point earlier but somebody said something to the effect that these were never meant to be pieces worth 20K or whatever.   I don't know if they are actually selling for that, but it seems to me that disagreement or disapproval of the value of things is what sometimes leads people to overstate their complaints.   But if people never disagreed about what things are worth, nobody would ever buy or sell anything.    It'd be like...

Seller: "20k?  That's what I paid for it and if I can only get 20K I'll just hang onto it."   

Buyer:  "But it's only worth 20K, not a penny more.   And when I sell it I'm gonna have to sell it for 20K..."

20 hours ago, drdroom said:

The attribution is a quote from Theakston, and just to be clear, "Kirby" in this context means Kirby's ghost, and these three are distinguished from a larger group done by Kirby's ghost and inked by Ayers. The sense of the article is that Kirby drew none of them. I'm not asserting the truth of this, but that's Theakston's claim, accepted by OhDannyBoy.

 

The suggestion that the family put one over on collectors is a bold one (though I can see the logical behind it).   I can even see the logic behind the idea that Kirby might have been unable to do the work and agreed to "do" the recreations so his family would get some money before he passed.   But why, oh WHY, does the person quoted in this article then take it a giant leap further and say that we should presume Kirby didn't touch these because he'd been on record as saying he didn't like to ink or do recreations because it meant he was doing the work "twice"?  

The simple fact that Kirby formally and contractually agreed to provide those recreations completely undercuts that particular assertion for questioning their value.   Yet it's pretty front and center here.   And any time someone uses a false assertion, you can -- and should -- question the agenda behind the other assertions that support his conclusion.  

On 5/22/2020 at 1:53 PM, drdroom said:

That's completely wrong:) Jack pencilling or doing layouts was an act of original creation. He didn't even work with prelims as some artists do, so tracing had no role in his practice. If he traced a copy of the original for this, he did far, far less than he did on a page he laid out (which means also plotted). 

But also, your scenario sounds unlikely to me. The point of having assistants is not so the main artist can do the scut work. Any fool can trace the picture. Why would Jack trace it? 

If you believe the "scenario" I posited is untrue, that's fine.  Because that's your opinion and if it's based on logical assessment, even better.

If you say I am wrong about that (even though I didn't say I knew that "scenario" to be a fact). that is fine, as well  

But when you say I am "completely wrong" that the tracing would be an equal amount of actual work on the page as exists on other pieces by Kirby, you are conflating opinions with facts.

Your opinion is that it's not his work if it's not an "original...creation" but that is not how "work" is defined.   If it were, we'd never say that ANY recreation was an artists' actual work.

What I said is that IF Kirby traced his own work, it means there may well be as much of his actual hand on that piece as there is on another piece on which he did layouts (especially if those layouts were then erased).    

It doesn't change that because, as you say, the "layouts (were) an act of original creation".   

Your opinion (or anyone's opinion) of them as a lesser work of creation or being of lesser value is not the issue I was addressing. 

34 minutes ago, Wayne-Tec said:

Hypothetically, if the CGC 9.2 copy became available for sale/auction, or another high grade Tec #27, and it set a new world record for the sale of a single comic book...

Would Tec #27s in all/most grades then jump ahead of Action #1 to become the No. 1 FMV book in the hobby?

If so it would be for illogical reasons, because, among other facts, it wouldn't change the fact there is a Mile High Action 1 out there which is probably 9.2.

But the behavior of people is not always logical

This takes me back to when I was working in Mexico in my early 20s and found stacks of these at street sales for next to nothing.   I bought a handful but wished I had bought more.  I loved the issues of Spider-man and Sgt. Fury which were clearly created just for the Mexican market (I know now to call them "non-canon").   Especially impressing me was the fact they had kept Gwen Stacy alive for a couple years' worth of issues.   In some she was totally sexed up and in others she was saintly and wife-like, which put her on both sides of the so-called 'madonna-whore" complex.   Apparently the eventually had to kill her off, but by then it must not have been a secret to fans, because they opted out of the "who dies?" theme from the original cover. 

Just now, The Voord said:

Sure, if you're talking about inked pages, yes, the original pencils were mostly erased.   This cover was re-created as pure pencils . . . so not really fair to lump it in the category of penciled & inked pages.  One set of drawing for a production process (the end-result mass-produced comic-books) . . . this one to exist as a drawing for an art collector to own.

Understood and agreed.   I was making the point because people have not to my knowledge said Kirby did no work on this, just that he had assistance, which sounds to me more like somebody helped clean it up and make the pencils tighter, not that his hand never touched the page.  But then maybe some people feel that was what happened and just aren't saying it?   If so that's a bold and harsh position to take and I would expect that such an extraordinary claim should be required to have extraordinary backup.

the vast majority of Kirby pencil art out there has inks by someone else over it and most of the original pencils were erased.   Many pieces simply had layouts.  So, even if all Jack did with this was to trace or lightbox or copy the basic shapes, he did as much as, if not more than, he had done on many other pieces that are considered Kirby works 

The one that matters IMB is the 1st with a hero that people still recognize, which gives the award to MMC4

1 hour ago, markseifert said:

I'd bet they knew or were told what the deal was fairly early on.  The reader poll they helped use to see what was driving it was in Action Comics #4 (which was the reason Donenfeld stated for the timeline on several occasions, including in court).

That makes sense.  While Action 4 was on the stands, they would be putting together #7

1 minute ago, GreatCaesarsGhost said:

That page is perplexing to me. It’s like Siegel and Shuster just began their story in the middle instead of the beginning 

It definitely feels like they just couldn't find the earlier pages in time for printing.   

This was made from daily strips and you could be forgiven for thinking maybe they just wanted to start the strip with action, but Siegel had created earlier strips focusing on the origin story with a different artist before partnering with Shuster so it seems like they (Siegel and Shuster) would've done the same.  I have never read an accounting of what was done that explains all the obvious questions.  

2 minutes ago, GreatCaesarsGhost said:

I have been a bit flummoxed trying to figure out how the cover of Action 7 was from the Action 1 story.  I bet you're right.  Maybe it came as a harsh surprise to Siegel and Shuster when their character had to wait 6 more issues to return to the cover.  It's odd they didn't make the Action 7 cover out of a later story, like in issue 6 or 7.  

My guess is they had the cover drawn for 2 based on the Action 1 story, and after it wasn't used for 2 they didn't bother making another cover.  DC got word that superman was the reason the book was selling by the time 7 went to the press and used the cover already drawn.  My educated guess. 

18 hours ago, GreatCaesarsGhost said:

 

I always liked that page, and the middle panel was probably intended by Shuster for Action Comics 2 before it ended up on 7.   

9 hours ago, jjonahjameson11 said:

Sal Buscema Avengers 69 cover

 

Scrolling this my screen showed only the portion of your post that I quoted above, which made think "Which one of the Avengers is she?"

On 5/18/2020 at 5:14 AM, GreatCaesarsGhost said:

@Comics181 That’s a great way to start back!

but I do not understand the CGC policy on trimming of these individual pages. First of all, your page doesn’t even look trimmed to begin with. Second, it would seem to me that ALL single pages had to have been trimmed one way or another in the process of removal from the book.  Isn’t any cutting of paper considered trimming?

for instance, consider the below page. Clearly this page got cut out of a book. Yet, blue label

 

 

 

Even without the inconsistency, it is just inarguably incorrect to call something "restored" when a portion of it has been removed.   I've heard it defended as a means of saying the book has been "desecrated" but in the real world 'restored' and 'desecrated' are two entirely different words.

I could be convinced to go along with the logic of a micro-trimmed book being called "restored" if in fact it has created the false appearance of a book that has never acquired any wear on the edges.   

But a book which was cut to fit in a bound volume, or some kid's notebook or shoebox, has been clearly damaged and appears far worse than its original state.  Not in English, nor any other language I know of, do we call something like that restored.     

Doing so was incorrect when labeling complete books.   And to do so with single pages is even less correct.     But the policy goes to extremes I would never have anticipated when something is called "restored" because it was harshly and obviously trimmed by some kid or librarian 50 years ago, but pieces of a book that was recently and methodically taken apart and trimmed (to cut the wraps in half), are not.  

I've heard it said that this is done despite the illogic because that's the way it's been done up to now.   But perpetuating a mistake is never a good idea.   People in the hobby may get used to something illogical over time, but it undoubtedly plays a part in lessening confidence, to some degree. And every time a new person comes to the hobby, or considers coming into it, each little piece of the puzzle that doesn't quite makes sense is something that may give them pause.         

1 hour ago, GreatCaesarsGhost said:

Well this is troubling . . and on just so many levels.
 

Here is the “Before” pic:

 

I don't know the seller but I would guess the reason for going with the other company was to get a label that said it had a verified signature.   The provenance on the signature was considered first rate when this first showed up for sale, consigned by the original owner but the worst-case interpretation of CGC's label could conceivably have caused some buyers to think that nothing was certain but that some random dude scribbled on it.  

On 5/15/2020 at 12:18 PM, Mmehdy said:

SHORT ANSWER: You should be doing both carefully.

 

LONG ANSWER:

 SELL: You should sell asap prior to a greater future price decline any duplicates, books you no longer care about, any CGC restored or  CGC low grade books, especially with tape, detached centerfolds, rusty staples and other condition defects.

 I would not buy any ungraded GA/SA comic book at this time, and if you do, limit that purchase to under $100 and be prepared for a drastic price drop so build it in the purchase price. ( 10 cents on the dollar or less).

 

 BUY:  With the sales money you raised you should  purchase upgraded  GA/SA comic books either condition wise or book wise. I would limit my buying to CGC graded unrestored books with no significant defects. In other words TRADE UP. If you buy now, only do so for the books you intend to keep in your collection for at least the next fives years and make sure the price you pay is reflective of the uncertain future market conditions...a discount. Otherwise wait and hold on to the money and see where the market goes.

 

TIMING: That is the real issue here to maximize you Ga/SA dollars. Look for very significant price reductions in GA/SA non- key but every expensive  $2K and over comic books once the full effects of this economic downturn play out. You can wait and get more bang for buck, in 6 months, and even a bigger bank after one year. I would not target the absolute bottom of this upcoming Ga/SA comic book market as your initial buying point as most likely it would have passed before you and everyone else know about it.  These discounts will be once in a lifetime so chose you targets carefully and don't just buy something because  it is a "good deal" . Still to you GA/SA collecting plan...make you collection better. The timing issue is how long do you plan on keeping your newly bought Ga/SA comic books. The earlier you buy now, the longer you are gonna have to hold to break even on your purchase. Now an exception would be purchases of material at 50 cents or less on the dollar and even then we cannot predict how long and deep this economic crisis will last...my best guess is that the negative effects will last for years to come. I disagree with the Mile High Comic book newsletter than states we will never get back to where we were a few months ago. I think it is gonna take work and time,and hopefully a little bit of luck to put some type of possible plausible ending out there.I can only tell you what I and few other original comic books collectors from the 70's(  who are not on the board ) are doing. We are getting together our wants lists and waiting for as long as it takes to get to the near bottom of this upcoming market. We do not care if it hits the absolute bottom...we just want to be there when's it at 90%. As a buyer you control when and what you buy, if you are seller, you had better take timing into account if you cannot hold the book thru this unknown time of downturn. I would consider a safe time a 5 year period. What you do not want to be caught is is 2 years down the road, 40/605 value decrease in GA/SA market value and you have to sell.  Its simple, reevaluate your entire collection, place in one the books that you will never sell/at least for the next five years aside. Everything else is fair game. Make that super want list and get ready, it is gonna take awhile but it is gonna be worth the wait.

 

 

Google translate says:

"SELL stuff I don't collect and don't have.

BUY stuff like what I have."

7 hours ago, Mmehdy said:

 

3-LA shutdown and beyond: image you are a comic book store with no income for 3 more months...different rules in our country now, but man....when and if they fully reopen...please support them or contact them and attempt to buy some of their GA/SA with current market conditions taking into account. SO SO-CAL board members especially make it a point to try to get to the stores once they reopen fully.

 

 

The virtual shutdown of comics publishing would not be happening if comics were readily available at grocery and drug stores and via subscription, the way they once were.   The focus on comics-only stores, coupled with the notion that new books are desirable only if they are slabbable, has put the (new) comics business susceptible to a quarantine, whereas in olden times comics they would be one of the sectors that would withstand it, even flourish, with people buying them mostly to read (instead of mostly to keep pristine and resell).

I can only assume the rationale behind putting comics shops way down the list of who-gets-to-reopen-next is that books are one type of consumer product that is more likely, on average, to be handled by customers and put back on the shelf.  

Maybe the comics business might increase its chances of climbing up from where it is (phase 3?  4?) to phase 2 or so, by initiating an industry set of guidelines for comics stores -- perhaps mandating not only masks inside the store but gloves and/or use of hand sanitizer open entering and exiting.    

12 hours ago, exitmusicblue said:

Given his 1970s Submariner published pages go for several thousand on average (some dealers ask for a few K more), I'd wager 400-700 would be fair for this.  Of course the more (verifiable) provenance, the better.

I will give you $701

Unfortunately, "production art" can be... 

1) xerox copies made a few months ago by some sphincter at Kinko's, or --

2) Marvel's office copies of a vintage silver age issue hand colored by Steranko himself.  

..or anything in between.