bluechip

On 8/1/2020 at 11:50 AM, bronze johnny said:

This has to be the only cover I can think of that has a splash page on the cover. Brilliant!

Also the only Marvel cover in which a superhero is apparently looking at a poster (or comic art) of another hero.   I would love to hear which it is, or if there's some other possible explanation I haven't considered.   

21 hours ago, Sensei Ryan said:

It seems weird to me, because the 34.5K bid was legit, and the seller lowered the reserve from 35K to 30K, the high bid should still be 34.5 (and not drop nearly 5 thousand dollars) to 29.75K...if that makes sense.

Does Clink allow bid retractions?  Maybe that happened coupled with the seller lowering the reserve but to have both happen simultaneously seems more than just a coincidence...

The lowering of the reserve would have to trigger an opportunity to withdraw any bids above the newly lowered reserve.  

When someone makes a bid and it doesn't meet the reserve, it's essentially the same as being outbid.  So you can't (or shouldn't be able to) tell a bidder they've been outbid and then say oh now that we know that you won't bid higher, the bid that exceeded yours has been withdrawn.  The other bidder (be it an actual person or a reserve) in any such situation allowing that would be able to bid against all other bidders and push you to the limit without any risk of losing an item they wanted or winning an item they didn't want.  

On 8/23/2020 at 6:45 AM, Frisco Larson said:

The logo expanded for this issue.  You see more webbing.

I don't know if anyone's dealt with this before, but after several days of 110+plus degree weather I suddenly remembered a bank branch where I have a safe deposit box has been closed due to Covid, and I found myself imaging that the AC was off all during the summer, causing my books to age several decades beyond their years due to the heat. 

So much was I concerned that I arranged to retrieve the most susceptible items, and when I got there the place relatively cool (not chilly but 30-40 degrees cooler than outside.  And I was told they basically had to come in every other day to deal with people getting into their boxes, so it never got above 80.  While that's not as reassuring as hearing they keep it at 40 degrees temp and humidity, it was much better than my fears.

Wondering if anybody has had similar concerns and if so how they dealt with them.

For weeks now I've had two boxes of books I've been wanting to send to CGC for grading.  But no matter how many times I try to give them my card information, it. just. will. not. take. it.

It was suggested I try a different browser.

Didn't work.

Tried calling to give my information over the phone.

Told they can't do that.

Asked then what can I do?

Forms would be mailed to me.

Weeks later, no forms.

So I tried again online, just to be sure that was still impossible.

And it was.

Compounding this is the fact CGC has had my CC information on file, and it was supposedly going to renew with a discount each year.  

And just before all this I got a bill for a book which I'd submitted years ago.  Thought I'd prepaid at the time but apparently not.  But regardless, that meant CGC was able to get money from my card very recently.

I tripped over the books again today, and I would really like to submit them.  But while, I've had this much trouble (and more) getting companies to stop taking my money.  I've never had so much trouble getting anyone to take my money. 

Any help would be appreciated.  

7 hours ago, The Voord said:

I don't necessarily agree with you.  I think that nowadays collectors are more focused on what the big auction houses are offering and the excitement that comes with the competition of bidding against other collectors.

To give you an example of this, at one time I owned a selection of Magic the Gathering paintings.  I decided to sell all bar a few examples I wanted to keep.  Over a period of months I drip-fed art for direct sale on one of the MTG FB groups and only a few paintings sold at my asking prices.  Later on I decided to re-offer the same paintings that no-one seemingly wanted to buy first time round on the same FB group . . . only this time in auction format.  Guess what happened?  All the MTG paintings sold at much higher prices than I was originally asking for them.

I was trying to be blatantly sarcastic, but I think maybe those views are a little too close to what some people actually say. 

11 hours ago, The Voord said:

I've offered it for sale a few times in recent years with no takers.  I tend not to leave For Sale stuff up indefinitely so after a few months it went back into my collection!

If it was up for sale then it must be that nobody wants it because whenever a piece comes up for sale every person who might want it now or in the future sees the offering.   Which is also why the price something achieves when it sells is exactly what it's worth to every other person.

31 minutes ago, Rick2you2 said:

Wasn’t that one out for auction within the last year? Or something similar?
I love it, by the way.

Good example of comic art that you can enjoy whether or not you have any nostalgic connection to the comic it was created for.  Or even if you have no interest in comics at all.

If "the hero" can refer to any briefly appearing and long forgotten side character, this thread could be very long, indeed.  

But how many major heroes appeared first on the cover as a tiny blurb, sometimes in their debut and sometimes not until they'd been around awhile?  

Thinking of Police 1 for Plastic Man and Jackpot 4 Archie

On 8/8/2020 at 10:22 PM, romitaman said:

that lost asm 82 cover would sell for more than the published asm 82...easily ..... if you want to call it a glorified commission that's  ok..it would still sell for more at auction

in turn I believe Ditko's unpublished asm 10 cover would sell for more than jack kirby's published asm 10 cover if both came up for auction at the same time....

(but with different artists its a little harder to compare values...... i know)

but hey..  everyone has their opinion.... and it's all good as we will never ever find out above for sure...so we are all right .. sorta like saying we personally know which hero is strongest....LOL

I remember seeing you list that ASM 82 unused cover and wanting to buy it but it was already gone.  The price seemed lower than it should be, compared to other covers with lesser images by lesser artists.  

Timely emphasizes nostalgia as if he feels that can only come into play if the buyer remembers seeing that very image in the month it was published.  But nostalgic feelings come into play whenever you see any image of a character you liked in the past.  Even if you like the character today, part of what you like is the long relationship you have with them.  If the work is by an artist you like, then even more so.  If it's contemporary to a specially remembered time in your life (or in the arc of the character, even more so). 

So, even if art was drawn and/or published before you were born, it can still make you nostalgic.  

Some artists, like in this discussion Ditko and Romita, evolve their styles as the draw.  So much so that a keen eye can pinpoint the year, even the month, when Ditko drew a particular image.  Same for Romita.   The unused ASM 82 cover (like the DItko unused 10) has a look that Romita would only have created at that precise point in his history with the character.  Hence, when you see it you feel a bit of nostalgia, especially if you remember that particular story, as well.  And because you haven't seen that precise image before, that feeling is also new

If you're ALL about seeing exactly what you saw when you were a kid and you first read that book, those feelings won't be as strong with you,   But unless it was a painted cover, then what you're seeing in the original art is never gonna be exactly what you saw back then, either.       

Marvel has done a lot of these over the years.  Dr. Strange made his first cover appearance as sidebar on the bottom (bottom bar?)

On 7/31/2020 at 2:51 PM, Bo_Hogg1 said:

All these years, I thought Superman came first and something caused me to check it and The Phantom came out 4 months before but the Phantom gets no respect. I have always thought of The Phantom like soccer.  The Phantom is the most popular superhero world wide like soccer is to sports but we don't really care that much about either one in the USA..

I own a nice Ace 11 and would never ever sell it at guide when I sell it, it deserves waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over guide. I will try and dig it out of my safe and post a pic.

So my question is why no respect for The Phantom?

The first comic hero with super powers was Popeye

23 hours ago, grapeape said:

Uhhh Bluechip....they were Flying Fish!!!!!

And lettering and Kibitzing by the great Artie Simek.

 

Flying fish gotta be worth 2x or 3X regular fish

A lot depends on the quality of the cover versus the Splash.  There are probably many examples where the cover was great and the splash sucked, and vice versa. 

Since Spider-man is the one I remember best, I recall that ASM 30 had an uncharacteristically lame Ditko cover but a pretty cool splash.  33 had a classic cover of Spidey crushed by machinery but the splash had an underwater building with word balloons and a fish (and this was Ditko not Kirby so building and fish were both unimpressive).    

Romita examples I remember include Amazing Spider-man 68 and 69, back-to-back classic covers.  The splash of 69 was so great it would arguably get many votes that it's even better than the cover.  But the splash of 68... I couldn't imagine anyone preferring it unless they're big fans of the Kingpin's big backside.    

So if anybody tells you there is some strict cover to splash metric determining value, beware.

34 minutes ago, grapeape said:

If he had said there’s no difference  in value between an unpublished cover and a published cover I’d agree.

I’ve seen covers rejected by publishers that subjectively were better then the published cover. The market would undoubtedly value the published cover more.

On merit, the eye and heart of the art purveyor may prefer the unpublished.

Cheers

🍇+🦍

Nothing to argue with there.  Published is usually going to be worth more and sales bear that out. 

What is not borne out by sales results, or the opinions of most people, so far as I can see, is the comparison between an unpublished cover and a commission piece.  

1 hour ago, Timely said:

To me, buying an unpublished cover is akin to buying a vintage commission piece. It rests on it's own merit as a piece of art and nothing more.

That sounds like something I expect to hear when selling an unpublished cover and never to hear when I am trying to buy one.

The largest reason the art for a published comic book cover (which is nearly always, by definition, an unfinished version of the published art) has value is due to its place in the cultural landscape. 

So an earlier version of the same piece created during the same process by the same artist and for the same purpose will be a lot more desirable than a commission piece created for an individual. 

In fine art, the closest thing in the fine art world to an unpublished classic comic cover would be, say, a preliminary version of a world-famous piece.  If someone had an "unpublished" version of a world-famous piece of art (and such things do exist) I doubt you could get the seller to believe it was worth no more than some contemporary commission portrait the artist made of some random rich person virtually unknown today, which the artist did to pay the rent.   

If you had a manuscript that wasn't the "final" version of a famous book would you hope to pay the same as you would for a contemporary commission piece by the same author which ended up having virtually no effect on culture (despite its quality or lack thereof)?   If you did I suspect you'd be disappointed.      

2 hours ago, buttock said:

JIM 117 strikes me as more of a generic war cover and is from '65 when Vietnam was escalating from an occupation to a response to an "attack on the US", at least in the public's eye.  Public perception would be, "Hey, Thor's helping the troops!"  It's cartoony to the point of silliness (the guy with the mortar is dropping the round in backward...)

Cap 125 is 5 years later, more gritty, and now well into the era of protest against the war.  This is post-Tet, Nixon is in office, and the US public wants us out.  The art is much starker and realistic, to the point of almost being subversive when you consider the fact that it's Captain freaking America about to get stabbed in the back!  

 

Vietnam was referenced also on a Tales of Suspense cover with Cap but the image is him facing off with a cliched Asian bad guy in the form of an evil Sumo wrestler.   Don't know the issue #. Sgt. Fury Annual (I think #3) shows Fury and the Howlers fighting in Vietnam.  It's pretty much a straightforward war scene.   JIM 117 was reprinted in a Thor Annual about the same time as the unpublished cap cover.   Marie Severin was tapped to create that new cover as well, and it goes a step further in its depiction of the Viet Cong chasing down Don Blake and calling him a "Yankee dog", iirc

The war and/or protests of the era began to get mentioned inside the books at the end of the 60s/early 70s but show up only a few times on covers, seldom enough that I sorta think I recall most -- Spider-man 68, Iron Man 45, Cap 120, Daredevil 70 and a Sub-mariner issue (47?).    

Walked away a beat and then remembered there's few additional Sgt. Fury covers which also reflect the Vietnam war and protests, indirectly.  There's the "Peacemonger" issue with a bloody battle with Asian (Japanese) troops drawn oddly inside a peace symbol, and "Who'll Stop the Bombs" which was a story about Dresden, but depicts children as collateral damage on the cover and features Fury trying to save what is clearly intended to be a 1970 Vietnamese kid who somehow got in the path of the bombs dropped by Allies on Germany in 1945.    

1 hour ago, exitmusicblue said:

I should say, it'd be a personal grail as someone who collected Harvey PCH.  GA OA can go for underwhelming prices.  This one's a bit tough for me to gauge... competing factors.  Not superhero stuff, Lee Elias on his own is respected but not legend, Misfits have their cult following which likely dwindles by the year.

i.e. could be a great time to auction.

I had never see this cover, or given a moment's thought to "Harvey PCH" or "Warren Kremer," and I've never listened to that band or seen their album cover, but when I saw the prelim cover for this come up for auction years ago I bid several times what the conventional wisdom said you should pay for any prelim by a top artist featuring a top hero.  I couldn't believe I didn't get it, but what happened was that someone (maybe several people) realized, even better than I did, that it was a really creative and evocative piece, regardless of whether you liked comics or had ever hear of any of the people, bands or publications involved.   

3 hours ago, tth2 said:

It's not "in the future".  It's already the case.  

That's great, and you should absolutely do that.  As you say, you'll be getting art you like at a discount.  I used to say the same thing to all the slabbed collectors who complained about PLODs selling at big discounts to unrestored books

I was talking about the future being different from the present.  Just as you were.  And your point was that comic OA would be in museums in the future, based largely it not entirely on its cultural significance.  And in such cases there is much value placed on artifacts which show the "process" which led to cultural icons' creation.   Dickens' scrawled out notes for "A Christmas Carol" are in a museum, despite being barely legible and with ink blots and sections changed and words crossed out, etc -- which makes it all the more interesting to museum goers and historians.  The original press proof for the book... not so much interest.  Same    

As for the comparison to restored books.   Nobody to my knowledge has ever claimed a restored book that appears near mint should be worth as much as, let alone more than, an unrestored near mint copy.   And neither book is a one of a kind item.  So there is no correlation whatsoever, except they both have the word "comic" in them and some people collect both.

15 hours ago, tth2 said:

Comic book art will never get into a museum purely because of aesthetics.  It's just not good enough as pure art.  Comic art can't hold a candle to the skill and artistry found in art produced by completely anonymous artists for advertisements, book covers and magazine illustrations. 

If comic book art ever gets into museums, it will be because of the cultural significance of the medium, in which case it will be all about whether the art was published or not, and the significance of the art within the context of the medium.   

The first paragraph is all very subjective.   I see plenty of art in museums that I can say with strong conviction "doesn't hold a candle" to some of the best comic art.  And BTW much of the art pieces you see in museums were contracted pieces, portraits and other things, which the artist did to pay for lodging and food.   

As for whether comic art may find a place in museum because of the cultural significance of the medium I do not see how that conflates to an obsession in the future over what was a final published.   I would very happily obtain Kirby unpublished pieces for the Fantastic Four at the very steep discount your theory implies they would have to be priced at, compared, for example, to some published pieces on which Kirby's pencils were erased and replaced with Vince Colletta inks.  I would happily buy them secure in the knowledge they are much better and more significant in respect to their cultural significance, and far more likely to be something I'd enjoy seeing in a museum (and that maybe, over time, so would other people)