MyNameIsLegion

@Sideshow Bob thanks for your post- this is a very illuminating and illustrative point on the math of flipping the same piece in a short amount of time (though that was not your intent here) but it accurately describes how the price and value of a piece is very obscured by the fees to buyer and seller an associated tax and shipping. I've had several debates about his in the last year online about this subject - how "market value" and auctions results are not the same, for all the reasons described in your post. Some have strenuously disagreed with me, which is there prerogative, and mostly because the are predicated on economic theory, and not market realities. Methinks they also had an ulterior motive to argue, because they wish to keep valuations artificially high for their own gain.

According to the website- it's updated daily and is 98-99% accurate!

Here's is a direct quote from Spencer's FAQ on his site: I spent about 5 minutes looking at the site, which I had taken a peek at a couple of weeks ago for the first time in over a year. Very little seems to have changed beside adding the poorly coded sales notices. This is a complete dumpster fire. what happened to to the promised new modern website that Spencer promised sometime last year? a 3rd grader could do a more competent job running this site. That is not a snarky exaggeration, that is a fact. Spencer is alway making excuses about how busy he is, but he does not take responsibility for how much this is his fault. It takes him 2 months to respond to emails because the site and inventory is not maintained worth a damn. basic online shopping cart technology has been standard for 15 years. There's no excuse for having to work through redundant orders on a first come first serve basis via email. He wastes his time, his customers time, and ultimately does his artist a disservice by doing such a poor job representing them. I'm sure he's a great guy, works hard at his day job, loves cats---well, that swell, but you're not gonna get a medal for it, because so do the rest of us, as do many of the artists represented, so suck it up and fix it or quit and save everyone the frustration and disappointment. Even Blacklinefever's site is better maintained than The Artist's Choice, and it might just be the only site that's more antiquated than Spencer's.

@THB hey dude- can you change the date? The show is this weekend! The 12th!!!!

@bug33fouf- @Weird Paper and I wil be set up under the Weird Paper banner as you walk into the show on the upper deck facing the main floor- we are bringing ALL our vintage Gold;, Silver, Bronze, and key modern books- we have not brought out the full inventory of our better stuff to a show in 18 months. We will be ready to wheel and deal and we are too lazy to re-price stuff.

this needs to go in the Lowry/CAF Best of 18 so I can vote on it!

sitting hunched over a drawing table for a living's not the healthiest for sure- and imagine how many have work related injuries- Carpal tunnel, arthritis, etc- eyesight issues. Mostly the sitting though- as they literally made no money unless they were drawing.

@flattracker14jto the original poster- I went on a rant about transparencies in general- but I did not click on the link to your example- and that was my mistake- in your case, I think it's 100% legit. Much more legit than what I was talking about. I would put the value on par with old style color guides- this is one of a kind to that printing- unless it was a foreign reprint or a reprint for a collected edition. The value really stems from the popularity of the comic itself. Watchmen or Dark Knight Production art will command some $$$. The production art to Superboxers GN not so much.

Sir you are talking about something else- that's camera-ready art used to shoot film in the pre-Pre-press linotronic film plate days. That ended in the early 90's. If it's from the 80's, its probably legit. But the Ovelay itself would only be the Black Plate in most cases- though there could be multiple overlays if the art was in color, and had to be printing 4 color process, and the overlay of the text would be incorporated into the final black plate. the ones on ebay is almost all hokum. Most of that paste-up art used to shoot plates was trashed- don't really see much of it- and it would have all kinds or anecdotal marks that would date it properly. The stuff on ebay looks like someone got ahold of digital files used to make digital plates, and printed them on transparency. Bogus. If you pay $50 for one of those, you might as well burn money in your BBQ pit.

90+% of all transparencies you see on Ebay are wildly_fanciful_statement. Pure wildly_fanciful_statement. Nothing about the modern printing process required them. They are not ColorKey plates. They are all frauds. Anything that is OA size is absolute nonsense. Anyone that tells you otherwise is a liar, or a fool that was lied to and literally and figuratively "bought" the lie.

First OA of 2019- a 30 year-old Leonardi/Austin X-Men Page from Uncanny X-Men #237 & a 40 year-old Tales of the Zombie/Simon Garth Page for TOZ#7: click on thumbnail for larger CAF view ,

hmm, if you flip for a loss, does it become the flop of the day?

posting a couple of books in a long thread from titles that extend across multiple comic ages seems like hardly an egregious offense to me. ( and I note that the few that I saw, have in fact sold)

Howdy- my last update for 2018: A 1977 George Perez Batman splash from his first portfolio book: Accent on the First "E", A Barreto Elseworlds Batman page, A Russ Heath Emma Frost Model Sheet from the X-Men cartoon, Pryde of the X-Men, and a Gray Morrow large Nick Fury Pin up. ,,, also posted a NSFW incredible Enrique Romero of Modesty Blaise and Axa fame NSFW pin-up, that can be found among all the stuff I've posted in the last 10 days: https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerynew.asp?gcat=3300&pm=1&PI=18&days=30

all the art that was lost in the flooded basement of Robert Beerbohm's shop in the 80's : stack of art measured in feet- completely ruined and tossed away.

Added some more: Enric, Ward, Wenzel- https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerynew.asp?GCat=3300

here's half a dozen really random things: Avengers West Coast Annual 1 page, Garcia Lopez Pin-up, Colleen Doran page, Heath James Bond, Lil abler Strip from 1960 during the Frazetta era, and a Chuck Jones Road Runner and Coyote drawing: https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerynew.asp?GCat=3300

yeah but ebay went a different route and with fixed price BIN ruined the collectibles auction market for themselves. They could have elected to only allow auction style formats on collectibles categories, now less than 10% of the OA category is auction style- the rest is ridiculous . I've seen certain pieces of art, and not bad ones either, stay list for 5+ years at 5x FMV. Those pieces of art are radioactive- no one will ever buy them, we are all sick of seeing them. Ebay allowing automatic free relisting has created a category of 40K items with only about 15-25% of that is new and churning through. As to the first part of your comment- it's not about the FMV of a particular piece of art or auction- it's ALL auctions, the whole thing is a shill. If most OA ran through eBay, and they didn't have cozy deals with other dealers buying on credit, selling at a discount, etc etc, dealers would lose their or would not have enough CASH to keep the whole OA market afloat the way HA is now. Time and again you will see a decent page of art for auction on Ebay- everyone sees it, because CAF and other services will filter out the gunk to highlight the few decent pieces. It will sell for $700-1200 for an average panel page from a good artist for a DC or Marvel book. Then it will be on HA or Clink or a dealers site for 2 or 3x more. It did not magically double or triple in value in 60 days, or because it sold for under $1500 due to an inferior auction format (eBay) I call BS on that. Nope, it's just been plucked out of the mainstream market and placed in the Wall Street OA market. Suckers welcome to bid, and HA gets the fees, and the rest is trading amongst themselves, where how many zero's is irrelevant because you can add a zero to the price every 5-10 years and not spend a dime trading like for like.

well and I think this is the key here: a few (very few) people are keep the entire HA model afloat by bidding and consigning in sufficient quantities that it is free for them, and $$$$$ AF for everyone else, and keeps the perception of price afloat, and basically is price protection for their art holdings- in a regulated financial market these dealings would probably put all parties in jail.

I've railed about this in multiple threads and on FB- and various people get all twitchy when you question the FMV of a piece = Y because it sold for X + 20%+ TAX (and S&H). Then when that piece gets flipped, you tack on another 20-30%, and very quickly the price has doubled from what the original consignor netted. The ONLY people making money here is the auction house, and prices are quickly escalating to a point that things are wildly inflated. A good piece of art will find it's true value in the marketplace - auction fees for both buyer an seller distort that perception of value, and suck up most of the profit in the process.

yeah that was a head scratcher - because I used to own that page until very recently, and no way did I value it at any where near that. This is an aberration. I watched the bidding and it looks like 2 sets of proxy bids shot it up immediately, and then there were no live bids at all. The auction closed almost immediately. I surmised that 2 guys placed proxy bids 3x market to get it, not thinking someone else had the same idea.

I gave away a page from this issue 12 years ago to a fellow collecting friend (he may have bought this one). He had done me a favor, and he had sent me a page he won on ebay back in the eBay salad days just because he knew I liked it. No regrets whatsoever and no thought to the value. Prices for #36 shot up just because of one person mostly, and there were a few pages that sat on ebay unsold for YEARs, so you actually made out quite well. In fact, you might not me able to get that price today for it.

no matter how many books are destroyed, deliberately, or by accident- there are 3 copies of Trencher and Brigade to take it's place....

I'm reporting this to Bill- I don't think it should be doing this...