sfilosa

3 hours ago, rlextherobot said:

The thought had crossed my mind that I might try to sell a few things while the market was hot to make a run at a grail piece... but that was tempered by the realization that if all art is going up ludicrously, I'm no better off selling-to-buy now than when/if things calm down. 

Not sure that is true. When everything’s going up, regardless of the quality, that’s usually the time to sell. But not necessarily a time to sell, quality pieces. More than likely they will go down less than non-quality material, and they will absolutely rebound much quicker. Works that way with everything, not just art. 
 

Not trying to say prices are going to go down but there sure seems to be a lot of supply out there nowadays, and ultimately supply and demand is still the most tried and true concept. 

48 minutes ago, vodou said:

No, 840 inclusive.

Yeah, I got that one wrong.

Shocking price. We are not talking house money.... but a pretty nice house money.

Honestly, seems like a good to time to sell some pieces. 

31 minutes ago, AnkurJ said:

Not everything was strong, my two consignments fizzled  

What were your consignments?

1 hour ago, tth2 said:

  4 hours ago, jjonahjameson11 said:

by the way, the Marvel Spotlight #5 that I mentioned earlier in this thread took a nice leap from $96K to $150K recently.  That has to be the record for any Bronze Age book!

Anything with "limited supply" is not necessarily affected by people spending their dollars somewhere else. Only takes a few people to drive up these prices, as would be the case with Original Art. 

Now that said, while OA is one of kind, 100s to 1,000s of page by the same artist (say Kirby) that mostly look the same, really has a lot of "supply". Therefore, one could see that if money is being spent on other items, certain OA with a lot of supply could come down in price. 

7 hours ago, mtlevy1 said:

Any thoughts on the Colan/Palmer DD91 page with a bit of DD and widow at over $6k?

My thought is you should sell some of yours (including the one you got from me last year).  Definitely seems like a very high price for something with no action.

4 minutes ago, batman_fan said:

Those covers follow the clearly defined equation

GGA + Fanboy = $$$

But for how long? No nostalgia to those covers. My prediction is that three to five years from now, some of those would sell for significantly less than today. But I could be wrong.

8 minutes ago, Mickey7 said:

Several J. Scott Campbell covers over $22,000.  Those "posing superheroine" covers he pumps out are like printing money.  

To me, those are the most overrated art in the auction. They are almost all the same year or two which makes me think either J. Scott Campbell is selling them, or he sold a bunch to one buyer at the time. And they are variant covers. Nice, but overvalued.

Wanted the Larsen Amazing Spider-Man splash. Missed as I was the underbidder. While ending price was high, way better page then the one that sold on Heritage a week ago (in my opinion).

16 minutes ago, tth2 said:

Buying a collectible means in theory that it should retain its value and appreciate.  Buying "stuff" means that it depreciates in value the moment it leaves the store and continues to depreciate to zero, never appreciating in value, unless at some point it turns into a collectible.

Not the actual definition of a collectible. It has to have value to a collector and something they want to collect. Nothing about holding it's value or appreciating in price.

Many "collectibles" have depreciated in price. I would agree that the people who collected those items were probably not buying them with the intention they would go down in price, it just happened as demand changed.

3 hours ago, jjonahjameson11 said:

23 hours ago, sfilosa said:

Two quick points,

1) In theory, if you purchase from a major auction house you’ve paid over market. At that moment in time, nobody else in the world wanted to pay more than you.

Nah.  Respectfully, I disagree with this statement.

Fair enough. In some cases, you could make the argument that someone would pay more, but wasn't able to. But I also said "major auction house". That was very specific as in most collectors have had a month or longer to see that a piece is available. If they really wanted a piece, even if they couldn't bid live, they could place their top bid. Yes, if you wanted to buy 10 pieces at $10k a piece, and only had $50k, were not available to bid during live bidding, you would only place $10k bids on five pieces. So in theory, if you lost all those five pieces (i.e. they all sold for $11k each) and the other five ended up selling for $9k each, the winners of those five pieces in theory paid less than what you would have purchased them for. I get that, but as a "winner" of a piece, that's not something you are really going to know at the time. . But I do get your point.

11 hours ago, KingOfRulers said:

1) I don't subscribe to that theory. It assumes a lot. The second chance button for losing bidders finds plenty of use.

2) I said, "While these days my objective isn't to flip art for a quick profit, I'd like to have the reasonable expectation that if I had to resell immediately, that I could break even." No reference was made to the future.

Justifying a purchase based upon possible future performance is an entirely separate endeavor. 

This was the phrase that in my mind makes no sense assuming you are a "collector", not someone trying to flip material, which you clearly stated you aren't.

* You are implying that if you ever bought anything at an auction or even from a dealer that had been on their site for more than a few hours:

1) You have such great contacts that you could turn around, sell the piece for exactly what you paid immediately, without using a 3rd party (e.g. auction site, dealer, etc.) so there would be no cost of selling. 

2) Now if you would need to resell through an auction house (which really couldn't be immediate) or dealer, you would in theory need to buy every piece of art at least 10% less than what you thought someone else really wanted to buy it for (to make up for the cost of selling).

3) So in my mind, the only way you could build a collection of material that you wanted, you would need to buy from other collectors (negotiate a price)  or items that were listed on CAF, FB, CGC, etc. and you purchased them in a few hours as they were really good deals. That is possible, but probably goes back to having a small collection and most likely not a lot of very high demand items. Most collectors not using an auction site would probably price "highly desirable/in demand art" very high just to see if someone bites, not at a discount.

None of this has anything to do with people with tens of millions of dollars just purchasing a lot of art and wowing the collecting community with how many highly desirable pieces they have. I don't spend any time trying to figure out how someone amassed their collection. I look at their art and either like the piece(s) or not. How anyone else wants to collector is fine with me. 

5 minutes ago, batman_fan said:

I bought a certain cover in a private transaction which was 3x the highest price every paid for one of this artist cover.  Today I could sell it for 5x what I paid.

Exactly. As a collector, it was clearly a piece you really wanted. It also turned out to be a great investment.

Two quick points,

1) In theory, if you purchase from a major auction house you’ve paid over market. At that moment in time, nobody else in the world wanted to pay more than you.

2) Many successful financial transactions are based on paying over market, at the time. Developers who win bidding for land, are banking on future increases that are not guaranteed. That could be the same for collectibles, you either believe there will be increased demand for the item or a way to maximize its value (resubmit for a CGC book for a higher grade).

23 minutes ago, Andahaion said:

This goes through my head every time I buy OA, or other fine art because it's certainly applicable to the greater art world holistically.  I like to think it helps me focus and try to pick the good stuff.  Does it work?  Maybe 5% of the time.  

Much longer topic to discuss but:

Quality in Original Comic Art can be many things. If you are only judging quality on "artistic craftmanship" well, not sure even 5% would qualify. But when I think of "quality", it's the totality of what that page/picture represents. I would agree that many Silver-Age Marvel pages are not always the best representation of craftmanship, but many pages represent "quality" in terms of what they "mean/create feeling of nostalgia" to collectors.   Said even more simplistically, the first appearance of a character does not mean it is the best "artistic page" but it will almost always be worth more than another page that has more artistic quality.

1 hour ago, Rick2you2 said:

Which should be flashing a warning sign on prices. People will eventually look at what the price is, realize they can have a very good Byrne piece without an X-man or other high flying figure on it, at a relatively low price, and shift their line of sight. Nostalgia and rarity have their limits—particularly when we can now go on vacations and out to dinner again without fear. I don’t think this is the big bubble about to burst, but some air is going to come out of the tires.

Have to disagree. Never happens that way. Quality (e.g. in this case the X-Men) wins out. There is plenty of Byrne art that isn't that expensive. And been that way for years, and will most likely stay that way. Not to say that some of his lesser art can't increase or become more in demand, just don't think it will have any effect on his "best" art. Once again, just doesn't work that way. 

Pretty sure you would back me up on that one!!!

33 minutes ago, vodou said:

Respectfully and without snark: What great art by great artists is not available on HA in any rolling 12 month period? Could be some outliers but I think you can mostly get whatever you want (by type, not a specific issue and page #) these days at auction if you're willing (and able) to spend more than anyone else that day.

Jim Steranko comic art (not a commission or sketch) is extremely hard to find. 

Also, I will also say that the quality of most pages are not "A or A+". While Steve Ditko pages come along every few months, how many have Spider-Man actually fighting a real villain. Very few (maybe one or two a year). 

I will agree that more "modern artist" (say last 40 years) art is pretty plentiful, especially as prices have risen (Byrne or Jim Lee X-Men, McFarlane Spider-Man, etc.)

46 minutes ago, szav said:

Totally.  I did attempt qualify if what we’re seeing is comics is not 100% speculative ... then I still think a degree of this will flow on over.  
 

Even if the speculators themselves dont come on over, collectors  like me who just cashed on comic out partially and reaped the windfall will move more into OA I think.  I think what’s going on in comics is good for OA long term .... if you like higher OA prices anyway.

That we agree on.

Prices don't necessarily have to go higher overall as supply is increasing everyday (new art produced). Of course, highly sought after artist, characters, story lines, etc. will likely increase and exponentially compared to lesser art.

Quick comic examples. Picked two issues that aren't keys (but very early in the title), high-grade copies, but nothing to make someone who isn't putting together a run to jump out and buy.

Avengers #2 in CGC 9.0  Heritage Auction - May 2008 $1,553      March 2020 $1,980

X-Men #3 in CGC 9.2 Heritage Auction -  September 2009 $2,270       May 2020   $2,640

These are really minimal increases for books that from a rarity standpoint are just as rare as the key issues right around the same time frame. The highly sought out key issues have skyrocketed, but probably 95% of all books have had minimal increases. I think art is somewhat the same thing (but that is not the sales we talk about).

11 hours ago, szav said:

will find their way to OA eventually.

Not sure. People who are speculating in comic books, will speculating in something else, but more likely something they feel they can gauge value more than OA. Collecting OA is not a commodity. There are great artist, who have great art, that just isn't available that often (at least in the open market). Comic books, cards, coins, etc. are increasingly available. And that's what is attractive to speculators.

4 minutes ago, stinkininkin said:

I've purged most of my better books several times over the years, cashing out (much too soon it seems) to fund art. But I've still got a ton of books, some of which are probably worth selling. But which ones should be slabbed, or pressed and slabbed or just sold raw is completely beyond me at this point. I need someone who knows what's what to come over and sort the whole lot for me and get them out the door. Volunteers? 

Send them to ComicLink and let them to the work. They don't charge for that and will get you a slabbing discount. Also, tell them to review for pressing as that is the game (finding slabbed books that weren't pressed). 

Have you searched Heritage Auction archives? There are lots of his pieces that have been sold in the past few years to give you a gauge. Nothing exactly like these but should give you a start.