Tracking Watchmen pages auction

[KLNole]

Last week my wife asked me if there was any art that I wanted for Father's Day, too bad this wasn't on Ebay yet, I'm sure she would of hit the buy it now without a second thought.

 

 

Watchmen

[Pirate]

sheesh

[heartened]

Last week my wife asked me if there was any art that I wanted for Father's Day, too bad this wasn't on Ebay yet, I'm sure she would of hit the buy it now without a second thought.

 

 

Watchmen

 

 

Nice sequence or a Doc Manhattan fan, but methinks the price be a little steep.

 

Anyone want to guess at FMV? I'll say 12-15K for the pair.

 

[comix4fun]

Last week my wife asked me if there was any art that I wanted for Father's Day, too bad this wasn't on Ebay yet, I'm sure she would of hit the buy it now without a second thought.

 

 

Watchmen

 

 

Nice sequence or a Doc Manhattan fan, but methinks the price be a little steep.

 

Anyone want to guess at FMV? I'll say 12-15K for the pair.

 

 

Weird thing is...I have known three of the past owners of that 2 pager sequence. One had it for years and it took a stooopid money offer to get it away from him.

 

Another friend of mine wound up making the aforementioned stooopid money offer...which was pretty crazy for 3-4 years ago when it changed hands then.

 

Then he wound up selling it to someone else I know at about the same price when he was moving from comic art into other memorabilia and wanted the cash for that.

 

So it moved a couple of times at wild numbers in the last 3-4 years.

 

Best,

C

[KLNole]

 

 

Nice sequence or a Doc Manhattan fan, but methinks the price be a little steep.

 

Anyone want to guess at FMV? I'll say 12-15K for the pair.

 

That almost seems too reasonable compared to some of the pages that have hit the past few months. But then again, would anyone really be surprised if they sold?

[heartened]

Last week my wife asked me if there was any art that I wanted for Father's Day, too bad this wasn't on Ebay yet, I'm sure she would of hit the buy it now without a second thought.

 

 

Watchmen

 

 

Nice sequence or a Doc Manhattan fan, but methinks the price be a little steep.

 

Anyone want to guess at FMV? I'll say 12-15K for the pair.

 

 

Weird thing is...I have known three of the past owners of that 2 pager sequence. One had it for years and it took a stooopid money offer to get it away from him.

 

Another friend of mine wound up making the aforementioned stooopid money offer...which was pretty crazy for 3-4 years ago when it changed hands then.

 

Then he wound up selling it to someone else I know at about the same price when he was moving from comic art into other memorabilia and wanted the cash for that.

 

So it moved a couple of times at wild numbers in the last 3-4 years.

 

Best,

C

 

So, Chris, what's your take then? Would you say 20K, 25K?

 

[delekkerste]

 

 

Nice sequence or a Doc Manhattan fan, but methinks the price be a little steep.

 

Anyone want to guess at FMV? I'll say 12-15K for the pair.

 

That almost seems too reasonable compared to some of the pages that have hit the past few months. But then again, would anyone really be surprised if they sold?

 

Yes, I'd be surprised if they sold at the asking price. But, I agree that "12-15K for the pair" sounds too low. The general rule of thumb these days is that, if the price doesn't offend you, it's almost assuredly too low. $12-$15K is entirely too civil to be the right price.

[chromium]

The general rule of thumb these days is that, if the price doesn't offend you, it's almost assuredly too low.

 

[heartened]

 

 

Nice sequence or a Doc Manhattan fan, but methinks the price be a little steep.

 

Anyone want to guess at FMV? I'll say 12-15K for the pair.

 

That almost seems too reasonable compared to some of the pages that have hit the past few months. But then again, would anyone really be surprised if they sold?

 

Yes, I'd be surprised if they sold at the asking price. But, I agree that "12-15K for the pair" sounds too low. The general rule of thumb these days is that, if the price doesn't offend you, it's almost assuredly too low. $12-$15K is entirely too civil to be the right price.

 

Very true. I put it there because I'm not a big Dr. Manhattan fan. I like Ozzy and Rorschach. I suppose I'd put them at 20K. No one else willing to guess?

 

[spider9698]

I'll throw out a guess (and again, not a huge Watchmen fan/collector) but I would say 15-20K. The freshness factor might be lost since it sounds like the pages have flipped around a bit over the past few years.

 

[Jesusjon]

12-15K sounded about right to me, but maybe that was wishful thinking giving that I'm looking for a decent page. 5 digits for each page would be truly offensive, so maybe you're onto something given that new axiom of collecting OA.

 

 

[KLNole]

 

 

Nice sequence or a Doc Manhattan fan, but methinks the price be a little steep.

 

Anyone want to guess at FMV? I'll say 12-15K for the pair.

 

That almost seems too reasonable compared to some of the pages that have hit the past few months. But then again, would anyone really be surprised if they sold?

 

Yes, I'd be surprised if they sold at the asking price. But, I agree that "12-15K for the pair" sounds too low. The general rule of thumb these days is that, if the price doesn't offend you, it's almost assuredly too low. $12-$15K is entirely too civil to be the right price.

 

I guess what I am saying, it seems lately that, almost without fail, there will be someone out there who drops a ton (either cash, trade, cash and trade) for a piece of art, regardless of FMV. The Kirby AF 15 pencil recreation jumps to mind as well as some of the Watchmen pages that floated around a few months ago. I have been in this for about 4 years now and one thing I have gleaned is never underestimate the original art collector (or flipper).

[Shawn Low]

12-15k is too low. What were the last few prices on these pages?

 

With collectors hanging onto pages, Watchmen pages are few and far between.

 

20-28k sounds closer to FMV.

 

Movie buzz would help.

[brasseye]

20-28k sounds closer to FMV.

 

Movie buzz would help.

 

 

Movie buzz looks to be adding another $10k on top of that!

[irchooker]

When it comes to pricing, I'm always astounded by how quick people are to throw out multiples for value.

 

I was discussing Watchmen pages just yesterday, as a friend of mine who is not a collector but instead a receiver of pages, showed me a couple of examples he was given by Gibbons 20 years ago.

 

Rorschach pages, specifically solely Rorschach sequences, have broken the 10k barrier within the past couple of years. Beyond that, we just haven't seen anything move in the similar space.

 

Watchmen is a book nearly without splashes. The splashes are constructed very purposefully for the impact near the end, but they are lame. Watchmen is a book filled with imagery and symbolism, things that are so unique to this particular art form, but not a draw. Watchmen is a book filled with talking head pages, you have to find the right, perfect talking head page to break 10k. Watchmen is filled with interesting and unique characters, but few action sequences that typically fuel the high dollar price.

 

Watchmen pages are not cheap, and these examples might be the perfect culmination of all of the above to spark a high dollar value. But not every page is 7 - 10k. Get yourself a pirate sequence page. A very well known flipper/dealer, who hustles prime product amongst a handful of friends, sending it into the price increase tornado, hasn't been able to move a pirate page because it's sitting at, maybe, 2x value.

[Jesusjon]

20-28k sounds closer to FMV.

 

Movie buzz would help.

 

 

Movie buzz looks to be adding another $10k on top of that!

 

I can't wait to see what happens to the Watchmen page market when every comic fan out there is complaining about the last 15 minutes of the film. Maybe then I'll be able to afford a page!!

[Nexus]

When it comes to pricing, I'm always astounded by how quick people are to throw out multiples for value.

 

I agree.

 

Rorschach pages, specifically solely Rorschach sequences, have broken the 10k barrier within the past couple of years. Beyond that, we just haven't seen anything move in the similar space.

 

So far as I know (and I've been tracking sales pretty closely), it's just been one Rorschach page that broke the $10K barrier. That was last year. Beyond that, a set of two non-Rorschach pages fetched $22K at a con this year. That's been it. Both deals were from the same seller who happened to find two extremely motivated buyers. I'm not sure those pages would have fetched the same value at auction.

 

FMV on these pages: The aforementioned $12-15K. Even that's high to me, but objectively, I can see values moving up to that level given the typical buying frenzy during the lead-up to a movie. A more realistic value is $10K for the pair.

 

However, I can, unfortunately, see someone with more money than sense spend even more than that. If that happened, though, I wouldn't draw any conclusions about the WM art market in general. I really don't believe (I hope not, anyhow!) anyone will buy these pages at the listed price.

 

 

[KLNole]

 

I can't wait to see what happens to the Watchmen page market when every comic fan out there is complaining about the last 15 minutes of the film. Maybe then I'll be able to afford a page!!

 

The last draft I saw pretty much screwed up the ending (I won't post any spoilers, PM if interested), hopefully they changed it. But then again, when the comic book adaptation of the movie comes out, maybe those pages will be in the hundreds.

[heartened]

I find it interesting that predictions on the value of this sequence range from 10K to 28K even among the few people posting on this thread. That's probably a larger differential than I would have guessed.

 

One of the interesting things about Watchmen is that certain pages command a premium based on the character, and unlike a Batman comic where everyone wants a page with Batman on it, some collectors want their Watchmen page with Ozzy, others want Rorschach and still others want Dr. Manhattan. Those three tend to command a premium.

 

I guess the true value will lay somewhere in between, probably hovering around 15-20K. We'll probably not know based on this auction, though.

 

[NelsonAI]

 

I do not own any Watchman pages and I have no interest in buying any.

 

What I am curious about is whether any individuals who gave FMV estimates of these pages own any Watchman pages themselves?

 

Cheers!

N