Comic Pages Vs. Marvel Masterpieces Sketch Cards

[kain76-migration]

Ive been offered 2 deals and both sound very interesting but due to cash flow can only do 1 so wanted to find out what fellow collectors might think.

1st Deal a small lot of around 15 pages of comic art work spider-man , batman , some splash pages , a few pages I would add to my collection the rest id most likely sell or trade.

 

2nd Deal around 100 or so Marvel Masterpieces Sketch cards from both series 1 and 2 some very nice peaces includeing a few 2 cards that make one picture again a few id keep but the rest id be looking to sell or trade

 

so my question is would it be worth to invest in the sketch cards or would it be better to get the comic pages and stick with something I atleast know a small bit about , any help or opinions is great eather way , as I am 50/50 right now

 

Thanks

Kain

[wurstisart]

Sorry but with not knowing the exact details and quality of pages it is like rolling a dice.

 

I guess one thing to consider is to sell a few items is much easier than having to sell a lot of pages.

 

Another thing, are you considering selling some of the items due to money you need to get back ? If that's the case...let me be your financial advisor....then don't do the deal in the first place !!

 

My 2 cents...

 

[Big Daddy]

Well is the artist well known, are these pages from current series or past series? Have you looked at the different sites to see how much art is going for by the particular artists? If you buy what you like then who cares but if it's to buy to flip then definitely investigate otherwise you might get stuck with a lot of stuff you can't sell.

[Mac Man]

I'm a guppy in this pond, but here are my thoughts:

 

Which are you most interested in holding onto in the event nothing sells? This is what I try to do when buying a big comic key--will I be happy owning it if the value decreases? If not, then I don't even buy it.

 

However, I think Andy is right when it comes to the comic pages being a smaller lot and therefore easier to keep track of simply because there is less there for you to handle.

[GotSuperPowers?]

I'd guess sketch cards, and sketch comics too, are more of a fad thing, and won't be much of anywhere value/appeal wise. I'm surprised folks pay as much as they do for them. So yeah, if the comic art is by anyone half decent, I'd go that way all the way.

 

Cheers

Simon

[Drewsky]

I say go for the 15 pages and if you are looking trade/sell the rest this the perfect place to do it. Dibs on any Wolverine. Best of luck!

[AKA Rick]

Published Original Comic Art Pages are probably the way to go if your intention is for longer term and more stable investment. Sketch Cards are for the most part fairly mediocre. Regardless of their inclusion in packs of trading cards as special chase / inserts touting the "one of a kind" moniker, when in fact all original art by nature is a "one of a kind" item - - and in fact with a lot of the trading cards, it's art by lesser known to mediocre artists who often times don't utlize the opportunity to be included in a card set and churn out sub-par artwork and often times the same simple sketch across multiple cards (I've seen so many Cully Hamner Red Sonja sketch cards that look of nearly exact same stick figure quality effort from that card release a few years ago), so in fact are further from "one of a kind" than you'd get at as a sketch at a convention or as a commission, which tend to be more detailed and unique. Oddly enough, some of these sketch trading cards on 2" x 3" cardstock exceeds prices what those very artists would charge for a more detailed or full figure on 8" x 11" or even 11" x 17" sized paper... I don't know who's buying and holding these cards... but to me, although they're nice, small, easy to store and fun to collect - - are not nearly worth what the marketplace is commanding today (via eBay and at Card Stores / Shows) when you compare the type of art that same money can buy in the form of published OA or higher quality commissioned art... it'll be interesting to see, after the massive glut of medocre art by some of these "has been that never was" type artists (and I say that because so much of the art featured on sketch cards seem to lack effor and heart and appear to be done just to get paid and to crank 'em out quickly - - without the artist realizing they have the opportunity to showcase their talents as well as provide a collector with a treasured prize) that are featured in some of these trading card sets that command even $10-25+ per card today, where those values and the demand will be in 10 years...

[Eric Seffinga]

Here's something I've heard complained about for years. There are more than a few artists that have lodged this complaint, and I've seen variations of this out there.

 

There are card collectors that drop crazy money on sketch cards that don't collect art. I know of a couple artists who have had requests for sketch cards from certain series and responded to the collector, explaining they did not have a sketch card of a particular character available, but if they wanted a full blown commission of that same character on 11x17 art board in more detail they could do it for the price offered for the sketch card. And been declined. Not interested. To me it's totally messed up and I can't get my head around it.

 

It'd be one thing if the collector was looking for a published card art, and been offered a commission that wasn't published. We're talking about, what, like a 2.5"x3" 1-off card vs. a full page illustration of better quality, but they decline because it's not got the logo printed on the blank paper? Yeesh. I've heard of this happening with those sketch comics too. Crazy.

 

-e.