McFarlane Artwork - How come so many covers come onto the market?

[wurstisart]

Hey,

Greetings. I have been collecting comic art for years, but have never noticed that many McFarlane Covers and Splash pages being publicly offered?

Obviously a fair amount of trades and sales took place between collectors, but right now we know of a ASM Spidey Cover that sold late last year, a Hulk and Spidey Cover as well as a nice Splash page that are currently available on dealers websites?

 

I am asking myself whether a major McFarlane collector decided to let his collection go, etc.?

 

Anybody any idea? Mainly just curious here.

All the best,

Andy

[Greg_C]

Andy

 

 

I'm not 100%, but maybe seeing his last Spidey cover selling for 70+K makes people want to cash in? If I had one and needed some quick cash that would smooth things out quite nicely, and the covers that have just come up are not some of his "timeless" ones, although the Hulk one is pretty sweet. Just my .02

 

 

Greg

[malvin]

My thoughts are the same as Greg, good prices tends to flush things out.

 

Malvin

[wurstisart]

True, but how good would those prices have been assuming that the overall original comic art market woud not have taken a dive in the last 2 years?

[malvin]

hmmm.. even assuming prices were flat the last 2 years (I don't think they were for high end pieces), that 70K sale was a public sale, which is rare.

 

There could be alot of people with splashes/covers that were out of touch and this made them realize the value.

 

Malvin

[gambron]

Without getting into too much detail, the only piece that's "fresh" so to speak is the Hulk Cover (Very Cool BTW) that the Donnelly's have posted. And if i'm not mistaken they've had it for quite some time. The other 2 Marvel tales covers being offered have been around and have changed hands at least once each in the last year or two. In fact the "Iceman" cover was listed and relisted on ebay a few years ago and DIDN'T sell until it was in the 5-6k range. The #325 Page is nice but unfortunately has the stigma of having been offered on ebay, heritage, comiclink, Romitaman.com and privately all at wildly fluctuating numbers in the past two years. The Marvel Tales #234 piece was publicly offered and sold by Bill Woo in the 10-15k range last year I believe.

 

So no major collector liquidating stuff type of scenario.

 

Hope this helps...

 

Ken

[AKA Rick]

Does anyone know where the Marvel Tales cover with Spider-Man and The Dazzler is now?

[artoholic]

I have followed the Mcfarlane spiderman cover market closely since 2002. The last year that I really remember seeing "new" Mcfarlane ASM cover come onto the market was ASM 319 around 2004. At some point, the cover with Spiderman 7 ? (the one with Ghost Rider) popped up on ebay a little afterwards as well. Again, that was some time ago. Since then, no "fresh" covers have really surfaced (outside of the recent Lizard) cover that was on ebay late last year.

 

There really are quite a few covers left that I would love to see come out...ASM 318 Scorpion and ASM 328 with the Hulk are two examples I would love to find.

 

Joe

 

 

 

[J.Sid]

I don't know, it seems like every other year Matthew Ellis turns up something I'd never seen before

[artoholic]

Hey Jeff

 

Matt does seem to unearth stuff....ASM 311 Mysterio cover for instance. But there really hasn't been very much ASM cover artwork to emerge since 2004.

 

 

[AKA Rick]

If Frank Miller Daredevil covers are in the $75k-$100k range from the 80's...

 

and McFarlane Spider-Man covers are near that in that $50k-75k+ range for the 90's...

 

I wonder what's the goldmine artist and title of the Y2K 2000 to present that will fund future down payments on homes or mansions...

 

Adam Hughes Wonder Woman Covers?

Jim Lee Batman Hush Covers?

John Cassaday Astonishing X-Men Covers?

 

[Bronty]

I know others will disagree but I am very bearish on the comics importance/history/values from implosion (say 92) up. For that reason I don't see prices exploding on someone with mass appeal like mcfarlane or miller because I don't think there will be anyone with wide enough appeal.

 

I'd say james jean might be the best shot, simply because he could conceivably make it big in fine art and become a big name that way.

[AKA Rick]

The only saving grace for modern pieces, is in theory they're just as scarce as the older pieces... all "one of a kind" pieces. As opposed to the overproduced, manufactured variants and multiple print runs of the actual comic books.

 

It just takes the laws of supply and demand to kick in, ignited by the spirit of nostalgia... so, hopefully the young collectors of the Y2K generation get a good education, get good jobs, get paid, and then reminisce to their childhood past and seek out the collectibles and keep the hobby alive...

[vodou]

get a good education, get good jobs, get paid, and then reminisce...

Those three things (education, jobs, paid) are going to be tough if this economy doesn't truly turnaround.

 

By turnaround I don't mean spin on news channels, from elected officials or consumer sentiment studies (which really mean "things must be getting better because I 'feel better', sure!) I mean lots of belt-tightening by less buying and more investing in actual growth of our contribution to the world in the form of intellectual property and manufacturing vs. growth in our buying cr@p from Wal-Mart (and thus China). When most folks have to borrow to put their kids through school that tells you that either education is too expensive or money is too easy to borrow. Same with everything else. It's a disconnect between supply and demand. Take the credit away and the demand will disappear. Lower the prices and demand will reappear. Any of us that personally buy and sell anything already know this. If your original isn't selling and you need the $, lower the price! That's what's been happening. It's not a bad thing, just a realignment of the ratio of debt to real wealth. Be happy you own art (or anything else physical) that isn't leveraged on a credit card or bank loan, something that can't be replicated as easy as adding zeros to a spreadsheet (like the number of "dollars" in circulation). At least you truly OWN something, not merely another payment stream out of your bank account to service the bank re-loaning it to somebody else, creating more debt slaves in the future. You have assets that hopefully exceed your liabilities. If they don't, maybe you should re-figure your plans for next week and next year!

 

There's some pain coming. More pain than we think we have now. Most folks are ignoring that fact and hope the whole thing will go away. Well Bernanke can't lower rates any further like Greenspan did to hide the truth. So the pain is coming sooner or later. The bills will have to be paid mine, yours and our govt's (which is ours too), at a minimum in the form of price inflation and a true lowering of all of our standard of living. Worst case huge sovereign defaults and then we're all eating ramen noodles..not because we're stretching to buy that one truly excellent grail piece but because our international credit line is dead. Either it's on us now or we pass it on to those very same kids we hope will buy our antiquated cr@p in 20 yrs. Sadly their memories of the early 21st century won't be of Spidey and the X-Men, it will be of watching all of us twist and squirm to make our oversized mortgage payments or declaring bankruptcy in record numbers. If you're in debt, pay it off and step to the side and (morbidly) enjoy the carnage to come.

 

Oh yeah, one other thing...sell your Apple, Google and Netflix stock now while they're high. Nothing goes up forever and you wouldn't believe the amount of leverage the hedge funds have employed to pump those stocks up. When the hedges take an about face and walk away there will be a huge crater underneath their sell off with few/no buyers to back stop the fall

 

If it makes you feel better, just chalk all of the above up to "somebody must have left the door open at the loony bin."

[J.Sid]

One of the problems with new covers is the number of readers like myself who now always "wait for the TPB". Sadly, I don't even know what most covers look like these days (though from what I can tell, they are all very boring-- uh, I mean 'iconic')

 

[sbomfim]

There really are quite a few covers left that I would love to see come out...ASM 318 Scorpion and ASM 328 with the Hulk are two examples I would love to find.

 

Joe

 

 

 

Joe,

 

That makes two of us waiting for the elusive ASM 328 cover to surface, then.

 

Socrates