Heritage 2013 February 21-23 Vintage Comics & Comic Art Auction

[Bird]

The Watchmen 8 page nearly doubled the Watchmen 7 page, which I thought was the nicer of the two. What was so great about the 8?

 

The page from 8 utilizes the cool technique that Gibbons does so well in Watchmen where he moves the characters through the scene with the same backgrounds but using only the panel borders to indicate the passage of time. I like the 8 page waaay better than the 7, what do you like about the 7? It seems boring to me, just Laurie in the ship, and looking stupid at that. The title is the coolest thing about the page IMO, and it is very cool at that.

 

 

[DJRome]

Neither of the Watchmen pages were that great, but the pricing was right so I took a shot at the second one. I had it won, too, but they reopened bidding and a someone from the floor took it. I'd say the winners of both pages got a decent deal for ok pages.

 

Alex Ross' work is very difficult to value. While his most desired pieces can break 50k, the vast majority of it goes for under 10k. I remember a few months ago the owner of the Superman/Captain America piece was trying to get 12k for it on CAF without success. HA just sold it for 8.5k without the juice. If the seller is paying the 10% premium, he only got $7,650. Not so impressive.

 

Another uneven set of results came from the Romita ASMs. Everyone (myself included) was very impressed with the 121 result, but if that stuff is so important why did a half splash of Gwen's funeral sell for only 6.5k?

 

The Avengers 55 cover sold for 36k. A decent result, until you realize that the cover to 144 will probably top it on C-Link. Can anyone explain how that makes sense?

 

The Cardy 70's Supe covers were both weak, going for around 3k each. Neither was very good, so I suppose you need to offer more interesting examples to get good bids. They went too cheap but I wouldn't buy either of them (and I collect 70's Superman).

 

Kirby's Olsen cover and Thor covers did very well IMHO considering you can see other artists' fingerprints all over both pieces. It makes me wonder what Kirby's 70's Cap covers are worth now.

 

All in all, a good auction. I got a few nice things from it, too. My top acquisition was probably the Vertigo Jam piece by Bisley. Congrats to all the buyers and sellers involved.

[drdroom]

The Watchmen 8 page nearly doubled the Watchmen 7 page, which I thought was the nicer of the two. What was so great about the 8?

 

The page from 8 utilizes the cool technique that Gibbons does so well in Watchmen where he moves the characters through the scene with the same backgrounds but using only the panel borders to indicate the passage of time. I like the 8 page waaay better than the 7, what do you like about the 7? It seems boring to me, just Laurie in the ship, and looking stupid at that. The title is the coolest thing about the page IMO, and it is very cool at that.

 

 

Owlship! Plus it has a complete little narrative. (Laurie always looks stupid)

[comix4fun]

I didn't bid on many items...my few targets went to other buyers but to salvage some funI always flip through the results and thought there were some surprisingly strong sales:

 

1. Bolland Camelot 3000 - I really like this series but didn't seem to interest collectors as much as I thoght it should

 

2. Rogers / Austin - This was 1st Rogers/Austin Detective page at Heritage - It did very well given no Batman in costume..also the splashier page from the more recent Dark Detective series did over $2k

 

3. Starlin - The Dreadstar page...another series that hasn't seemed to garner much activity from collectors but the page today was highest I have seen

 

4. Jones, Jeffrey - A popular artist of course but his stuff always seems to do better than I expect at Heritage than in other venues...If I sell Jones, I'd consider Heritage seriously

 

What surprised you?

 

 

 

Bolland Camelot 3000 interior pages are not inked by Bolland, People only pay up for Bolland when it's all Bolland. So the price paid for that Arthur page was about 50% higher than I would have pegged it, personally.

 

Personal eye-brow-raisers included the Alex Ross painting.

[lb jefferies]

The Cardy 70's Supe covers were both weak, going for around 3k each. Neither was very good, so I suppose you need to offer more interesting examples to get good bids. They went too cheap but I wouldn't buy either of them (and I collect 70's Superman).

 

Kirby's Olsen cover and Thor covers did very well IMHO considering you can see other artists' fingerprints all over both pieces. It makes me wonder what Kirby's 70's Cap covers are worth now.

 

I thought the Kirby Jimmy Olsen - being the first cover of Jack's return to DC - would go for double what it did. The Thor I was happy with (being the eventual buyer). Kirby's last Thor cover and the first Thor I ever read. Was hoping for less but would have paid more. Win win.

 

The two Cardy's surprised me, though. Yes, they weren't great examples - especially the Action - but I would have put the very bottom price on these at a much higher number.

[delekkerste]

The Avengers 55 cover sold for 36k. A decent result, until you realize that the cover to 144 will probably top it on C-Link. Can anyone explain how that makes sense?

 

I would have been interested in the #55 cover...if it actually had any Avengers on it that I cared about. It was just a weak line-up (no Cap, no Iron Man, no Thor, still a couple issues away from The Vision's first appearance, etc.) and I'm not surprised it didn't go for more.

 

The #144 cover is already in territory IMO. I believe the reserve was $12K and I started escalating the bidding on it a couple of days ago, trading high bids back and forth with the then-high bidder. Apparently a third party then entered the fray and I'm pretty sure the run up since the high-teens has been two guys slugging it out which has taken the price beyond any realm of reasonability. Though, it is undoubtedly a very cool cover - I'm not the biggest Kane or Avengers fan, but the 1st Hellcat and great images of Cap, Iron Man and The Vision...well, how could I not take a run at it. But, right now, it's all about which guy has to have it more between two guys slugging it out.

[Ironmandrd]

New to this forum but as to personal HA surprises: the Alex Ross Wizard cover would be right up there. The ASM funeral page I would have thought would have been a bit more (and maybe snatched up by the #121 winner?). I don't follow Watchmen pages/covers but the #1 cover did seem to stutter at points (for example at around $80k) but once that was cleared it seemed to get up to $130k pretty fast.

 

On a lesser scale, the Iron Man #274 cover (which I was winning bidder on at $7170 w BP). That was not expected. I was willing to adjust up a bit because it was the first Paul Ryan Iron Man cover on HA and then a bit further for a nice Fin Fang Foom but I didn't realize that (apparently) the FFF would cause it to blow past expectations. That's the only thing I can think of--that the FFF drove the bidding much much higher than normal market and frankly more than (IMO) a Paul Ryan Iron Man (or Avengers) cover should go. I hope collectors take it as a large aberration because of the FFF factor and that it does not set a bad precedent for "regular" Ryan IM/Avengers covers (the Avengers covers have recently gone for $2600-$3300). Even the other Ryan IM #278 seemed to be effected a bit (maybe by disappointed #274 bidders?) by going for $4200 w BP but at least it stayed in the rough ballpark.

 

As an aside, also surprised at Av #144 bidding, especially with 5 days to go. It went from $12k to $30k yesterday. ??

 

 

[batman_fan]

I just looked through my list of tracked items in this auction. I did something interesting this time around and I put down my predictions for the price to see how I would do.

 

I was WAY off on the McFarlane panels. The two with the bigger images closed at more than 2x what I thought. I guess with the prices of the covers going so high, people are grabbing what ever they can.

 

Neal Adams Green Lantern - prediction $4000 actual $3,107.00, cheaper than I expected

 

The Jack Davis story went a lot higher than I expected. I really wanted one of his EC splashes and I liked this one but didn't care for the story. I expected no more than $12k but it closed at over $19k

 

Jim Lee Superman Splash, I expected this one to close at $3500 and it didn't even break $2k

 

Romita Spiderman Cover. I figured $30k but closer to $40k. It was a real nice cover.

 

Saga of the Sub-Mariner closed slightly higher than I expected at $2.2k

 

Byrne West Coast Avengers Splash closed right where I thought it would, just under $1.7k

 

One of the Dennis the Menace strip arts closed at just over $1.1k, I thought (hoped?) it would be had for $500

[Overthetopinc]

You said Bisley vertigo jam piece? You mean Glenn Farbry right?

thanks,

Matthew

[Overthetopinc]

That was to DJ ROME by the way. Still trying to figure out the posting here =)

[DJRome]

Yes, my bad.

[Overthetopinc]

Ha..I was thinking did I miss something. Great Fabry cover..Congrats!!

[Doc Joe]

Posted this elsewhere but here is the other win

 

psyched to get a Cherry cover thats not so inappropriate I cant display it in the house

 

 

 

 

[delekkerste]

Another uneven set of results came from the Romita ASMs. Everyone (myself included) was very impressed with the 121 result, but if that stuff is so important why did a half splash of Gwen's funeral sell for only 6.5k?

 

Actually, most people I've spoken with were NOT very impressed by the #121 result. Don't get me wrong, they will of course acknowledge that it's the 4th highest OA sale Heritage has ever had and that it's a huge amount of money no matter how you slice it. However, it's kind of like a company reporting blowout record earnings of $2.86/share when some of the optimists were expecting $3.50-$5.00+ a share. I mean, there was A LOT of talk about the cover challenging the McSpidey #1 ($358K), DKR #3 splash ($448K) or ASM #328 cover ($657K) and instead the cover would have had to climb another 129% just to equal the latter. I was on the record stating that the cover would likely sell for "between the high $200Ks to mid-$300Ks". As it turned out, it was closer to the lower end of my forecast (and my forecast was by no means among the higher/highest ones).

 

I personally think $287K for the #121 is a fine result, and a healthy one to boot. $657K for the ASM #328 cover was not the sign of a healthy market; it was a sign of clinical insanity. Furthermore, that insanity was contagious, because everyone started playing the game of, "well, if the ASM #328 cover is worth $657K, then these covers are worth a million, and these covers are worth $750K and these covers are worth half a million and these 75 covers are all $250K and these 200 covers are all now 6-figure items..." I'm sorry, but that's just making a mockery of the transitive property.

 

I'm glad that the #121 sold for a healthy, but not-too-far out of the realm of reality, result, so people can now start benchmarking other values to that sale instead of the DKR #3 splash and the ASM #328 cover, both of which were not only aberrations, but both clearly less important pieces than the #121 cover. Some of the wildly fanciful valuations at the ultra high-end will now have to be brought back down to reality (possibly even halved) because, while their prospective valuations didn't look insane next to the #328 sale price, they now look wildly overvalued after the #121 sale. I think that's a good thing for the overall health of the hobby.

[Overthetopinc]

You know its funny I have been reading this thread and I will only speak for myself although I do know a lot of people who feel the same way but I would take spiderman 1 or 328 over the 121 cover all day long. This storyline came out way before I was born and the spiderman I grew up with had little to nothing to do with Gwen Stacey so it would have to really awe me artistically and this piece of a shot of spideys back doesnt do it. In fact I could care less about it. Mcfarlane on the other hand those images of spidey 1 and 328 have been in my head since I was a kid. Nostalgia really does play a huge role in this stuff.

thanks

Matthew

[Nexus]

Another uneven set of results came from the Romita ASMs. Everyone (myself included) was very impressed with the 121 result, but if that stuff is so important why did a half splash of Gwen's funeral sell for only 6.5k?

 

Actually, most people I've spoken with were NOT very impressed by the #121 result. Don't get me wrong, they will of course acknowledge that it's the 4th highest OA sale Heritage has ever had and that it's a huge amount of money no matter how you slice it. However, it's kind of like a company reporting blowout record earnings of $2.86/share when some of the optimists were expecting $3.50-$5.00+ a share. I mean, there was A LOT of talk about the cover challenging the McSpidey #1 ($358K), DKR #3 splash ($448K) or ASM #328 cover ($657K) and instead the cover would have had to climb another 129% just to equal the latter. I was on the record stating that the cover would likely sell for "between the high $200Ks to mid-$300Ks". As it turned out, it was closer to the lower end of my forecast (and my forecast was by no means among the higher/highest ones).

 

I personally think $287K for the #121 is a fine result, and a healthy one to boot. $657K for the ASM #328 cover was not the sign of a healthy market; it was a sign of clinical insanity. Furthermore, that insanity was contagious, because everyone started playing the, "well, if the ASM #328 cover is worth $657K, then these covers are worth a million, and these covers are worth $750K and these covers are worth half a million and these 75 covers are all $250K and these 200 covers are all now 6-figure items..." I'm sorry, but that's just making a mockery of the transitive property.

 

I'm glad that the #121 sold for a healthy, but not-too-far out of the realm of reality, result, so people can now start benchmarking other values to that sale instead of the DKR #3 splash and the ASM #328 cover, both of which were not only aberrations, but both clearly less important pieces than the #121 cover. Some of the wildly fanciful valuations at the ultra high-end will now have to be brought back down to reality (possibly even halved) because, while their prospective valuations didn't look insane next to the #328 sale price, they now look wildly overvalued after the #121 sale. I think that's a good thing for the overall health of the hobby.

 

Agree 100% (and said the same in the "121 vs 328" thread). A sad day for market pumpers only.

[suspense39]

This hobby is still trying find market values due to historical relevance vs. nostalgic relevance...me personally i go with historic. i think the golden age has some of the best art out there and is the most scarce. most of it in my opinion is undervalued, i wasn't even alive then. i think what keeps it undervalued is younger nostalgic collectors spending higher dollars on more recent art.....which makes it still affordable for me.

[Overthetopinc]

Very true and I really dig the old classic stuff myself and only have the utmost respect for it but to me it is more about having examples of the character from their early days. My interest in having a Bob Kane Batman strip and having a page from the death of Gwen Stacey storyline don't equate. I think it is more complex when you talk about historic beginnings vs nostalgia. For example to me that Batman strip was a sign for things to come in terms of everything ever related to Batman from that time till today. The asm 121 story does not hold that all encompassing history.

[Ferran Delgado]

AsM #303: 77k

Marvel Tales 233 (with X-Men): 45k

SpM #3: 33k.

 

Whatever happened with McFarlane market? Any theories?

[lb jefferies]

AsM #303: 77k

Marvel Tales 233 (with X-Men): 45k

SpM #3: 33k.

 

Whatever happened with McFarlane market? Any theories?

 

Over saturation within a short time period.