All your eggs in one basket? 0

[Panelfan1]

Anybody else look at your own collection and ask - do I have all my eggs in one basket?  In other words, do I have too many pieces all by the same artist or same series or same character?

[thethedew]

Yes, but in my case it's obviously by design.

Now, 'all my eggs in one basket' from a financial standpoint... is an entirely different question.

[mister_not_so_nice]

 

1 hour ago, Panelfan1 said:

Anybody else look at your own collection and ask - do I have all my eggs in one basket?  In other words, do I have too many pieces all by the same artist or same series or same character?

Can you elaborate? 

[Panelfan1]

25 minutes ago, mister_not_so_nice said:

 

Can you elaborate? 

I collect what I like. When I started I limited myself to one example per artist.  As time went by got more pieces from the same artists.  Same thing - with multiple examples of the same character..     

Now art is bought for enjoyment, but most won't deny there is an investment component.  At the very least you want to know that you  recoup your expenditure if you ever had to.  

In investing, some argue ita good to have a diversified portfolio.  If you think of your art collection as your portfolio (i keep my art in a litteral portfolio) is there a concern when a big part of the portfolio is all dedicated to one thing?

[batman_fan]

My stuff is all over the map for artist but it is mostly Marvel and DC. 

[AnkurJ]

In regards to characters I have a focus on a few. But not when it comes to artists or time periods.

[mister_not_so_nice]

1 hour ago, Panelfan1 said:

I collect what I like. When I started I limited myself to one example per artist.  As time went by got more pieces from the same artists.  Same thing - with multiple examples of the same character..     

Now art is bought for enjoyment, but most won't deny there is an investment component.  At the very least you want to know that you  recoup your expenditure if you ever had to.  

In investing, some argue ita good to have a diversified portfolio.  If you think of your art collection as your portfolio (i keep my art in a litteral portfolio) is there a concern when a big part of the portfolio is all dedicated to one thing?

I was being sarcastic. Sorry that didn't come through in the message board. 

A majority of my eggs are in a couple of baskets.

"Quite a few" pages from one of my favorite series.

100+ pages from another favorite VERTIGO series (NOT SANDMAN   )

100+ pages each from two of my favorite artists

 

F diversification. I like what I like.

 

[JadeGiant]

I can see if this being a question if art is more investment than hobby for sure. For me, it's all hobby so I buy as much of what I really like as I can find and fits within my hobby budget. You might think my portfolio needs more diversity but I enjoy as much green as I can get. 

[Mighty Hal]

I do wonder if the hobby might be a simpler joy for me if I only collected one character (i.e., Strong Guy), or one artist (say, Bruce Timm) or a limited series (such as 100 Bullets). It would focus my wandering eye, that's for sure. 

I've got all kinds of baskets. My OA diversification has nothing to do with investment value, though. There are probably three Strong Guy collectors in the world; enough Bruce Timm material out there that I'll never get back what I paid the dealer; and 100 Bullets has, like so many limited series, slowly faded away. I'll lose money when the time comes to sell, but so what?

It's been great fun.

 

[KirbyJack]

Ooh yes. I'm down to a total of 3 pages, and I'd be willing to trade them for a better one!

[fmaz]

Diversity of a collection is really only relevant if you're talking about a) protecting your investment in case some parts of a portfolio spike or crash, or b) if you were somehow monitizing your collection by, say, opening a museum and wanted to attract the biggest crowd by offering art appealing to many different tastes.  A personal collection can and should be as excrutiatingly narrow (or broad) as pleases its owner. 

[Twanj]

if all you collect is one artist I can see that having a big impact if you (or your family) needed to liquidate your collection

[delekkerste]

On 2/26/2017 at 2:41 PM, Panelfan1 said:

Anybody else look at your own collection and ask - do I have all my eggs in one basket?  In other words, do I have too many pieces all by the same artist or same series or same character?

23% of my collection (well over a hundred pieces) consists of Vampirella artwork.  It was the primary focus for the first 7 years of my collecting experience - I loved (still do) the art, especially by the Spanish masters like Jose Gonzalez, Enric and Sanjulian, and liked that it was generally less expensive than a lot of mainstream superhero art.  And, perhaps even more importantly, that many of the very best vintage pieces featuring the character were still generally available in those years (2002-2009), whereas many of the best pieces of Marvel hero art were already sucked into black hole collections by then, or were already priced beyond my comfort zone at the time. 

Nowadays, I definitely have more Vampirella art than I need, and have actually been selling off some pieces over the past couple of years.  In hindsight, I would have been better off being less focused on the character and spreading my budget out more during those first 7 years of collecting.  But, it wasn't until about 2010 that I decided to try and build a broader collection encompassing more eras, genres, characters, artists, etc.

[John E.]

On February 26, 2017 at 9:07 PM, Hal Turner said:

I do wonder if the hobby might be a simpler joy for me if I only collected one character (i.e., Strong Guy), or one artist (say, Bruce Timm) or a limited series (such as 100 Bullets). It would focus my wandering eye, that's for sure. 

I've got all kinds of baskets. My OA diversification has nothing to do with investment value, though. There are probably three Strong Guy collectors in the world; enough Bruce Timm material out there that I'll never get back what I paid the dealer; and 100 Bullets has, like so many limited series, slowly faded away. I'll lose money when the time comes to sell, but so what?

It's been great fun.

 

I've entertained the same idea...to focus on one artist, like Bruce Timm or Alex Ross. And I really like your analysis and what would happen if you did.

I have an acquaintance that I run into at cons and with whom I talk art. He told me he had something like 12-14 pieces by Chris Bachalo. It seemed like he had various examples by Bachalo and was considering picking up something from Doctor Strange until he caught himself and said, "Well, maybe I have too much of him. And the market is beginning to soften." That's what got me thinking: how much is too much of an artist? I don't know the Bachalo market but if he bought pages for $1400 and could "only" get $1100 from them, then at a dozen he'd have $3600 loss. But that's in theory. Sure, the value of some of those pages might soften, but if he had one or two "Death" pieces, then those pieces are likely to pick up the slack. So at first, my misperception was that there is such as a thing as having too many of one artist; but if the artist is worth collecting, and you've started collecting him since the beginning, then pages from the artist's most popular/historical title is where all the equity is made. Unless you're dozen pages deep in an artist's worst work from his worst title, your portfolio is just as diversified as it would be collecting many different artists.

Just as an aside, trading a dozen pieces for one piece is similar to "putting all your eggs in one basket" I believe. Second, most art collectors have different interest and tastes and favorite, that I also believe that hardly anyone puts it all in one basket. Bill C. has an extraordinary collection of GOTG but he has other art, too.

[The Voord]

I like lots of different artworks, so collect lots of different artworks.  Diversification keeps the hobby fresh for me and I remain open to new areas of art to explore (I'm into movie poster artworks at the moment, which look wonderful framed and on display on the walls of my house and most visitors are impressed by what they see, as most people connect with the cinema as an entertainment medium).

Expecting this Vic Fair concept art for the 1967 British movie 'Charley Bubbles' to arrive next week, along with two other paintings (sadly, Vic Fair passed away over the weekend):

Edited March 3, 2017 by The Voord

[staffman]

I'm changing how I have been doing things myself for the very same reason of having too much of one artist.  At one point I must have had 15 Bruce Timm pieces and I just thought that was way too much.  He's the only one I'll still keep a high # of after purging about 6 pages from my collection, but my wallet and mental capacity have it now down to just 1 key page from a lot of artists.  It's helped me on a lot of fronts.

[malvin]

When I saw the subject, I thought it was about overall net worth tied up in OA (vs other asset groups).  I think as OA prices appreciate, most of us have a higher % in OA that what is prudent (relatively speaking)

Like many people though (and prodded by my wife..) I am trying to focus, so if it's not core and I happen to have multiple examples, I am trying to get to 1 (and for some, to none).  But for things that are core (i.e. I like it a lot), and prices are reasonable (i.e. under $200 for panel pages) I will continue to buy more.

Malvin

[jeBailey]

7 minutes ago, malvin said:

When I saw the subject, I thought it was about overall net worth tied up in OA (vs other asset groups).  I think as OA prices appreciate, most of us have a higher % in OA that what is prudent (relatively speaking)

Like many people though (and prodded by my wife..) I am trying to focus, so if it's not core and I happen to have multiple examples, I am trying to get to 1 (and for some, to none).  But for things that are core (i.e. I like it a lot), and prices are reasonable (i.e. under $200 for panel pages) I will continue to buy more.

Malvin

My problem is for the stuff I truly want the panel pages start at around $500 and go much higher. I only own 3 covers and will likely not get any more as the last few so-so examples people wanted north of 15K. These where from Marvel Team-up covers so you can imagine what the ASM covers would run.

John B.

[delekkerste]

I met a local collector (probably 5-8 years older than I am) a year or two ago who used to have a broader collecting focus, but, as time went on, found himself gravitating more and more to only what tingled him the most nostalgically.  To the point where, now, he only collects the art of one particular character (which I won't name so as not to easily identify him) published between 1976-78 (IIRC...whatever his first 3 years of collecting were...maybe it was 1977-79 or 1978-80).

I am finding my focus similarly narrowing as well - right now, there's very little that I'm interested in outside of material that was published between, say, 1980 and 1986.  And, I could easily see that range eventually narrowing even further over time to 1983-85 or even just 1983 and 1984.  Pretty much everything I've bought recently has been material that was either published in 1983-84, or that I was exposed to in that short timeframe.  

Edited March 9, 2017 by delekkerste

[Panelfan1]

1 hour ago, delekkerste said:

I met a local collector (probably 5-8 years older than I am) a year or two ago who used to have a broader collecting focus, but, as time went on, found himself gravitating more and more to only what tingled him the most nostalgically.  To the point where, now, he only collects the art of one particular character (which I won't name so as not to easily identify him) published between 1976-78 (IIRC...whatever his first 3 years of collecting were...maybe it was 1977-79 or 1978-80).

I am finding my focus similarly narrowing as well - right now, there's very little that I'm interested in outside of material that was published between, say, 1980 and 1986.  And, I could easily see that range eventually narrowing even further over time to 1983-85 or even just 1983 and 1984.  Pretty much everything I've bought recently has been material that was either published in 1983-84, or that I was exposed to in that short timeframe.  

A friend and I were looking at the clink auction last week and noticed quite a number of pages from 1984.  Hopefully some of that made it your way.  

Collecting by year is not a big deal - but collecting only one character could be an issue.  Depends on the character though.