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It appears that WATA and Heritage are colluding to pump up the graded videogame market. What are the implications for OA?
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153 posts in this topic

On 9/6/2021 at 12:00 PM, Rick2you2 said:

There will be very few, if any, ramifications from this. Everyone wants to believe that what they bought was the product of legitimate supply and demand valuation instead of market manipulation. Dealers can hold steady as they have priced their profit into presumed sales based on purchases at a certain price. And, they seem to have sufficient resources not to cut their prices. How else does one explain the huge pile of unsold art which sits for years? So, when the noise dies down, people get back on the merry- go-round, like junkies in need of a fix. The solution? Cap your purchase price for specific pieces, come hell or high water, and shift your gaze elsewhere. You’ll need it if you are buying a new car in the short run. 

I agree, thievery worst case if something is found to be shady is a fine gets paid.

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On 9/6/2021 at 8:04 AM, Wolverinex said:

It will be interesting to see what happens... I think a correction will happen  (ie A lot of key books dropped 30% or so) in the last comiclink sales but eventually, we'll get through this.

Which books are you talking about? It wasn’t any I was bidding on. Thanks.

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On 9/6/2021 at 10:33 AM, vodou said:

Very true. Substack you can actually trust.

i more or less agree with you.  

still i think chicago boy is needlessly fanning the flames here, implying that the new york times is doing some big exposé on this budding scandal when they are not. as far as i can tell, its a thing on twitter and on reddit. that's about all. more certainly could be coming down the pike, but i don't see alot of significant coverage happening just yet. 

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On 9/7/2021 at 12:13 AM, alexgross.com said:
On 9/6/2021 at 10:26 PM, Chicago Boy said:

NYT reporter asking similar questions in his latest article.  

can you please link the nyt article? you keep saying this but i dont see any article about this. some reporters on substack have substantial audiences. but that's quite a different thing than the nyt. 

I just did a search on the New York Times and the most recent references I could find to "WATA" and "Heritage" were from Jan 27, 2020 and July 12, 2021, respectively.  None related to this alleged scandal.

Chicago Boy, please post a link to the article you keep referring to.  

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Really interesting video and pretty shocking to see how closely Heritage was involved in the 80's coin bubble.  This definitely reinforces my distaste for graded comics and makes me suspect some of the record breaking sales we've seen in recent years.  Having said that, I do think original art is less susceptible to this level of manipulation and collector sites such as CAF provide evidence that much of the market is still made up of individual collectors who enjoy sharing their collections. We just need to stay vigilant against attempts at official art grading or certifications that can be easily manipulated.

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On 9/6/2021 at 2:01 PM, Wolverinex said:

asm194, gsx1

I’m have been trying to get back into comics lately.  When did ASM 194 become a key book?  I thought it was just the first appearance of a minor character.  Do actual people that collect comics really want this book, or is it just one of those books the “card guys” who explain comics on you tube value?

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On 9/6/2021 at 8:40 PM, inovrmihd said:

I’m have been trying to get back into comics lately.  When did ASM 194 become a key book?  I thought it was just the first appearance of a minor character.  Do actual people that collect comics really want this book, or is it just one of those books the “card guys” who explain comics on you tube value?

I'm now more an art guy but I always thought the first Black Cat was a decent semi-key

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On 9/6/2021 at 11:00 AM, Rick2you2 said:

There will be very few, if any, ramifications from this. Everyone wants to believe that what they bought was the product of legitimate supply and demand valuation instead of market manipulation. Dealers can hold steady as they have priced their profit into presumed sales based on purchases at a certain price. And, they seem to have sufficient resources not to cut their prices. How else does one explain the huge pile of unsold art which sits for years? So, when the noise dies down, people get back on the merry- go-round, like junkies in need of a fix. The solution? Cap your purchase price for specific pieces, come hell or high water, and shift your gaze elsewhere. You’ll need it if you are buying a new car in the short run. 

A couple points on this. As far as the huge pile of unsold art, its all the second rate stuff. In my areas of interest, like 70's Kirby, good pages are snatched up almost as soon as they appear. I assume that's true across the board. I'd like to cap my purchase price at $1000 for an A-page, but then I'd never buy anything. So my personal, considered "cap" is a function of where the market seems to be, and part of my argument to myself involves assurance that I can get my cost out of it pretty quickly if need be. One personal ramification is that I am looking at Heritage sales with a considerably more jaundiced eye–I know many here are way ahead of me on this.

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On 9/7/2021 at 3:11 AM, drdroom said:

A couple points on this. As far as the huge pile of unsold art, its all the second rate stuff. In my areas of interest, like 70's Kirby, good pages are snatched up almost as soon as they appear. I assume that's true across the board. I'd like to cap my purchase price at $1000 for an A-page, but then I'd never buy anything. So my personal, considered "cap" is a function of where the market seems to be, and part of my argument to myself involves assurance that I can get my cost out of it pretty quickly if need be. One personal ramification is that I am looking at Heritage sales with a considerably more jaundiced eye–I know many here are way ahead of me on this.

I don’t think you are fairly evaluating “all the second rate stuff”. While good pages do sell pretty quickly, some of that other stuff, published at least, can be very good but not by a popular artist, or a piece that simply exceeds the typical quality of a mediocre artist. As for Kirby, he had his bad days, too, including those in the 1970’s. I almost never buy anything over 2k, unless it is really special, but to me, it is a sunk cost which is never to be recovered by a sale in any event. I search hard for my little treasures and don’t plan on letting them go.

Regarding the auction sites, absolutely be careful. I’ve been torched before when I used the word “shill”, but that’s not the only way to keep prices artificially high. Dealers dealing with dealers, dueling or otherwise, is definitely kicking up prices. But “where the market seems to be” is why shilling and bid-rigging work. They set where the market “seems to be”. I cannot justify the pricing for Richard Dillin, so he’s not in my little pile of stuff, even though pricing these days is where the market seems to be. So, as long as you keep buying your area of interest, you’re just feeding the furnace. And that is what I expect a lot of people will continue to do.

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On 9/6/2021 at 11:40 PM, inovrmihd said:

I’m have been trying to get back into comics lately.  When did ASM 194 become a key book?  I thought it was just the first appearance of a minor character.  Do actual people that collect comics really want this book, or is it just one of those books the “card guys” who explain comics on you tube value?

ASM 194 has been on the rise for several years, and as with many other 1st appearance books, has benefitted from accelerated price increases due in part to rampant covid buying, and rumours of a movie and/or tv appearance.

Numerous 1st appearances of likewise minor characters have seen similar percentage increase in value over the past 1-2 years.

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On 9/6/2021 at 9:26 PM, Ted_L said:

collector sites such as CAF provide evidence that much of the market is still made up of individual collectors who enjoy sharing their collections.

I did a study a few years ago, actually two studies. In one I took a group of popular artists who created work during the period there was a obvious market for OA. I listed all the cover art that they did and then proceed to try to find it anywhere on the web. In the other I used a group popular artists who also did work before there was an obvious OA market and then listed their works that had been sold on Heritage (the only seller that provides such historical data) and again tried to find these works on the web. The results for both studies were pretty consistent, I could only find about 25% to 35% of the work on the web, mostly on CAF. Some artists were outliers with smaller number of work found on the web, I suspect there were artists that had so far kept some of the work. There were no real outliers on the high end. I believe the highest percentage of works found for a particular artist was 45%. So the large portion of OA is not visible on the web. Some of what I think of this as dark art belongs in black hole collections. I know some such collectors who never share their collection on CAF, but what I don't know is how much of the dark art is in black hole collections, and how much is held by investors with no real interest in the art itself other than the money they hope to make. And, for me, one of the lessons of the YouTube clip on the videogame market that open this thread, is that you only need a small number of people to manipulate a market. I am not saying that is happening to the OA market, but it is a concern.

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On 9/7/2021 at 8:23 AM, jjonahjameson11 said:

Numerous 1st appearances of likewise minor characters have seen similar percentage increase in value over the past 1-2 years.

Typical bubble lifecycle behavior. Coming soon...a Futures market for specific characters and "baskets" of minor characters. If that goes well then look for fractional shares in futures of baskets of minor characters ;) 

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On 9/6/2021 at 9:40 PM, inovrmihd said:

I’m have been trying to get back into comics lately.  When did ASM 194 become a key book?  I thought it was just the first appearance of a minor character.  Do actual people that collect comics really want this book, or is it just one of those books the “card guys” who explain comics on you tube value?

The Black Cat has beoobs so she is deemed a major character.

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On 9/6/2021 at 10:40 PM, inovrmihd said:

I’m have been trying to get back into comics lately.  When did ASM 194 become a key book?  I thought it was just the first appearance of a minor character.  Do actual people that collect comics really want this book, or is it just one of those books the “card guys” who explain comics on you tube value?

While it's true that minor character 1st appearances are inflated nowadays, as are most comic books anyway, Black Cat is no longer a minor character. She has her own book now, is currently the main player in an event with the Infinity Stones (no longer gems thanks to the MCU), and makes appearances in other books fairly often. She may not be major like Spider-Man, but she's definitely not minor. So what does that make her...mean?

Anyway, the buzzword in comics these days is "key," and ASM 194 is at least a true key compared to the other stuff labeled that these days.

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I don't disagree with you here and it's pretty obvious that dealers have been artificially pumping up the market by trading pieces back and forth.  However, I do think the nature of original art makes it much harder for pure investors to make a quick buck.  There's just not enough high level inventory for Heritage and other venues to make the same kind of money as with mass produced graded collectibles.  There's obviously some dealers/collectors doing really well these days, but at least these are people who've been in the hobby for years and not just jumping in now to pump and dump.

Regarding the hidden art out there, I do think a lot is the result of black hole collectors, artists such as Simonson, Austin and others keeping a lot of their art and people who were given art years ago who don't really know what they have.  I think there's also a certain amount of fear on the part of silver age collectors that the Kirby, Ditko or other estates might try to come for their artwork with questionable provenance, so a lot of this art has been kept private.  

On 9/7/2021 at 9:15 AM, hmendryk said:

I did a study a few years ago, actually two studies. In one I took a group of popular artists who created work during the period there was a obvious market for OA. I listed all the cover art that they did and then proceed to try to find it anywhere on the web. In the other I used a group popular artists who also did work before there was an obvious OA market and then listed their works that had been sold on Heritage (the only seller that provides such historical data) and again tried to find these works on the web. The results for both studies were pretty consistent, I could only find about 25% to 35% of the work on the web, mostly on CAF. Some artists were outliers with smaller number of work found on the web, I suspect there were artists that had so far kept some of the work. There were no real outliers on the high end. I believe the highest percentage of works found for a particular artist was 45%. So the large portion of OA is not visible on the web. Some of what I think of this as dark art belongs in black hole collections. I know some such collectors who never share their collection on CAF, but what I don't know is how much of the dark art is in black hole collections, and how much is held by investors with no real interest in the art itself other than the money they hope to make. And, for me, one of the lessons of the YouTube clip on the videogame market that open this thread, is that you only need a small number of people to manipulate a market. I am not saying that is happening to the OA market, but it is a concern.

 

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