Heritage September 2022 comic and art auction 3 3

[RBerman]

On 8/18/2022 at 5:54 PM, jjonahjameson11 said:

Assuming the vast majority of us OA are 50, +\- 5 years, then at this stage of your life, coming up with $10K for a piece of OA that you really want shouldn’t be a problem

Once, perhaps. Repeatedly? That's an increasingly smaller tip of the pyramid.

[Carl Elvis]

So many Kirby pages to choose from, it’s hard to pick what to go after.

[Aahz]

On 8/18/2022 at 1:31 PM, Xatari said:

The sub $10k pieces did well last night at Heritage. Market is 💪 

The romance covers went for around $3K.  I was floored.

[tth2]

On 8/19/2022 at 2:53 AM, Mighty Hal said:

For me, anything close to $10k is a high-end piece!

For a second, I thought I accidentally opened a thread from 2012.

Edited August 19, 2022 by tth2

[tth2]

On 8/19/2022 at 5:25 AM, jjonahjameson11 said:

On 8/19/2022 at 2:31 AM, Xatari said:

The sub $10k pieces did well last night at Heritage. Market is 💪 

Yes, very strong indeed.  Definitely no slowdown in price escalation 

the sports card market is crashing, which means we have to follow!

[drdonaldblake1]

On 8/19/2022 at 1:14 PM, tth2 said:

the sports card market is crashing, which means we have to follow!

Didn't the sports cars market crash in the late 90's and then pick up again mid 2000's?

I don't follow that market so have no idea

[Rick2you2]

On 8/18/2022 at 6:54 PM, jjonahjameson11 said:

Assuming the vast majority of us OA are 50, +\- 5 years, then at this stage of your life, coming up with $10K for a piece of OA that you really want shouldn’t be a problem

It may not be a problem, but to me, it lacks worth. I wouldn’t spend that much on “fine” art either. They are just a bunch of pictures which only give little moments of joy. For that, I will only spend a little.

My father just died, leaving behind some valuables, and as the saying goes, “you can’t take it with you”. Neither my brother nor I have any interest in a fair number of things his generation gathered, like sterling silver dinnerware, a common current problem with this new generation, too. They also don’t care for most of my stuff, that I lovingly gathered. So why bother buying more at high prices?

[Rick2you2]

On 8/19/2022 at 3:56 AM, drdonaldblake1 said:

Didn't the sports cars market crash in the late 90's and then pick up again mid 2000's?

I don't follow that market so have no idea

If memory serves me, the price for rare sports cars did drop around that time, but later skyrocketed. 

Ironic typo.

[kbmcvay]

On 8/18/2022 at 9:24 PM, Carl Elvis said:

So many Kirby pages to choose from, it’s hard to pick what to go after.

That Jane Foster centric JIM page is the one I like the best personally (even though it has Vinnie inks). I think the blacks on that one look really awesome.

[drdonaldblake1]

On 8/18/2022 at 10:05 PM, jjonahjameson11 said:

Well, the Miller Wolvie page should crack $25K fairly easily, possibly hit $30K so it’s no surprise that it’s at $10K already

I remember the wolverine 3 LS COVER being auctioned on comiclink.....around 2015/16 I think. I think it went for about $35k and I thought that was a bit  of a bargain. Lucky buyer!  What's that worth today? $200k?

[KirbyCollector]

On 8/19/2022 at 8:20 AM, kbmcvay said:

That Jane Foster centric JIM page is the one I like the best personally (even though it has Vinnie inks). I think the blacks on that one look really awesome.

I love the page but that stain is rough... makes me wonder why HA hasn't offered its own OA art restoration service... think a lot of sellers would go for it to correct smaller issues 

[tth2]

On 8/19/2022 at 3:56 PM, drdonaldblake1 said:

On 8/19/2022 at 11:14 AM, tth2 said:

the sports card market is crashing, which means we have to follow!

Didn't the sports cars market crash in the late 90's and then pick up again mid 2000's?

I don't follow that market so have no idea

I don't know.  Do sports car collectors wear their baseball caps backwards?

[jjonahjameson11]

On 8/18/2022 at 7:56 PM, RBerman said:

Once, perhaps. Repeatedly? That's an increasingly smaller tip of the pyramid.

Repeatedly.  Do it once per year for 10 years and you have a very nice collection.

[vodou]

Perspective:

[delekkerste]

On 8/18/2022 at 5:25 PM, jjonahjameson11 said:

Yes, very strong indeed.  Definitely no slowdown in price escalation 

After the past quarter, I think many people would say that we're seeing a slowdown in the rate of price escalation, but, not a decline in the overall level of prices. I think the consensus view of the last HA sale was basically "stable at the record high prices that have been prevailing". 

IF we're going to see the market rolling over, we'll see it happen across a series of steps. First, you'll see a slowdown in the rate of price escalation (second derivative inflection). Next, you'll see supply increasing but transaction volumes decreasing (as the auction block supply is managed, I'm talking about across the whole of the hobby - auctions, dealers, collector-to-collector). You'll then probably see what we saw in late 2008/early 2009 - supply shrinking, volumes shrinking, and the market freezing up as people try to wait out a downturn. But, unlike 2008/09, which was really a very brief dip (6 months between the fall of Lehman Bros until the beginning of the Great Reflation), a more prolonged downturn will cause more supply to come back out and valuations to reset. NOT saying that it's definitely going to happen, but, I think that's a roadmap of what a real correction or bear market would look like.

Also, just because in the third stage (as described above) prices aren't crashing at auction doesn't mean that valuations aren't impacted. Would people have been able to get the same or more for their pieces in February 2009 as they would have in July 2008 at the peak of the summer hard asset frenzy? Maybe for a select few pieces, but, for the majority, nope. I got some of my all-time best OA deals in early 2009. It's a total revisionist fantasy to say that the OA market wasn't impacted during the last downturn - it was, but, basically the market froze up and most were able to wait out what turned out to be a relatively brief downturn. And 100% of the gains that people attribute to people shifting asset allocations into art & collectibles after being burned in stocks and real estate happened during The Great Reflation (March 2009-onward), NOT during the September 2008-February 2009 economic and market bloodbath period (as grudgingly confirmed to me by one of the heads of the Big Three comic/OA auction houses...)

Edited August 19, 2022 by delekkerste

[comix4fun]

On 8/19/2022 at 2:56 AM, drdonaldblake1 said:

Didn't the sports cars market crash in the late 90's and then pick up again mid 2000's?

I don't follow that market so have no idea

The sports card market has crashed more times in the last 30 years than Ricky Bobby did in the second act of Talladega Nights.

[delekkerste]

On 8/18/2022 at 11:14 PM, tth2 said:

the sports card market is crashing, which means we have to follow!

Serious question: without the sports card market paving the way to heretofore undreamed of levels of collectibles valuations by early 2021, do you think the OA market would have reached the levels it has? I don't (eventually, maybe, but, almost certainly not in the timeframe it has). Oh, sure, it would have caught a tailwind from the general pandemic wave higher, but, let's face it - what happened in sports cards paved the way for what happened in comics and OA over the past 16 months. Before the sports card market went parabolic/vertical, comics and OA were climbing at a strong, but steady rate, but, after the Goldin sale at the end of January 2021, well, comics and OA followed with their own hockey-stick like advances soon after to play catch-up.

Now that the sports card market has gone into reverse, it's not unfathomable to think that, just as comics/OA caught up to sports cards on the upside with a pronounced lag, maybe the same will happen on the downside in the fullness of time if the economic and market weakness we've seen in recent months continues. As Jim H. noted on the latest Felix Comic Art podcast, asset prices have rebounded strongly of late, but, it's starting to look like it was "buy the rumor of a Fed pivot and sell the fact" with markets reversing hard off of recent highs. He also noted in the podcast that it's basically settled science that crypto money has seeped into a lot of collectibles verticals - not necessarily used to make payments, but, the wealth effect has definitely had a strong linkage to the rise in collectibles prices. Well, now Bitcoin and Ethereum have reversed 15%+ from recent highs in the blink of an eye, while other popular tokens have shed 20-30%. 

Regardless of how things eventually pan out for the OA market, it does seem to be very premature at this time to be spiking the football and sounding the all-clear when the bigger macro picture is still looking very uncertain. 

Edited August 19, 2022 by delekkerste

[comix4fun]

On 8/19/2022 at 10:11 AM, delekkerste said:

Serious question: without the sports card market paving the way to heretofore undreamed of levels of collectibles valuations by early 2021, do you think the OA market would have reached the levels it has? I don't (eventually, maybe, but, almost certainly not in the timeframe it has). Oh, sure, it would have caught a tailwind from the general pandemic wave higher, but, let's face it - what happened in sports cards paved the way for what happened in comics and OA over the past 16 months. Before the sports card market went parabolic/vertical, comics and OA were climbing at a steady rate, but, after the Goldin sale at the end of January 2021, well, comics and OA followed with their own hockey-stick like advances soon after to play catch-up.

Now that the sports card market has gone into reverse, it's not unfathomable to think that, just as comics/OA caught up to sports cards on the upside with a pronounced lag, maybe the same will happen on the downside in the fullness of time if the economic and market weakness we've seen in recent months continues. As Jim H. noted on the latest Felix Comic Art podcast, asset prices have rebounded strongly of late, but, it's starting to look like it was "buy the rumor of a Fed pivot and sell the fact" with markets reversing hard off of recent highs. He also noted in the podcast that it's basically settled science that crypto money has seeped into a lot of collectibles verticals - not necessarily used to make payments, but, the wealth effect has definitely had a strong linkage to the rise in collectibles prices. Well, now Bitcoin and Ethereum have reversed 15%+ from recent highs in the blink of an eye, while other popular tokens have shed 20-30%. 

Regardless of how things eventually pan out for the OA market, it does seem to be very premature at this time to be spiking the football and sounding the all-clear when the bigger macro picture is still looking very uncertain. 

I see correlation, but I don't necessarily see causation with sports card price increases. 
Both markets may move similarly due to external forces but I don't see one forcing the other up or down by itself.
All of the other market forces may or may not impact this hobby, but I've been through enough "hobby corrections" to know that cards are their own flawed beast. 

I was getting "Holy Cannoli!!! What?" Offers for a lot of my top shelf pieces by May of 2020. Same with my rare vintage toys, RPG items, etc etc. The only real parallel with graded cards was graded comics as they share some metrics (and some players) because the learning curve is lower as many just "look at the number" and trade the pieces accordingly. 
 

[delekkerste]

On 8/19/2022 at 4:17 PM, comix4fun said:

I see correlation, but I don't necessarily see causation with sports card price increases. 
Both markets may move similarly due to external forces but I don't see one forcing the other up or down by itself.
All of the other market forces may or may not impact this hobby, but I've been through enough "hobby corrections" to know that cards are their own flawed beast. 

I was getting "Holy Cannoli!!! What?" Offers for a lot of my top shelf pieces by May of 2020. Same with my rare vintage toys, RPG items, etc etc. The only real parallel with graded cards was graded comics as they share some metrics (and some players) because the learning curve is lower as many just "look at the number" and trade the pieces accordingly. 
 

What you're talking about by May 2020 is the general pandemic tailwind that all collectibles were benefiting from. But sports cards separated from the pack soon after in the biggest way - sports card sales were all over the media, there were M&A deals in the industry flying left and right, celebrities and influencers were getting in the game and prices were soon ramping up into triple and quadruple digit gains (and not from teeny tiny starting prices like RPGs, by comparison). What we saw in sports cards or led by sports cards (as with fractional companies, vaults, third party grading services, selling platforms, etc.) in 2020-21 (and at an industry-level, it's still ongoing) is bigger than anything we have ever seen in comics or comic art; I would say that it was a watershed period for the entire collectibles industry, with more capital pouring into card-related businesses than has ever happened in comics, probably by a factor of 10 or more.

After the surreal results at Goldin in late January 2021, where a pair of 1986 Fleer Michael Jordan PSA 10s sold for $720K (and two more sold privately at the same price right after), a 20-25x gain during just the pandemic period, well, that's when the starting gun went off for the Crazy Olympics. I had lunch with Vinny Z. and Doc Joe right after that sale and we all realized at that moment that comics were going to have to play catch up. At a Cabal dinner a few weeks later, one member announced he had just made a 7-figure comic purchase specifically because of what sports cards were doing (making high-end comics look stupidly cheap by comparison). 

But, in any case, it's not just about sports cards - sports cards are going down due to a combination of hobby-specific and macro factors. OA is probably more insulated on the macro front given its wealthier clientele, but, "more insulated" does not mean "immune". If we get a more prolonged downturn in the economy and markets (again, not saying it's going to happen, just that it's way premature to be taking that scenario off the table and spiking the football), it will eventually start to impact our hobby. And, arguably, we may already be in the first phase of that, with the rate of change inflecting over the past auction cycle. 

And, hell, if no less than an authority as Jim Halperin says that our hobby is affected by these macro factors, well, who am I to disagree? Felix specifically pointed out on the podcast that the consensus in our hobby is that OA prices are not affected by what happens in external markets, something Jim disagreed with in his telling of how the DKR #1 cover sale went down. So, put that in your pipe and smoke it @tth2!  

Edited August 20, 2022 by delekkerste

[Aahz]

Only my opinion, and I collect because I love the stuff ... not because of opportunity.

Leaving aside price, comic art is not comic books, sports cards, beanie babies.  It is combination of words and art ... one moment in a story and one of a kind ... regardless of popularity or quality.  If you destroy a published piece, there will not be another.  If there are enough people that enjoy this (for whatever reason), the price will maintain.  Not that it is a perfect comparable, but Picasso was very prolific, creating an estimated 50,000 original artworks.  Prices have not gone down.  Now not everyone artist is a Picasso, but there is an appetite and market for his works and the prices maintain.  Unless people decide that there is no value in this as art, the prices will maintain and maybe continue to rise.