Michael Browning

I actually picked up three more and sold one of those last year. I still have five Frazetta pieces in my collection.

Yes, still hanging on my wall, directly across from my Bob Larkin Crystar #1 cover painting.

Honestly, it sucks that this has happened to you, Malvin, and will certainly come back up in the future. It truly sucks. And, again, honestly, if it was my piece and I didn't love it, I'd get rid of it so that I didn't have to keep fighting the battles whenever the subject comes up. I've done that with a couple pieces.

Quoting myself to say “I told you so.”

Why not ask this in one of the comic BOOK boards on here? I think you'd get a better response and better answers than asking it in an ORIGINAL ART group.

Neal wasn't taken advantage of in his career. He was greedy at the end.

I thought it was such a terrible thing for Neal to say that he would provide authentication on the covers being auctioned off -- FOR A CUT OF THE SALE -- that I sold off and traded away every single piece of Neal Adams art I ever owned, covers and all.

Neal claimed so much of his art was stolen that I would be afraid he would have said art was stolen even as he took my cash and sold and handed it to me.

I bought two Bobby London Dirty Duck Book pages last year from a private collection and the level of detail and the gags on them are hilarious. I think Underground art will continue to stay strong for awhile. The pages were sold in 1972 by Rick Marshall for Bobby and they had been hidden away ever since, which doesn't hurt their value at all.

I think CC and Clink having two good auctions following two big Heritage auctions shows that the market is rebounding from what I considered a lull. I think art prices plateaued for a little bit, but that people are buying what they love again and I think that will continue on. I think that Quesada will definitely go for double its sold price the next time it comes up for sale, so I wish you had gotten it.

Trust me on this one. Better pages have sold for less recently.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone.

Well, now, that is truly unfortunate. Having said the above: They all -- Paolo, Andrew and Corey -- should have done better by their customers and, in turn, their artists. Paolo flat-out lied to me during our transaction about shipping the art and, after I filed a case with PayPal, he lied about sending my refund, so I knew never to deal with him again.

After all these posts about no communication, VERY late deliveries and artists jumping ship, anyone who buys from them at this point and has to wait years or doesn't get their art at all, it's absolutely your own fault.

Cadence put up art for sale today. The site update was listed on CAF at 12:15 p.m. today.

From the great Archie artist Dan Parent, who is an expert at figuring out who Archie artists are: Serve Verve is by Gus Lemoine. Dipsy Doodle is most likely by Dexter Taylor. Sun Fun is by Samm Schwartz. Snack Attack is most likely by Gus Lemoine with a different inker than Serve Verve. Real Cool Kid is by Gus Lemoine with Jon D'Agostino inks. Spray Cans for Teens is by Samm Schwartz. Still Life is by Gus Lemoine. Dan couldn't ID the artists for the other pages and he said that Archie used to put test artists on some of the one pagers, so some artists may not be regulars.

Kirby’s dialogue was just plain awful. I find his DC Fourth World work extremely hard to read.

I hate the blank cover sketches/drawings. I figure, though, that the consignor wanted them all in the same auction and someone at HA said “nah, we ain’t putting these into a Signature Auction, so stick ‘em all in a January Wednesday auction.”

I keep seeing all these excuses - it’s hard keeping records, artists all over the world, exhaustion from conventions… I work 60 hours a week and no matter how long the day has been, I still package up my eBay sales the night or morning they are paid for. I’m a one-man operation. They have a staff. There is absolutely no excuse for the way they do — or don’t do — business. They won’t ever get a penny from me. The lies and bad service, them having the artist tell me she will never sell art to me again — nope, I won’t ever buy from them again.

You waited six months? That’s like waiting on an artist to do a commission, not ship already-drawn artwork. Man, if I have to wait six days, I’m asking for my cash back. Terrible service.

Thank God, I am very blessed with a lot of great art that I really enjoy. I am very thankful. Never thought about it as far as a percentage of my net worth and computing all that just isn't something my brain can do. I just buy what I like at a price I'm comfortable paying -- and comfortable knowing I can get what I paid out of it in the end. I know what the real value of my collection is worth and it's way more than I've got invested in anything else. I made my wife a promise when we got married that I wouldn't take away from our earnings to buy comics and art and that I would use only the profits/proceeds from the sale of my already-existing collection to do that. I have kept that promise for 20 years. I sold off my golden age collection many years ago and invested it in comics and art that I could then, in turn, sell and reinvest in comics and art. I am a government worker who will have a pretty good government pension when I retire in about 11 years, plus Social Security. We've got a little cash in the bank and I still love selling comics as a hobby, so there's that. When (if) I hit 60-61, art collectors look out, though, because my art collection will be up for sale. I can't take it with me and I want to be able to enjoy the fruits of my labors for a few years before I die, so I plan to sell. Heck, for the right price, I'll sell now (but the price would have to be the RIGHT price). I'm fairly certain that if my art collection's value continues to grow as it has every other year, I will do better than okay on the sale and have a nice ROI to aid my retirement.

I don't think there's anything criminal about the description, which was probably taken directly from the consignor. I find mistakes all the time in their listings and I send them an email with the correct information and they change the listing. They've done it every single time I've emailed them. If they were up to no good, I would think they, like a lot of eBay sellers, would just ignore my messages and go ahead with the incorrect information.

Every time I buy at an above Fair Market Value price, I look at the time it will take for that art to mature into the price I paid and will I be able to break even if I need to resell before then. I'm at the point in my collecting life that I've got or had most every piece I ever set out to acquire so now I buy for fun and, sometimes, to get art to resell or trade at a later date, so I look at those things a lot more now than in the past. I didn't go big during the COVID years because I had a gut feeling that people were paying too much. I mean, the guy who bought the Secret Wars 8 page for $3 million set the bar really high - in my opinion, much too high for him to make a profit on that art, so I hope he plans to keep and enjoy it for the rest of his life. I think the ASM page is in the same place this close to its original sale. Now, maybe in five or six years, it could be a $150,000 page, so I'm not saying it won't ever happen.

Good points, all around. I think it MIGHT hit $125K, so it will get close, but I don't think it will surpass the previous sale and, by not doing that, the seller takes a small loss. Maybe the enjoyment of the piece is enough to offset that, but, selling it so soon after buying it less than three years ago makes me think it was bought as an investment rather than a nostalgic keeper and the seller might be trying to mitigate a bigger loss.

I don’t think it will hit that this time around. The seller’s going to take a loss, I’m afraid.