ShallowDan

Good observation (especially given the fact that you've possibly seen this play out from both sides of the table, so to speak), and it's a mistake I've certainly made before. Once was with an artist whose work I liked and could find countless examples of things I love online. I was happy to meet him and we spent a couple of minutes talking about me being a fan of his work before I started leafing through a portfolio of stuff that was nice enough, but with nothing that really grabbed me (and that all seemed to be priced with a bit of a show premium built in). It wasn't that I felt obligated to him to buy something, but more like I felt obligated to myself to buy something. In the lead up to the show, I had mentally budgeted the money to be spent at his booth, and well, here I was at the booth, so... Since then, I've tried to take the approach that the best part of a show is the experience, so to speak: meeting/chatting with artists and other fans/collectors of their work - the networking thing that you mentioned. No shame in driving home empty handed but with a full wallet, and you can still end up with memories of a fun day even if you don't buy anything.

This comes down to whether a "B"/"C" piece from a bigger name is better than an "A" piece from a lesser known/less appreciated artist. Personally, regardless of the particular price point, I'd say always go with the piece you like the most. If you know you absolutely want something from a particular artist and you can only afford one thing due to the price point, I'd say save and stretch for the single best example you can get. I will mention that the occasional bouts of buyer's remorse I've had were things that I picked up due to feeling the need to buy something/anything when I lost out on a piece I was chasing at auction, or when I bought something simply thinking it would be a placeholder until a better example came along. Inevitably, the "something better" popped up much sooner than I would have expected, and the money spent on the consolation prize would've been put to better use if held on to for something I really wanted (mediocre pieces are generally much easier to buy than to sell). As others have said, a few so-so $250 purchases quickly add up to a $1,000 purchase, a few misspent $1,000 purchases add up to a $5,000 purchase, etc.

Gorgeous examples! I was unfortunately a little late to get any of the best of them (with best being defined as Axa topless, lol), but interestingly enough after "settling" for what I could still get, I appreciated how he was one of those guys who could draw anything - dinosaurs, monsters, giant insects, cars, beautiful landscapes, etc. I'm still hoping to eventually get my hands on a 3-4 strip sequence of the best ones to frame up. Whenever I'm showing off art to female guests, I'm always slightly surprised how much of a hit Axa is with them.

I searched for a thread and didn't see one. Since he was a European artist, and one who was primarily involved with strip art, I don't think the news of this spread as widely as it might have otherwise, but I just learned this morning that Enrique Romero passed away on February 15. He was best known for his work on the British strips Modesty Blaise and Axa). For a few years I had been trying to get my hands on some nicer examples of the Axa strip and after hitting a lot of dead ends, ended up reaching out to him directly by email. There was a language barrier, since we were limited to my high school level of Spanish and the fact that he never picked up much English even after working with British publishers, but he enjoyed knowing that there were still fans who appreciated his work and was very cordial and generous with his time. Although the best stuff had been long gone, I was fortunate to be able to be able to buy a handful of strips from him. He had a knack for drawing a wide range of subjects, which the fantasy-based series Axa showed off better than Modesty Blaise, since it gave him to opportunity to draw a wider range of settings and obviously sci-fi and fantasy creatures. Another talented artist has sadly passed.

That's gorgeous (or at least as gorgeous as could ever apply to Cthulhu) and the eyes are absolutely brilliant. Great piece of art.

I will say that Heritage's system of allowing you to opt in to texts to notify you when an auction is about to start, and even better, when a lot is coming up, has really spoiled me and is something I wish some of the other guys would emulate.

Having gone low on an early item in auction, only to wish I'd chased it a little harder when I got blown out on a later piece that I was more interested in, my first choice would still be for Heritage to just send me a list of everything that will be coming to auction in advance and then let me tell them the proper order in which to list items, but since that's never happening, I will admit that one advantage of this format is allowing you to chase both something you're really interested in and something that works as a consolation prize at the same time. Having said that, the format seems like a headache if you're seriously bidding on lots of items, and I see no valid reason to have the requirement that you must place a bid prior to the extended bidding session in order to be a bidder once extended bidding begins.

Obviously he's best known for the action roles, but the man had comedy chops as well. I loved his cameo appearances as himself on Arrested Development:

I find that interesting, insomuch as part of the charm of OA can be seeing that sort of evidence of the creative process.

For those who collect slabbed/graded sketch covers, how does the rating factor in with the value? That's the part that's always a little confusing to me about the whole thing. Would a slabbed sketch cover collector turn up their nose at a 9.2 with a great piece of art in favor of a 9.8 that's in better condition, but not as good art?

"Hi, Mrs. Delekkerste, I'm very, very sorry about the untimely passing of your husband.... Anyway, he had mentioned to me once that there's a spreadsheet somewhere there on his laptop that shows what all that silly art stuff is worth. I know it's hard time for you, and I want to make things easier, so..." Reminds me of something I once heard from another hobby. I'm paraphrasing slightly, but the guy was saying that his second biggest fear was his wife finding out what he'd actually spent on everything. His biggest fear was her getting ticked off at him one day and selling it all for what he'd told her he'd spent on it

I know Bill's primary goal was obviously driving attendance, and I'm sure he's getting plenty of footage for future recap videos, but it would be great to see the auction live-streamed. I'm not even saying that bidding online would need to be part of it, it would just be fun to see everything that was up for grabs and watch the action.

As someone who took a while to warm up to the idea of slabbed comics, and still doesn't get sketch covers, the idea/appeal of graded/slabbed sketch covers is really lost on me.

Does anyone have experience with any package forwarders in Europe that they could recommend? There's a piece on Catawiki that I am interested in bidding on but the seller does not ship to the U.S. I've randomly found a few places online that will receive it at their address, then ship it out, but am wondering if someone here has some actual experience using one.

Between Dave being on the west coast and a night owl, I didn't get to watch the live stream, but I really enjoyed the replay of the show. It's interesting how regardless of what end of the hobby you're in at, the emotions are the same. And I don't know much at all about prop collecting, but I ended up checking out "The Stuff Dreams are Made of" after the December edition of Felix's podcast with Dave where they discuss the big wins that resulted in him selling off these pieces. It's a very fun listen. I especially enjoyed the episode with Rob Liefeld where they talk both comic art and props.

I definitely think that if anything in the collection entered that sort of life-changing territory, I'd happily cash out. For better or worse, that not a problem I expect to ever deal with. My tastes are fairly niche. I think this aligns fairly well with my gut-feeling on everything. Frankly, if I were to sell something just for the sake of selling it, the funds would likely just end up sitting in cash (which as you say, would have been an even dumber "investment" in 2019-2023, and definitely would bring less enjoyment). In the past I've comfortably lost money when selling. I've never taken a 50% haircut that I can recall, but there's definitely stuff that I've sold at a loss, but that was usually a matter of selling something from the bottom of the collection to buy something that I really wanted and trying to do it the responsible way. Part of the inspiration for the topic was a conversation I had with a friend after finishing up the spreadsheet. He'd asked what I'd been doing all day Sunday and after I explained the project, he asked how much I'd spent on everything when it was all totaled up and immediately responded "sell that $#iT" But he admittedly has no appreciation of the finer things in life!

A year-end to-do list resolution for me was finally tallying up my history of art purchases all on a single spreadsheet with the dates purchased and prices paid for everything in my collection. I'm a comfortably middle-class guy who has been buying on and off for more than a decade and have always treated comic/illustration art as a hobby, taking a "buy what you love" approach to things, and generally only make purchases that I would still be okay with even if they were to lose half their value. But after seeing everything all collated together, it stuck me that just looking at my buy-in price on things and comparing it to other assets, it all really adds up. Just looking at the money spent, it's somewhere in the 5-6% range of my total net worth. And if everything is marked to market, it's definitely higher. All of which has me thinking... I'm not someone with a leaking roof, or have kids who are going hungry, or anything like that, and there are plenty of other hobbies where the money is completely gone once spent, but at the same time I do wonder if it's a good idea to have quite so much tied up in collectibles, even if the 401k is being funded and the mortgage is getting paid. I've been trying to transition to playing with the house's money and selling things to fund new purchases, but most years still see more money going into this hobby than coming out of it. I'm sure others have dealt with similar issues, and am curious how they've handled it. Have you ever sold OA simply because it was too valuable compared to other assets you owned and it seemed like the prudent thing to do? If so, were you happy with the decision or was it something you came to regret? Is there a percentage of your total net worth that you'd be uncomfortable with OA being?

II don't have any other solutions/ideas, but for what it's worth, I've successfully used the iron method before on a gouache illustration that was on a very wavy piece of heavy watercolor paper. Basically I lightly misted the back/verso so that it was just barely damp, laid a layer of paper towels over it, ironed it flat on a low heat setting, then sandwiched it between some heavy books (changing the paper towels out every few hours). The process worked great and completely flattened the piece. I'll admit though that this was a fairly low value piece of art and even then the pucker factor was really high. I don't know if I would have the courage to try it on something of higher value.

Ha! You can be proud to know it's one of the top results for an image search on "the doctor is in". Great piece, by the way.

Discipline in action! Congrats. Was a card art piece or Star Wars painting that you had on your radar, or something that just popped up and caught your eye unexpected?

But with your life now being complete, where do you go from here???

2020 was a lousy year for all kinds of reasons, but somehow I missed the news of Mort Drucker's death and was unaware of it until seeing your post. I'm guessing I missed it due to all the pandemic craziness going down at the time. He was one of my childhood heroes and I can remember spending hours trying to recreate some of his illustrations from MAD. He'll definitely be missed.

In line with my budget, I have fairly modest goals for 2021. I've been recently venturing down the rabbit hole of strip art and would like to make a few key pick-ups there. Specific targets include: - Enrique Romero's AXA: I'm hoping to pick up a handful of really nice examples, where Axa is fighting monsters/creatures, or is topless (or better yet, both!). There were some fairly good ones which popped up on Heritage in 2020, but I kept holding out for even better ones and ended up reining in my bids and coming in second highest on the ones I liked. Hopefully I don't come to regret that. - Carol Day strips from David Wright: This is one goal I'll definitely be making some progress on, as I struck a deal for a couple of great examples with another collector during the recent Comic Art Live sale (I owe him the remainder of the payment post-holidays in the new year). - Walt Kelly's Pogo: dailies are plentiful, but I'm hoping to find a Sunday that ticks off all the right boxes for me. This is one of those "I'll know it when I see it" type things. - Krazy Kat daily: another where I'm waiting for the right one to come along. - Sydney Jordan's Jeff Hawke: This is a lower priority than the ones above, but I'm keeping my eyes open for a couple or three examples that really catch the sci-fi spirit of the strip (with alien creatures, spaceships, etc.). I am also hoping I can manage to bring a specific commission project to life in 2021. It's an idea I've been kicking around for a while and is completely self-indulgent (even by commission standards). I'm fairly optimistic about this one, as I reached out to the artist recently to pitch the idea and he definitely seems enthusiastic about it; the only question is if/when he'll be able to fit it in his schedule. As far as comic book art goes, I want to do some digging around for info on a couple of specific pieces I'd like to at least confirm the existence of. They are things that wouldn't really have too broad of an appeal, but hit some specific nostalgia points that are unique to me. Finally (just to get it down in writing), I'm hoping to be more disciplined in 2021. Basically, avoid bidding on consolation prizes just because I missed the piece I really wanted; no late night eBay impulse buys; thin out the bottom 20% of the collection to offset some new buys; that sort of thing.