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sfilosa

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Everything posted by sfilosa

  1. Just keep doing what you are doing. Apparently some people are very sensitive about someone offering to buying a piece of art and others (like myself) are not. I have bought a number of NFS pieces off of CAF and sold several NFS pieces. Yeah, I don't like when people make an offer for about what I bought it for (and they know that or should know that), but I just tell them "it wouldn't make sense for me to sell it for that price". I would say the only way I would get "offended" (and life is too short to get offended unless you are insulting my wife ) is if I said something like "Permanent Collection". Clearly that means, not going to sell. All that said, if it is a NFS piece, someone makes an offer and I say, "I wouldn't sell for less than $10k", either offer the $10k or not, but don't try to negotiate more. Remember, the piece was NFS and if someone is nice enough to give you a price, take it or leave it. I will say the one other thing is if you are going to make an offer on a NFS, make sure the offer is significantly above what the piece would sell for in an auction. If they first wanted to sell at FMV, they would have already done that.
  2. Not sure that is true. When everything’s going up, regardless of the quality, that’s usually the time to sell. But not necessarily a time to sell, quality pieces. More than likely they will go down less than non-quality material, and they will absolutely rebound much quicker. Works that way with everything, not just art. Not trying to say prices are going to go down but there sure seems to be a lot of supply out there nowadays, and ultimately supply and demand is still the most tried and true concept.
  3. Yeah, I got that one wrong. Shocking price. We are not talking house money.... but a pretty nice house money. Honestly, seems like a good to time to sell some pieces.
  4. Anything with "limited supply" is not necessarily affected by people spending their dollars somewhere else. Only takes a few people to drive up these prices, as would be the case with Original Art. Now that said, while OA is one of kind, 100s to 1,000s of page by the same artist (say Kirby) that mostly look the same, really has a lot of "supply". Therefore, one could see that if money is being spent on other items, certain OA with a lot of supply could come down in price.
  5. I couldn’t in good conscious spend 20 K on a piece of art, which I’ve done, if I didn’t think there was a chance it would go up in value. I understand it can go down in value also. I get more enjoyment out of the 20 K piece of art than I do seeing another 20 K in my stock portfolio. But having a family, I could never justify spending 20 K if I thought for a fact it was going to be significantly less in the future. Doesn’t mean I’m buying it for totally investment purposes, But I don’t look at it as I am spending money. When I buy a stock, sell a stock and buy another one there’s no spending involved. The day, original comic art constantly goes down in value for 10 years, that will be the day it feels like spending. That hasn’t happen yet.
  6. My thought is you should sell some of yours (including the one you got from me last year). Definitely seems like a very high price for something with no action.
  7. But for how long? No nostalgia to those covers. My prediction is that three to five years from now, some of those would sell for significantly less than today. But I could be wrong.
  8. To me, those are the most overrated art in the auction. They are almost all the same year or two which makes me think either J. Scott Campbell is selling them, or he sold a bunch to one buyer at the time. And they are variant covers. Nice, but overvalued.
  9. Wanted the Larsen Amazing Spider-Man splash. Missed as I was the underbidder. While ending price was high, way better page then the one that sold on Heritage a week ago (in my opinion).
  10. Not the actual definition of a collectible. It has to have value to a collector and something they want to collect. Nothing about holding it's value or appreciating in price. Many "collectibles" have depreciated in price. I would agree that the people who collected those items were probably not buying them with the intention they would go down in price, it just happened as demand changed.
  11. ???? That's the goal of investing..... not collecting. Of course we would all like to buy our collectibles at a 30% discount, but if you can do that a lot, maybe what you already own is worth 30% less than what you think.
  12. Nah. Respectfully, I disagree with this statement. Fair enough. In some cases, you could make the argument that someone would pay more, but wasn't able to. But I also said "major auction house". That was very specific as in most collectors have had a month or longer to see that a piece is available. If they really wanted a piece, even if they couldn't bid live, they could place their top bid. Yes, if you wanted to buy 10 pieces at $10k a piece, and only had $50k, were not available to bid during live bidding, you would only place $10k bids on five pieces. So in theory, if you lost all those five pieces (i.e. they all sold for $11k each) and the other five ended up selling for $9k each, the winners of those five pieces in theory paid less than what you would have purchased them for. I get that, but as a "winner" of a piece, that's not something you are really going to know at the time. . But I do get your point.
  13. This was the phrase that in my mind makes no sense assuming you are a "collector", not someone trying to flip material, which you clearly stated you aren't. * You are implying that if you ever bought anything at an auction or even from a dealer that had been on their site for more than a few hours: 1) You have such great contacts that you could turn around, sell the piece for exactly what you paid immediately, without using a 3rd party (e.g. auction site, dealer, etc.) so there would be no cost of selling. 2) Now if you would need to resell through an auction house (which really couldn't be immediate) or dealer, you would in theory need to buy every piece of art at least 10% less than what you thought someone else really wanted to buy it for (to make up for the cost of selling). 3) So in my mind, the only way you could build a collection of material that you wanted, you would need to buy from other collectors (negotiate a price) or items that were listed on CAF, FB, CGC, etc. and you purchased them in a few hours as they were really good deals. That is possible, but probably goes back to having a small collection and most likely not a lot of very high demand items. Most collectors not using an auction site would probably price "highly desirable/in demand art" very high just to see if someone bites, not at a discount. None of this has anything to do with people with tens of millions of dollars just purchasing a lot of art and wowing the collecting community with how many highly desirable pieces they have. I don't spend any time trying to figure out how someone amassed their collection. I look at their art and either like the piece(s) or not. How anyone else wants to collector is fine with me.
  14. Exactly. As a collector, it was clearly a piece you really wanted. It also turned out to be a great investment.
  15. Two quick points, 1) In theory, if you purchase from a major auction house you’ve paid over market. At that moment in time, nobody else in the world wanted to pay more than you. 2) Many successful financial transactions are based on paying over market, at the time. Developers who win bidding for land, are banking on future increases that are not guaranteed. That could be the same for collectibles, you either believe there will be increased demand for the item or a way to maximize its value (resubmit for a CGC book for a higher grade).
  16. A collector of original art should be prepared to pay over market for items that they really want. On a one of a kind item, what really is market? Example, I see a piece someone has in their CAF gallery that I really want. This person does not want to sell the piece. That said, I make an offer higher than what that person believes it would sell for in an auction, and decides to sell to me. Did I pay over market? Unless that person sells the piece, there was no true market value. Original art is nothing like other collectibles because they are one of a kind. It’s very easy to see if you paid more for a CGC 9.4 book then what it sold for yesterday and what it sold for tomorrow. Then you can say you overpaid. Not with OA.
  17. Much longer topic to discuss but: Quality in Original Comic Art can be many things. If you are only judging quality on "artistic craftmanship" well, not sure even 5% would qualify. But when I think of "quality", it's the totality of what that page/picture represents. I would agree that many Silver-Age Marvel pages are not always the best representation of craftmanship, but many pages represent "quality" in terms of what they "mean/create feeling of nostalgia" to collectors. Said even more simplistically, the first appearance of a character does not mean it is the best "artistic page" but it will almost always be worth more than another page that has more artistic quality.
  18. Have to disagree. Never happens that way. Quality (e.g. in this case the X-Men) wins out. There is plenty of Byrne art that isn't that expensive. And been that way for years, and will most likely stay that way. Not to say that some of his lesser art can't increase or become more in demand, just don't think it will have any effect on his "best" art. Once again, just doesn't work that way.
  19. Jim Steranko comic art (not a commission or sketch) is extremely hard to find. Also, I will also say that the quality of most pages are not "A or A+". While Steve Ditko pages come along every few months, how many have Spider-Man actually fighting a real villain. Very few (maybe one or two a year). I will agree that more "modern artist" (say last 40 years) art is pretty plentiful, especially as prices have risen (Byrne or Jim Lee X-Men, McFarlane Spider-Man, etc.)
  20. That we agree on. Prices don't necessarily have to go higher overall as supply is increasing everyday (new art produced). Of course, highly sought after artist, characters, story lines, etc. will likely increase and exponentially compared to lesser art. Quick comic examples. Picked two issues that aren't keys (but very early in the title), high-grade copies, but nothing to make someone who isn't putting together a run to jump out and buy. Avengers #2 in CGC 9.0 Heritage Auction - May 2008 $1,553 March 2020 $1,980 X-Men #3 in CGC 9.2 Heritage Auction - September 2009 $2,270 May 2020 $2,640 These are really minimal increases for books that from a rarity standpoint are just as rare as the key issues right around the same time frame. The highly sought out key issues have skyrocketed, but probably 95% of all books have had minimal increases. I think art is somewhat the same thing (but that is not the sales we talk about).
  21. Not sure. People who are speculating in comic books, will speculating in something else, but more likely something they feel they can gauge value more than OA. Collecting OA is not a commodity. There are great artist, who have great art, that just isn't available that often (at least in the open market). Comic books, cards, coins, etc. are increasingly available. And that's what is attractive to speculators.
  22. Send them to ComicLink and let them to the work. They don't charge for that and will get you a slabbing discount. Also, tell them to review for pressing as that is the game (finding slabbed books that weren't pressed).
  23. Have you searched Heritage Auction archives? There are lots of his pieces that have been sold in the past few years to give you a gauge. Nothing exactly like these but should give you a start.