Dick O. Posted December 12, 2017 Author Share Posted December 12, 2017 WTTB @LB JEFFERIES1! With the sheer amount of material jostling for coverage in my articles, there's just no room for auction previews. Practice makes perfect @PhilipB2k17 Will run your Baker piece whenever it's ready @kat123 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ironmandrd Posted December 12, 2017 Share Posted December 12, 2017 17 hours ago, LB JEFFERIES1 said: What I'd wish you'd do is pinpoint some key pieces prior to the auction commencing and post your thoughts prior, and then see how close your estimates are afterwards. I'm sure your blog is not influential enough to move the needle in any great way and it would be an education for newer collectors to actually see how difficult it is to nail down hammer prices. I'm afraid I'm slightly skeptical of all your pre-auction estimates. +1 16 hours ago, delekkerste said: Agreed - I think the estimates need to be posted before the auction even starts, otherwise it's too easy to dismiss it as an exercise in curve (data) fitting after the fact, whether or not that's actually the case. It also helps mitigate selection bias; even if the estimates being posted are true, pre-auction estimates, it's very easy to just spotlight the results that give the best spin. Any potential bias can be mitigated, though, by posting pre-auction estimates in advance and opening them up to public scrutiny. +1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ironmandrd Posted December 12, 2017 Share Posted December 12, 2017 1 hour ago, O. said: WIth the sheer amount of material jostling for coverage in my articles, there's just no room for auction previews -1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ESeffinga Posted December 12, 2017 Share Posted December 12, 2017 (edited) 54 minutes ago, Ironmandrd said: -1 -2 Edited December 12, 2017 by ESeffinga Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vodou Posted December 12, 2017 Share Posted December 12, 2017 7 hours ago, O. said: WTTB @LB JEFFERIES1! With the sheer amount of material jostling for coverage in my articles, there's just no room for auction previews. 5 hours ago, Ironmandrd said: -1 4 hours ago, ESeffinga said: -2 Sorry to bandwagon but yeah massive -3. I kept mum on this aspect of your articles all this time, didn't want to go negative and discourage your building up a brand and awareness of our hobby "out there" but...it's total bs to only post your predictions after the final result is in. Again, I think general hobby kindness across the board let you get away with it for a year (or however long you've been post-predicting, if not right from the start), but if this was a day-trading board, an ipo board, that kind of (cutthroat) thing...you'd be insta-dismissed as shill and run out of town. We all know you are not...but you may want to reconsider you're no room positioning and just pick three (or whatever) from each auction, post them here (CGC board) first, item and price prediction, and then follow-up there (your article) and point back to here when you lay out your case for spot on, high or low. That's the intellectually honest approach. And now that I've reminded everybody what a supreme jerk I can be (above, in case anybody missed it), I'll just go with the flow and also point out that you seem to put in comments along the lines of "I'd have been harder" or "wish I'd bid harder", "this went much lower than I expected" etc and yet you never tell us what you have won. Do you ever win anything? If something goes a lot lower than you think it should or is a great investment "today"...are you "investing" today, did you win it and hope to double or whatever next year? (Nothing wrong with that but the reader -at a minimum- is left wondering.) I think if you cover something, specific, a specific piece of art, you should tell us if you have a vested interest in it also...as a consignor, winner or even top underbidder, sort of a potential conflict of interest statement. That may ease some minds, especially skeptical/paranoid newbies, and give a little more meat to your observations too. Hope you take all this as constructive criticism. The Voord and Twanj 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SquareChaos Posted December 12, 2017 Share Posted December 12, 2017 I'd personally be fine if the articles were just about what sold, for how much, and every now and then a spotlight piece on a particular artist, genre, collector, etc. I don't really care too much about the predictions before hand - I'm impressed by the knowledge of some on these boards, it is a neat trick when one of you come to a conclusion that is close to where the gavel falls, but it isn't necessary for me in an article attempting to keep people up to date on the happenings in the hobby. I understand it may be more necessary for others. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sooners151 Posted December 12, 2017 Share Posted December 12, 2017 (edited) I just saw the pre-auction estimates as his way to try something new and see what people think, not a manipulation angle. Maybe that's my naivete. There have been only three articles posted so far with estimates, the earliest one on Nov 24th. I understand constructive criticism, but man....tough crowd. Edited December 12, 2017 by Sooners151 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
malvin Posted December 12, 2017 Share Posted December 12, 2017 The easy answer is maybe to just drop the pre-auction estimates... Malvin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bronty Posted December 12, 2017 Share Posted December 12, 2017 Yeah, tough crowd. Look, the single most important part of any magazine, blog, periodical, comic book... whatever... is to be on time, every time. And Spoon has kept up his end of that admirably. Hekla 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ironmandrd Posted December 12, 2017 Share Posted December 12, 2017 No one is (or seems to be) knocking the effort of doing this for each auction. Kudos for doing that. While not always agreeing with the commentary, I have read every article over the past year. The issue de jour is using and reporting private pre-auction estimates in a public post auction manner. It just raises too many questions and issues. I also don't think anyone is saying that every single piece has to have a pre-auction estimate. But I don't see why there couldn't be a short preview article with whatever number of pieces he wants to do an estimate for. The post auction article can then cover those and then just like the articles prior to adding estimates, the article can cover any other selected pieces as well. And this is not picking on the author. It would the case with any collector who publicly compared auction results to their own private estimates. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eewwnuk Posted December 12, 2017 Share Posted December 12, 2017 I don't really see the benefit to the auction estimates. I'd rather see the history on comps or previous sales. Twanj, Hekla and Mr. Machismo 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bird Posted December 12, 2017 Share Posted December 12, 2017 1 minute ago, eewwnuk said: I don't really see the benefit to the auction estimates. I'd rather see the history on comps or previous sales. I agree. This fits in with my desire to see more depth and less breadth in these reports. I would take objective reporting about prior sales/comps over conjecture about realized prices all day long. I have not been fond of the meta-commentary about prices e.g. "more/less than expected" as they seem to come out of thin air and are generally presented without backing data/evidence. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nexus Posted December 12, 2017 Share Posted December 12, 2017 21 minutes ago, Ironmandrd said: The issue de jour is using and reporting private pre-auction estimates in a public post auction manner. Yes, that's right. It'd be like if I predicted the winner of the Super Bowl, down to the final score, who won the coin toss, how many touchdowns were scored, et al...but didn't tell anyone until AFTER the game had been played. Maybe I AM that good of an oddsmaker...but there are going to be skeptics. Especially if I do this season after season. Many of us have been playing this estimate game for years, privately and publicly. Watch enough auctions, and anyone can do it. Most results are fairly easy to predict (within a range). So if I know someone has been carefully observing the market for a while, and they tell me after the fact that they guessed most correctly beforehand (within a range), I'd tend to believe them. But nail ALL of them, including the outlier events that can't be predicted? Then I'd be less inclined to give the benefit of the doubt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JadeGiant Posted December 12, 2017 Share Posted December 12, 2017 Tough crown indeed. The articles are of quality and very regular in release – I wouldn’t want to add more frequency onto a current weekly schedule myself. As for the predictions, I really don’t pay much attention to them aside from a fleeting curiosity of how they were derived, etc. Mr. Machismo and Sooners151 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lee B. Posted December 12, 2017 Share Posted December 12, 2017 1 hour ago, eewwnuk said: I don't really see the benefit to the auction estimates. I'd rather see the history on comps or previous sales. After reading the discussion in this thread today, I decided to try writing a comic art auction column. My goal is to try to publish a preview of Heritage's weekly auctions, on a weekly basis. I am focusing on comps and previous sales, as well as old ads, but I couldn't resist tossing out some barely educated guesses at auction estimates. You can read my first column here: http://www.comicartads.com/content/heritage-weekly-auction-ending-121717# Enjoy! Best, Lee delekkerste 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
delekkerste Posted December 12, 2017 Share Posted December 12, 2017 (edited) 2 hours ago, Nexus said: Yes, that's right. It'd be like if I predicted the winner of the Super Bowl, down to the final score, who won the coin toss, how many touchdowns were scored, et al...but didn't tell anyone until AFTER the game had been played. Maybe I AM that good of an oddsmaker...but there are going to be skeptics. Especially if I do this season after season. Many of us have been playing this estimate game for years, privately and publicly. Watch enough auctions, and anyone can do it. Most results are fairly easy to predict (within a range). So if I know someone has been carefully observing the market for a while, and they tell me after the fact that they guessed most correctly beforehand (within a range), I'd tend to believe them. But nail ALL of them, including the outlier events that can't be predicted? Then I'd be less inclined to give the benefit of the doubt. For me, the issue was not so much this latest CLink review whereby most of the results fell within the claimed "pre-auction estimate" ranges. For veteran hobby participants/observers, it's perfectly reasonable that a majority of auction results will fall within their educated pre-auction estimate range guesses. But, go back to the recent Heritage auction review and, after the initial "disappointing" Ditko ST page result, literally every other example cited beat Richard's pre-auction estimate range, in some cases by eye-popping margins, thus giving the appearance that this is an OA market where prices are galloping out of control. Whereas, I think the consensus feeling now is that the overall market has been more stable-to-slightly up over the past year, but, with more dispersion than usual. When all but one of the estimates listed was beaten (many by wide margins), it naturally raises some possible questions/issues: Is the author just out of touch with the market or too conservative with his estimates? Is the author cherry-picking results to highlight? Is the author back-fitting estimates to cast the highlighted results in a better light? I'm not saying that any of the above is true, just that the optics don't look good. If Richard doesn't have the time/bandwidth to post estimates ahead of time and subject them to public scrutiny and comment, I agree with Malvin - better to just eliminate them completely from the auction reviews. Anyway, I've been a fan of the blog from the beginning and appreciate Richard's enthusiasm and efforts - none of this is meant to be anything other than constructive advice on improving an already very entertaining and informative product. Edited December 12, 2017 by delekkerste Twanj 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dick O. Posted December 13, 2017 Author Share Posted December 13, 2017 Thanks for the productive feedback everyone! Good to know folks are actually reading these I was able to structure articles around pre-auction estimates for the latest HA and CLink auctions because they contained large enough selections of artwork from artists/titles I actively track. Still got caught out a few times though Will try to provide advance estimates for any future such articles! delekkerste 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Panelfan1 Posted December 13, 2017 Share Posted December 13, 2017 4 hours ago, O. said: Thanks for the productive feedback everyone! Good to know folks are actually reading these I was able to structure articles around pre-auction estimates for the latest HA and CLink auctions because they contained large enough selections of artwork from artists/titles I actively track. Still got caught out a few times though Will try to provide advance estimates for any future such articles! having the estimates posted in advance will help for comparison sake -but at the same time - as with the comic art ads heritage weekly estimates - the only problem I see is that posting pre-estimates creates a subjective anchor. Whenever heritage for example has auction estimates, or anyone has any kind of estimate -that number will influence the final outcome. this is a proven (by experiment) phenomenon. check out the short link below, and if you find it interesting -check out Dan Ariely's new book Dollars and Sense which goes over this stuff in a much deeper way. The anchoring effect is especially likely for items whose price is more subjective. anchoring effect video money sense book talk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lee B. Posted December 13, 2017 Share Posted December 13, 2017 59 minutes ago, Panelfan1 said: having the estimates posted in advance will help for comparison sake -but at the same time - as with the comic art ads heritage weekly estimates - the only problem I see is that posting pre-estimates creates a subjective anchor. Whenever heritage for example has auction estimates, or anyone has any kind of estimate -that number will influence the final outcome. this is a proven (by experiment) phenomenon. check out the short link below, and if you find it interesting -check out Dan Ariely's new book Dollars and Sense which goes over this stuff in a much deeper way. The anchoring effect is especially likely for items whose price is more subjective. anchoring effect video money sense book talk Interesting Panelfan1! I wasn't aware of that research. If folks end up being concerned about any influence I may have on, for example, the final outcome of an auction for John Calnan Superboy art, please let me know. I plan to focus on pieces that typically are not widely debated on these boards. Cheers, Lee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Marino Posted December 13, 2017 Share Posted December 13, 2017 Personally, I think just emailing a small group of trusted 3rd parties before the auction should be enough. Then after the auction, post the same list publicly and discuss the interesting results. Or we just start posting all the estimates and we start betting on the over/ under. Comic Art Betting, the future is now! (Always bet high) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
