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Original Art Aficionado [New Article - 1/12/17]
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491 posts in this topic

32 minutes ago, O. said:

New Article - 18/5/18

Report on last week's Heritage Signature Auction is up!

https://comicbookinvest.com/2018/05/18/original-art-aficionado-2/

 

It was good to see the juxtaposition of the two Jim Lee covers, X-men 248 and FF #4.

Given how the Lee market and his career have progressed over the decades I don't think the perceived slightness of the gap in the final prices has less to do with "Black Panther" and a lot to do with the relative merits of the two covers. 

FF #4, full team, classic posing, Lee at a real sweet spot in terms of his skills and inked by the incredibly talented Scott Williams. Lee/Williams will go down as one of the greatest pencil/ink teams in comic history and for very solid reasons. It may have over performed at auction, but that's because it's a piece without a weakness and a gorgeous Lee/Williams perfect example like this is going to be fought over.

The X-men #248 is memorable, for sure, but it's early for Lee...his earliest on X-men, and it's basically two team members (no Wolverine to apply a "wolverine tax" to either), and it's inked by the talented Dan Green. I love Dan Green. I dig his inks on X-men especially, but he's not the inker most recognized as being part of the dream team with Lee like Williams is. Given how early this cover is for Lee, the content of the cover, and the lack of Williams inks it's pretty clear to me that this auction result was a sizable over performance. 

Inking credits always matter but sometimes they are MASSIVELY important to how a piece of art or a run of books is received, remembered, and sought after later. When you have a Hall of Fame-level team like Lee/Williams it will always be something that commands a premium and justifiably so. I know that collectors at this price/value level take inkers into account as much as they do pencillers. It's the kind of nuance and complete discussion of a piece of art that cannot be escaped especially at these price levels. 

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Well, is that a bit of Monday morning quarterbacking ?    We can always come up with justifications after the fact but before auctions end I think most observers would have expected 248 to do much better than the FF

Edited by Bronty
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11 minutes ago, Bronty said:

Well, is that a bit of Monday morning quarterbacking ?    We can always come up with justifications after the fact but before auctions end I think most observers would have expected 248 to do much better than the FF

And it did do better. The 248 wasn't really a better cover, and it didn't have a better art team, so it was missing the things that make people really go hard after a Lee X-men pieces (without even getting into the lack of characters present). 

Both pieces over-performed from my pre-auction quarterbacking. The only knock on the FF was that it was from a title that had the least connection to Lee (as opposed to X-men or Batman, for example) but it had everything else going for it. The not-so-great elements of the 248 were far more tangible and easy to tick off in rapid succession. Still, it went almost 20% above where I thought it would go, given lesser competition from the guys who really wanted a great Lee/Williams X-men piece that included more than a couple of the regulars from the run on it. It was missing the factors that lend itself to garnering a super-premium. That was clear since it appeared in the catalog, not after the hammer fell. 

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1 hour ago, comix4fun said:

And it did do better. The 248 wasn't really a better cover, and it didn't have a better art team, so it was missing the things that make people really go hard after a Lee X-men pieces (without even getting into the lack of characters present). 

Both pieces over-performed from my pre-auction quarterbacking. The only knock on the FF was that it was from a title that had the least connection to Lee (as opposed to X-men or Batman, for example) but it had everything else going for it. The not-so-great elements of the 248 were far more tangible and easy to tick off in rapid succession. Still, it went almost 20% above where I thought it would go, given lesser competition from the guys who really wanted a great Lee/Williams X-men piece that included more than a couple of the regulars from the run on it. It was missing the factors that lend itself to garnering a super-premium. That was clear since it appeared in the catalog, not after the hammer fell. 

I think it would have been interesting to explore the larger stack of Lee art from that auction beyond just the two covers. There were 10 Jim Lee pieces in that auction and almost none of them fell how I expected them to.

The 2 Williams inked Uncanny X-Men pages I felt were far better examples than the Thibert inked X-Men page, yet the Thibert more than doubled the Gambit page and was 50% more than the Colossus. I assume it was the Wolverine factor more than anything, but it was still surprising. By the same token, the Batman 615 DPS of batmobiles topped all the X-art, while the Hush wash piece(without Batman) also hammered for more than the Gambit.

Combined with the Superman cover selling for $20k less than the FF, I found most of the Lee results to be a surprise.

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Great to hear your comments and analyses folks!

 

On ‎5‎/‎20‎/‎2018 at 1:44 AM, comix4fun said:

It was good to see the juxtaposition of the two Jim Lee covers, X-men 248 and FF #4.

Given how the Lee market and his career have progressed over the decades I don't think the perceived slightness of the gap in the final prices has less to do with "Black Panther" and a lot to do with the relative merits of the two covers. 

FF #4, full team, classic posing, Lee at a real sweet spot in terms of his skills and inked by the incredibly talented Scott Williams. Lee/Williams will go down as one of the greatest pencil/ink teams in comic history and for very solid reasons. It may have over performed at auction, but that's because it's a piece without a weakness and a gorgeous Lee/Williams perfect example like this is going to be fought over.

The X-men #248 is memorable, for sure, but it's early for Lee...his earliest on X-men, and it's basically two team members (no Wolverine to apply a "wolverine tax" to either), and it's inked by the talented Dan Green. I love Dan Green. I dig his inks on X-men especially, but he's not the inker most recognized as being part of the dream team with Lee like Williams is. Given how early this cover is for Lee, the content of the cover, and the lack of Williams inks it's pretty clear to me that this auction result was a sizable over performance. 

Inking credits always matter but sometimes they are MASSIVELY important to how a piece of art or a run of books is received, remembered, and sought after later. When you have a Hall of Fame-level team like Lee/Williams it will always be something that commands a premium and justifiably so. I know that collectors at this price/value level take inkers into account as much as they do pencillers. It's the kind of nuance and complete discussion of a piece of art that cannot be escaped especially at these price levels. 

Yeah the Black Panther question was a spot of facetiousness on my part:nyah: The triumph of artistic considerations over historic/nostalgic significance in determining these two covers' prices is what surprises me.

 

22 hours ago, RabidFerret said:

I think it would have been interesting to explore the larger stack of Lee art from that auction beyond just the two covers. There were 10 Jim Lee pieces in that auction and almost none of them fell how I expected them to.

The 2 Williams inked Uncanny X-Men pages I felt were far better examples than the Thibert inked X-Men page, yet the Thibert more than doubled the Gambit page and was 50% more than the Colossus. I assume it was the Wolverine factor more than anything, but it was still surprising. By the same token, the Batman 615 DPS of batmobiles topped all the X-art, while the Hush wash piece(without Batman) also hammered for more than the Gambit.

Combined with the Superman cover selling for $20k less than the FF, I found most of the Lee results to be a surprise.

Thibert over Williams?! Now I'm all confused??? 

Heh actually the X-Men #6 page kind of makes sense, as the Wolvie/'Tooth/Psylocke factor overpowers the characters in those UXM pages (plus bigger images). It's the $15.5k price quantum that's really shocking!

I agree about the generally topsy-turvy Lee prices; Ron Lim IG results were similarly confounding. Man, OA valuation is tough:p

 

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9 hours ago, O. said:

Yeah the Black Panther question was a spot of facetiousness on my part:nyah: The triumph of artistic considerations over historic/nostalgic significance in determining these two covers' prices is what surprises me.

I think it's possible to argue it both ways - one can say that the FF #4 cover over-performed on the strength of its artistic merits (i.e., despite not being an instantly recognizable cover like the UXM #248).  Or, you can argue that the UXM #248 cover (vastly inferior artistically, though, vastly more recognizable) fetching a higher price in spite of its artistic flaws proves yet again that nostalgia triumphs over aesthetics, even if some younger collectors (for whom comics history started with Lee and McFarlane in the late '80s) thought it would/should do even better than it did, price-wise. 2c 

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On 5/19/2018 at 11:38 PM, RabidFerret said:

 

The 2 Williams inked Uncanny X-Men pages I felt were far better examples than the Thibert inked X-Men page, yet the Thibert more than doubled the Gambit page and was 50% more than the Colossus. I assume it was the Wolverine factor more than anything, but it was still surprising.

 

17 hours ago, O. said:

 

Thibert over Williams?! Now I'm all confused??? 

 

 

Well it's not really Thibert over Williams, content for content that same Wolverine vs. Sabretooth page is probably above $20k with Williams inks. It went for pretty much exactly my pre-auction estimate of $15k with the max being set as a battle between the Wolverine Tax and the Non-Williams inks. 

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11 hours ago, O. said:

New Article - 25/5/18

Part 2 of the report on Heritage's May 2018 Signature Auction is up!

https://comicbookinvest.com/2018/05/25/original-art-aficionado-3/

 

Totally agree with you on the Bagley ASM 387 cover... that went cheap!

the Ross Marvels splash was not a good price for the seller when you factor in HA’s consignment fees.  The seller would have taken a loss.

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1 hour ago, jjonahjameson11 said:

Totally agree with you on the Bagley ASM 387 cover... that went cheap!

 

Agreed. And being the only one he inked himself on, and him being known for his pencil only pieces later on on Ultimate Spidey, I think, makes the piece even more desirable. Hard to find a weakness with that cover. 

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1 hour ago, O. said:

New Article - 15/6/18

Report on ComicLink's May 2018 Featured Auction is up!

https://comicbookinvest.com/2018/06/15/may-2018-comiclink-featured-auction/

 

Thanks for another report.  

with respect to the mcspidey cover - for me personally it's one of my least favorites. not sure what you see in that one.  

 

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10 hours ago, Panelfan1 said:

Thanks for another report.  

with respect to the mcspidey cover - for me personally it's one of my least favorites. not sure what you see in that one.  

 

Agreed...one of my least favs, too.  Still, if you are trying to get ahold of a McSpidey cover, they don’t come cheap.  I stated this one would close below $100K and it did.  Others were more bullish and vocal about it so perhaps it fell short of its ‘perceived’ value by some folks on this board.

and I will say this again to CLINK:  having your Auctions close the day after a long weekend is a great disservice to your consignors, and the auction results for numerous pieces in their last auction validate this point!

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1 hour ago, O. said:

New Article - 22/6/18

Report on Heritage's June 2018 European Signature Auction is up!

https://comicbookinvest.com/2018/06/22/original-art-aficionado-4/

 

"Even though Eisner’s (and the Spirit’s) contributions to the genre are invaluable, the passage of time has lessened their recognition somewhat, as current American OA collectors mainly focus on superheroes from the Big Two publishers."

It could also be a function of supply and demand. Eisner kept almost all of his artwork when he was alive. So, there is a lot of it which is available on the market. That should logically result in lower prices.

 

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19 hours ago, jjonahjameson11 said:

Eisner was so innovative, so ahead of the pack.  He is Legend.  To me, Eisner is the King of comics and stands above Kirby in every way.

unfortunately, he didn’t work at Marvel otherwise his would be a household name.

I agree with you. I used to have a Spirit splash page of his which was destroyed by flooding: my greatest loss. 

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