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Is it in bad taste to ask a comic art dealer what he believes a piece of art to be worth?
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41 posts in this topic

Or do you mean, "I have this cover. What do you think it's worth?" Unless I have good rapport with a dealer, I would never trust to ask what they think my art is valued. Too much self-interest at stake. 

Edited by Jay Olie Espy
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To further qualify the above answer, if the piece was yours, and you were just trying to gauge it's value for insurance purposes or a potential sale, I think that is the most acceptable "ask".   On the other hand, if the piece is currently owned by someone else? And you're asking to help determine if the current asking price is a good one? I'd think most dealers would shy away from doing to other sellers what they wouldn't want done to them.

 

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It's not in bad taste, but his/her answer may be of questionable value.  Remember the old adage "How can you tell when a comic art dealer is lying?  His lips are moving."

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40 minutes ago, tth2 said:

It's not in bad taste, but his/her answer may be of questionable value.  Remember the old adage "How can you tell when a comic art dealer is lying?  His lips are moving."

Man, this is a tough crowd. I've only dealt with comic art dealers via email but my experiences have been largely positive ones. Roughly 25% of my collection has come from dealers, often purchased on time or at a lower price than asked, and I wouldn't hesitate to buy from those guys again.

But...

Many of the dealers, if not all, are collectors, too, and that's the market they know. From the '80s and down, they can probably give you a solid value. Something more recent? They didn't collect it, they don't know it, and they'll probably undervalue it. 

It isn't in bad taste to ask them as long as you've asked ahead of time if they're willing to offer their opinion. Yep, you need to ask if you can ask. Then, if they offer their opinion and you strongly disagree, it's bad taste to tell them so. Thank them politely and ask your fellow collectors for a value, instead. You can tell us we're full of bullpuckey all day long.

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8 hours ago, NamesJay said:

I'm just curious if this is in "bad form" or not.

It's fine as long as your response when they answer you is not:

 

giphy.gif

 

I try to stop short of that. Just short...but short of that.

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I probably should have offered more context.

I've seen a piece of art for sale from someone's collection on comicartfans.com and they wanted me to offer a price I would be willing to pay.

Since I'm not intimately familiar with prices on high end art, I was thinking of asking a dealer from whom I have purchased art from before. 

I wanted to make sure it wasn't "bad taste" to ask someone to value a piece of art that isn't their own.

I appreciate the feedback.

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7 hours ago, NamesJay said:

I probably should have offered more context.

I've seen a piece of art for sale from someone's collection on comicartfans.com and they wanted me to offer a price I would be willing to pay.

Since I'm not intimately familiar with prices on high end art, I was thinking of asking a dealer from whom I have purchased art from before. 

I wanted to make sure it wasn't "bad taste" to ask someone to value a piece of art that isn't their own.

I appreciate the feedback.

Odds are, you ask four different dealers, you'll get four different quotes. You ask Dealer A about (for example) Chaykin's American Flagg, he never really enjoyed it, the one panel page he had in 2006 sat in inventory forever, he'll offer one price. Dealer B loves Flagg, he has eight pages in his personal collection, he wants page prices to climb, he'll have a different view.

As a buyer, I hate the "make an offer" thing. Good luck!

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On 7/15/2017 at 10:39 PM, NamesJay said:

I probably should have offered more context.

I've seen a piece of art for sale from someone's collection on comicartfans.com and they wanted me to offer a price I would be willing to pay.

Since I'm not intimately familiar with prices on high end art, I was thinking of asking a dealer from whom I have purchased art from before. 

I wanted to make sure it wasn't "bad taste" to ask someone to value a piece of art that isn't their own.

I appreciate the feedback.

If that's your situation then ask as many people as you can because as was said you will get many different responses unless its something that's relatively easy to value.    

Its going to boil down to how much you want it as well.

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I'm not sure if this helps, but 'Comic Art Fans' has a searchable archive of past public market sales (auction houses, eBay, etc.) that you can fully access when you become a 'Premium' member. (And a severely limited search scope version when you're not a member). You can search for past public sales for the same artist, and see if there are comparable pieces to what you have, and see what they were sold for.

http://www.comicartfans.com/MarketDataSearch.asp

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Just out of curiosity, what exactly is the piece of art you are considering buying, and what is the seller asking for it ? Or is that question 'in bad taste' ?

Edited by MHoes
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There is a 'can you spare a grade' sub-forum here for asking opinions on comic grades based on an uploaded image. I don't see why you couldn't create a post somewhere in this forum and ask the collective to weigh in. Of course, then you might end up with a public record of data that you don't really want or that you don't agree with, or with people who have no flipping clue what they're talking about, or with people that have some sort of vested interest in curving the data. So... I guess that is pretty much the same as asking a dealer, but at least it'll be more spread out if a number of people responded.

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13 minutes ago, SquareChaos said:

There is a 'can you spare a grade' sub-forum here for asking opinions on comic grades based on an uploaded image. I don't see why you couldn't create a post somewhere in this forum and ask the collective to weigh in. Of course, then you might end up with a public record of data that you don't really want or that you don't agree with, or with people who have no flipping clue what they're talking about, or with people that have some sort of vested interest in curving the data. So... I guess that is pretty much the same as asking a dealer, but at least it'll be more spread out if a number of people responded.

What will happen after a public thread:

Seller agrees with high side valuations

Buyer agrees with low side valuations.

 

Should be kept private.

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Just now, Bronty said:

What will happen after a public thread:

Seller agrees with high side valuations

Buyer agrees with low side valuations.

 

Should be kept private.

 

There seems to be an abundance of secrecy in this hobby. 

My view is, if the seller doesn't want to sell it at insert price here, what the buyer thinks is irrelevant anyway, regardless of public airing of laundry. Anyway I'm not suggesting this be a thing one does to prepare to sell an item, I'm just suggesting if you need to ask someone anyway, you may as well ask the public unless you just so happen to know an expert you can trust. 

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4 minutes ago, Bronty said:

What will happen after a public thread:

Seller agrees with high side valuations

Especially in the case of OP where the scenario is "make an offer", the information arbitrage is already in favor of the seller.

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1 minute ago, SquareChaos said:

 

There seems to be an abundance of secrecy in this hobby. 

My view is, if the seller doesn't want to sell it at insert price here, what the buyer thinks is irrelevant anyway, regardless of public airing of laundry. Anyway I'm not suggesting this be a thing one does to prepare to sell an item, I'm just suggesting if you need to ask someone anyway, you may as well ask the public unless you just so happen to know an expert you can trust. 

Success in this hobby either as a casual collector or a significant wheeler (and even dealer) depends on being a good person and forming trusted private networks. Just the way it is. There's no one-size-fits-all substitution with semi-unique items (and even whole sub-markets) like there is with comics. Even very rare, but still desirable books, that don't trade hands often provide a poor comparison. Simply very different markets and drivers for market participants.

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Just now, vodou said:

Success in this hobby either as a casual collector or a significant wheeler (and even dealer) depends on being a good person and forming trusted private networks. Just the way it is. There's no one-size-fits-all substitution with semi-unique items (and even whole sub-markets) like there is with comics. Even very rare, but still desirable books, that don't trade hands often provide a poor comparison. Simply very different markets and drivers for market participants.

I'm not saying anything that disputes what you're saying - my point is only offered for people that find themselves unsure where to turn when they don't know what they have or what it may be worth. It is much better to ask in public than to go in private... at least, for the person on the unbalanced end of the information asymmetry. There was a thread here not so long ago, concerning a modern Venom cover, that appeared to help the poster quite a bit (shrug)

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5 hours ago, MHoes said:

Just out of curiosity, what exactly is the piece of art you are considering buying, and what is the seller asking for it ? Or is that question 'in bad taste' ?

Based on a lot of feedback, I've found the seller's offer to be fair. At this point, I'm just trying to figure out whether I want to break the 5-figure mark for original artwork for the first time.

I don't know if there's any going back after that :whatthe:

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