Charles Schultz house fire 0

[1950's war comics]

Sad that his house was in the California wildfire..

https://www.bleedingcool.com/2017/10/12/home-jean-charles-schulz-destroyed-santa-rosa-fire/

[AnkurJ]

Terrible news!

[delekkerste]

This Schulz home fire highlights something I was talking to Louise Simonson about at the SDCC.  She said that she was worried that Walt, by keeping all of his OA together in one place (whether at their home, or, ultimately at RISD or some other location), was leaving his art vulnerable to a catastrophic loss in the event of something like a fire.  Better to get at least a good chunk of it into the hands of the fans who will display/appreciate it, and who have, besides, admired and supported the art/artist for decades.  Helps mitigate the risk of total loss in case of a fire or flood or theft wherever the art will be stored at RISD when it's not being viewed/appreciated by anyone (that is to say, 99.9999% of the time).  I'm sure that RISD would rather have the money anyway - win/win for everybody! 

I wonder if all the originals at the Schulz Museum are stored on-site (though, at least there are a lot of Peanuts strips out in the wild as well).  In any case, I hope that they and everyone else in NoCal get through this difficult ordeal without any further loss of life or property.   

Edited October 13, 2017 by delekkerste

[RabidFerret]

34 minutes ago, delekkerste said:

This Schulz home fire highlights something I was talking to Louise Simonson about at the SDCC.  She said that she was worried that Walt, by keeping all of his OA together in one place (whether at their home, or, ultimately at RISD or some other location), was leaving his art vulnerable to a catastrophic loss in the event of something like a fire.  Better to get at least a good chunk of it into the hands of the fans who will display/appreciate it, and who have, besides, admired and supported the art/artist for decades.  Helps mitigate the risk of total loss in case of a fire or flood or theft wherever the art will be stored at RISD when it's not being viewed/appreciated by anyone (that is to say, 99.9999% of the time).  I'm sure that RISD would rather have the money anyway - win/win for everybody! 

I wonder if all the originals at the Schulz Museum are stored on-site (though, at least there are a lot of Peanuts strips out in the wild as well).  In any case, I hope that they and everyone else in NoCal get through this difficult ordeal without any further loss of life or property.   

I've long thought the same thing about Bill Watterson, Jeff Smith, and the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum. When all the art is in one place it's certainly a risk. It reminds me of those classic 70s Marvel warehouse photos. In fact, that fear of egg-basket storage was part of why I finally sold some of my originals, just in case something happened.

[ComicConnoisseur]

6 hours ago, 1950's war comics said:

Sad that his house was in the California wildfire..

https://www.bleedingcool.com/2017/10/12/home-jean-charles-schulz-destroyed-santa-rosa-fire/

Terrible news. 

[The Shoveler]

6 hours ago, delekkerste said:

Better to get at least a good chunk of it into the hands of the fans who will display/appreciate it, and who have, besides, admired and supported the art/artist for decades.  Helps mitigate the risk of total loss in case of a fire or flood or theft wherever

Couldn't a well-designed storage plan with regular facility inspections just as easily mitigate the potential risks?  Casting it to the four winds to be nibbled by silverfish, baked in the sun on collectors' walls, cultivate mold in closets, get burned in house fires, used as beverage coasters by hipsters, or just plain lost simply replaces one risk locus with multiple elements.  As long as they keep it away from Mosul's Museum then the risks should, in theory, be manageable.

Would the art really be any more vulnerable at RISD than at any facility on the east coast (MOMA, Boston Museum of Fine Art, etc)?  I don't know how decrepit their facilities are or how stringent their oversight is... 

Would the Simonsons sell to any fans who live in Houston, Miami, NOLA, Tornado Alley, earthquake-vulnerable Cali, the Mississippi River flood plains, or any large metropolitan region (or anyplace in-between) where fire/flood/weather has already destroyed art or likely will in the future?  Hurricane Sandy showed us that all the art in NY/NJ ain't safe.  There's gotta be a lot of art that's one tsunami wave away from sleeping with the fishes.

Maybe if we all chipped-in, we could qualify for a group discount in a Cheyenne Mountain vault. 

 

[delekkerste]

20 minutes ago, The Shoveler said:

Couldn't a well-designed storage plan with regular facility inspections just as easily mitigate the potential risks?  Casting it to the four winds to be nibbled by silverfish, baked in the sun on collectors' walls, cultivate mold in closets, get burned in house fires, used as beverage coasters by hipsters, or just plain lost simply replaces one risk locus with multiple elements. 

To say that "[replacing] one risk locus with multiple elements" somehow has no value is to imply that these multiple elements have 100% correlation and that there is no benefit to diversification, which is obviously wrong.  Replacing one risk locus with multiple risk loci that are less correlated, if not uncorrelated, reduces your overall portfolio risk (re:  risk to the whole of Simonson's art hoard).  This is the basis of both actuarial science (i.e., the insurance industry) and modern portfolio theory. 

In layman's terms:  don't put all your eggs in one basket.   

[Twanj]

In software projects, they call this the bus factor. 

You don’t want one bus (aka freak accident or sudden death) to be able to take out all the leaders of a project (Everyone in one place at one time). 

Edited October 14, 2017 by Twanj

[The Shoveler]

 

25 minutes ago, delekkerste said:

To say that "[replacing] one risk locus with multiple elements" somehow has no value is to imply that these multiple elements have 100% correlation and that there is no benefit to diversification, which is obviously wrong. 

To counter that is to imply that diversification has a generic, universally applicable utility and value.  In this case it seems like it should be feasible to implement simple, reasonable and effective controls to adequately reduce the risk to an acceptable level while maintaining the integrity of the collection...if that is Walter's intent.  I'm sure this isn't the first time someone's dealt with this problem, and it seems like plenty of collections are maintained as an entire unit without getting lost to oblivion.  It seems this could be done without inducing additional risk (unforced errors) by splitting it up for ca$h.  To do so just to adhere to a theory turns the theory into dogma, and dogma easily morphs into a misguided sense of security.

1 hour ago, delekkerste said:

This is the basis of both actuarial science (i.e., the insurance industry) and modern portfolio theory. 

Authoritarian appeals that focus on broad credentialism rather than specific logic can be unpersuasive.  "In theory, theory and practice are the same.  In practice, they're different." Attributed to Yogi Berra

10 minutes ago, delekkerste said:

In layman's terms:  don't put all your eggs in one basket. 

What if it doesn't make sense to use multiple baskets?  We put all of our "eggs" into one "basket" all the time.  Does it make sense to always send two vehicles to the grocery store, and to divide the bags into both cars so that at least some of the goods will make it home?

It's not always better to accept the inevitable attrition of some dispersed assets in order to gamble that a portion of the items will, ostensibly, survive.  What is the overall intent...the desired outcome?  is it preservation of the entire library as a complete unit, or just to make sure that some pages..any pages...survive the zombie apocalypse?  Will certain items (splashes, covers, UXM/NTT) be tiered into gold-plated baskets while others get staged in OKC awaiting the next twister?  Lastly, haven't they already "dispersed" and preserved the longevity of some of the collection via the Artist Editions?

As fun as this discussion is, it really seems that they're even talking about this isn't exactly a vote of confidence in RISD...

[vodou]

5 hours ago, The Shoveler said:

...

What is the overall intent...the desired outcome?  is it preservation of the entire library as a complete unit, or just to make sure that some pages..any pages...survive the zombie apocalypse?

...

As fun as this discussion is, it really seems that they're even talking about this isn't exactly a vote of confidence in RISD...

Excellent questions, I'm not aware that Walt has fully articulated it. If it's the usual pie-in-the-sky permanent display in the Walt Simonson wing of RISD...that's something that's most often fool's gold unless accompanied by an eight-figure or more endowment. Most and maybe all the art will never get displayed outside a grouping and as soon as he passes, or they may wait until the widow does too -just to be considerate (cya of course), start doling it back out to the market themselves. It may be that Walt and/or Louise started having a real discussion with them as some level-setting occurred.

As to the other stuff, there is an excellent argument to be made for going all-in on a really good idea. (More of a maximize total return than risk management discussion now.) Spreading your eggs around just means averaging out much closer to lowest common denominator aka watered down returns. High risk often equals...high reward

Now successful all-in pre-supposes that one knows a good one idea when one sees it. Not all good ideas are equal (so one has to be confident in picking the best of the best too), and one has the nuts to jump when it's time to jump. And then keep feeding the beast all the way up and (most importantly) know when to calmly cash out while there are still more buyers than sellers. (This goes to the 60-80% comment I made in the Mark thread.) Anybody that's done this, even if you failed 9/10 times but won just once, knows it's a whole lotta fun...and that 1/10 win if sized correctly can make your year or even much more. And concentration is why it works. The long-term hoarders of quality material (in current FMV terms, not artistic quality per se) on this board also know this

[BCarter27]

2 hours ago, vodou said:

Most and maybe all the art will never get displayed outside a grouping

I've said it before... This is my biggest objection to museum donations. It's like a black hole collection that will never shake loose. As a collector, it is just depressing and I think it leaves a black mark on that person's work. "Oh, I can't ever get a <artist> piece." You end up just tuning them out.

I think not having at least some low- to mid-tier work in the market hurts their long-term visibility. For example, there was enough lower-end Frazetta material selling over the years, that made going to the museum back in the early 00s a real treat.

[delekkerste]

12 hours ago, The Shoveler said:

As fun as this discussion is, it really seems that they're even talking about this isn't exactly a vote of confidence in RISD...

Right now, the art is all at the Simonsons' home - not at RISD - where a fire, flood, burglary, or any number of things could wipe it out in one shot.  It's not like we haven't seen comic creators lose art in house fires before (e.g., Len Wein, Erik Larsen). 

Oh, and groceries should never be compared to art.  

6 hours ago, vodou said:

As to the other stuff, there is an excellent argument to be made for going all-in on a really good idea. (More of a maximize total return than risk management discussion now.) Spreading your eggs around just means averaging out much closer to lowest common denominator aka watered down returns. High risk often equals...high reward

I know you're just going off on a tangent, but, in this particular scenario, what you are talking about does not apply because the upside is capped (return = Walt's art survives), so there is no incentive to take more concentration risk.  Better to choose the point on the efficient frontier that minimizes your overall risk, which is spreading your risk around (i.e., dispersing the art and avoiding what Twanj calls the "bus factor").