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ComicArtAds Auction Preview (UPDATED--Heritage weekly ending 12/9/18)
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131 posts in this topic

1 hour ago, vodou said:

If you must, okay got me. But not really, it's almost semantics. I should have taken more time in writing. Why I bother I don't know, you're clearly set on this idea that the world is out to get you, the casual Dillin buyer, the one buyer that definitely isn't buying anyway?!

The seller sets the price (of course) but the buyer sets the deal. (Is that better? I know you already know all this anyway.) Price can be anything and only requires one willing party, the deal requires two. And that's where you come in and where you walk. No deal. Big deal.

I know you want this to be a grand conspiracy theory turned fact, and maybe it is, but it's not as obvious as you think and not as obvious as the others that are definitely being run and where folks have been caught before. Is this more of a public service message you are sending to compel a buyers strike on all Dillin over $300 or are you just feeling entitled, but it's an entitlement the market isn't satisfying?

If you are right, the market will right itself just fine anyway and all this mudane, at best, art will come back down to earth. For certain I don't care either way, you do and should just be patient...right? Or are you just a tiny bit worried the market may actually be getting away from you for realz?

The world is not out to get me, and Lee already mentioned what he thinks the range ought to be. Price is not set in an auction like in a private deal. Bidders set it based on expectancies of what might carry the day. That’s a little different. In my line of work, I’ve seen how forms of price manipulation can be done, including bidding.  Some of the stuff is pretty creative. Let’s see what happens in the next three weeks and whether a new, surprising price level is set. I could be wrong, and I hope I am. 

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30 minutes ago, Rick2you2 said:

The world is not out to get me, and Lee already mentioned what he thinks the range ought to be. Price is not set in an auction like in a private deal. Bidders set it based on expectancies of what might carry the day. That’s a little different. In my line of work, I’ve seen how forms of price manipulation can be done, including bidding.  Some of the stuff is pretty creative. Let’s see what happens in the next three weeks and whether a new, surprising price level is set. I could be wrong, and I hope I am. 

"...ought to be..." famous last words in this hobby! Lee would be the first to admit that, but he can correct me if wrong. I disagree regarding how price is set and deals are struck in the auction format, but instead of going into that let's see where things go the next three weeks. Don't hold your breath though, that's hardly enough time for whatever silliness, nefarious or not, to work itself out. I maintain that you will not see a repeat of the outlier result.

Successfully distributing a corner is actually quite tough. While you may initially control a market supply, every piece you sell reduces your supply and thus your price power and your past buyers can become your competition too, pushing prices down even faster by withdrawing their demand or even adding their own supply to the market. With Dillin, there just isn't the kind of organic demand to begin with to support a corner being doled out well. If it's that, it should fail fast. The only hope for the playas is that they can create new demand where it didn't exist before, with eye-popping prices. Our back and forth on the subject is helping that agenda move along nicely we keep Dillin in the headlines.

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Let me add that I am not making that claim about the run up in Aparo art where I think a scarcity of good material for a long time was only remedied earlier this year and which led to aggressive buying. I bought one as well, and it was definitely more than what looked like market.  Dillin is not the same.

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2 minutes ago, vodou said:

"...ought to be..." famous last words in this hobby! Lee would be the first to admit that, but he can correct me if wrong. I disagree regarding how price is set and deals are struck in the auction format, but instead of going into that let's see where things go the next three weeks. Don't hold your breath though, that's hardly enough time for whatever silliness, nefarious or not, to work itself out. I maintain that you will not see a repeat of the outlier result.

Successfully distributing a corner is actually quite tough. While you may initially control a market supply, every piece you sell reduces your supply and thus your price power and your past buyers can become your competition too, pushing prices down even faster by withdrawing their demand or even adding their own supply to the market. With Dillin, there just isn't the kind of organic demand to begin with to support a corner being doled out well. If it's that, it should fail fast. The only hope for the playas is that they can create new demand where it didn't exist before, with eye-popping prices. Our back and forth on the subject is helping that agenda move along nicely we keep Dillin in the headlines.

It isn’t a market corner type of manipulation. It an expectancy manipulation. There are lots of ways to play games.

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6 minutes ago, Rick2you2 said:

It isn’t a market corner type of manipulation. It an expectancy manipulation. There are lots of ways to play games.

Expectancy without enough captive supply can get very expensive very quickly, if the public doesn't take up on it.

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Here is an example you will never see, but it came up with a client of mine. A public body decided to go out for public bidding for a particular system. It set very high standards for the various components. Under the legal rules in place, the public body could amend the specifications so long as there were 5 days left before bidding closed. Now these are not off the shelf systems—it takes time to design components into a system. On the 5th day before bid closing, the public body radically cheapened the component requirements. When bids were opened only one bidder was able to submit a bid with the cheaper components, knocking out all the other higher bidders. Why? They didn’t have the time to redesign everything to be able to compete. The one winning bidder must have been told in advance by the public body of the cheaper system which could be substituted. No proof, so no one could go fight it in court.

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7 minutes ago, vodou said:

Expectancy without enough captive supply can get very expensive very quickly, if the public doesn't take up on it.

That’s the role Heritage fulfills. It’s final sales prices on auctions becomes a standard. Who doesn’t look at past auctions to gain a sense of cost for things?

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18 minutes ago, Rick2you2 said:

That’s the role Heritage fulfills. It’s final sales prices on auctions becomes a standard. Who doesn’t look at past auctions to gain a sense of cost for things?

You're gonna hate this, but I don't. I mean I do, but it's a very small part of my analysis. My own gut sense of the market culled from decades of experience is worth about 85% of any sense of value (not so-called FMV) I apply to something. I handicap downward hard whatever utility how much the last bloke got suckered into paying in a public venue may provide. In the best case it's worth 15% or so, and might encourage me to pay up a bit for something outside of what I usually follow and know like the back of my hand. I will usually follow a new market of interest for years before spending anything more than small play money on the thing, and that's usually going to books and other research anyway, not in lining myself up to be the next greater fool.

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12 minutes ago, vodou said:

You're gonna hate this, but I don't. I mean I do, but it's a very small part of my analysis. My own gut sense of the market culled from decades of experience is worth about 85% of any sense of value (not so-called FMV) I apply to something. I handicap downward hard whatever utility how much the last bloke got suckered into paying in a public venue may provide. In the best case it's worth 15% or so, and might encourage me to pay up a bit for something outside of what I usually follow and know like the back of my hand. I will usually follow a new market of interest for years before spending anything more than small play money on the thing, and that's usually going to books and other research anyway, not in lining myself up to be the next greater fool.

I’m all for that. Not everyone does, however. Some of my favorite things were cheap. Look at some of the suggestions to newbies about how to gauge market prices. “Oh, wow, I scored a Dillin. Only $3,000!”

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31 minutes ago, Rick2you2 said:

I’m all for that. Not everyone does, however. Some of my favorite things were cheap. Look at some of the suggestions to newbies about how to gauge market prices. “Oh, wow, I scored a Dillin. Only $3,000!”

Hence my regular post of: A fool and his money...

The herd will always be the herd, and they are great for when it's time to sell as they chase the trend to the end. You can't educate them, but a few of us do value the way I do and don't get caught out, while still getting great art that we want and that should sell well later on too.

Behavioral Economics has been pretty popular the last ten years, lots of books sold, unfortunately it seems few actually got smarter (became contrarian). Oh well. The herd marches on, merrily, toward the cliff.

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The message is for people just starting out, take a deep breath and do some research before you take a plunge on original comic art, or animation art.  It is all cool, and maybe you will like an entry level piece more than you expect, and begin your journey from there.   For today, David

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3 hours ago, vodou said:

"...ought to be..." famous last words in this hobby! Lee would be the first to admit that, but he can correct me if wrong. I disagree regarding how price is set and deals are struck in the auction format, but instead of going into that let's see where things go the next three weeks. Don't hold your breath though, that's hardly enough time for whatever silliness, nefarious or not, to work itself out. I maintain that you will not see a repeat of the outlier result.

Successfully distributing a corner is actually quite tough. While you may initially control a market supply, every piece you sell reduces your supply and thus your price power and your past buyers can become your competition too, pushing prices down even faster by withdrawing their demand or even adding their own supply to the market. With Dillin, there just isn't the kind of organic demand to begin with to support a corner being doled out well. If it's that, it should fail fast. The only hope for the playas is that they can create new demand where it didn't exist before, with eye-popping prices. Our back and forth on the subject is helping that agenda move along nicely we keep Dillin in the headlines.

I'm enjoying this lively discussion and am starting to think that I will have to start focusing on a Dillin piece every time I write up a Heritage weekly auction.  When I come up with my prediction (guesses), I look back at Heritage auctions over the past several months.  Dillin panel pages had been bopping along at around $700 until the past few weeks.  I doubt the $3K+ prices will because a steady thing, but I have been wrong before.  Cheers, Lee

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In @Rick2you2 's topic re: Dillin, I mentioned a couple reasons for liking Dillin's work.  Not sure why @Rick2you2 believes Dillin's work is better suited for coloring books.  I think coloring books actually require more simple lines.  There are plenty of artists that would be a better fit for coloring books.

I think Dillin was actually a pretty good artist.  But demand for Dillin art is mainly nostalgia based.  And mainly based on his JLA work.  His art on other DC titles ( e.g. Hawkman and World's Finest ) is probably behind the curve.  There were a lot of well respected Dillin contemporaries that would not be suited to team books.

For me to go overboard (e.g. $3,000 or more) it would have to be THE Dillin page.  For the near future, even $1000+ prices for Dillin panel pages doesn't seem sustainable.  But certain pages will get a little extra.  For example, Sid Greene inks and JSA crossovers. 

Also, it's possible that Dillin may be riding on Sekowsky's coattails (and even then $3,000 is still seems like an outlier).  And you can't ignore that Dillin is smack in between the Sekowsky and Perez runs on JLA.  HA does not have a lot of info on Perez JLA art.  And if Sekowsky and Perez JLA art goes bonkers, you can't expect Dillin to NOT get any love.

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6 hours ago, Lee B. said:

I'm enjoying this lively discussion and am starting to think that I will have to start focusing on a Dillin piece every time I write up a Heritage weekly auction.  When I come up with my prediction (guesses), I look back at Heritage auctions over the past several months.  Dillin panel pages had been bopping along at around $700 until the past few weeks.  I doubt the $3K+ prices will because a steady thing, but I have been wrong before.  Cheers, Lee

 I hope you are right. It is Saturday morning and the current JLA Dillin piece is at $700 already with about 36 hours to go. 

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If it were in my wheelhouse, I could see how the Adam Strange wedding page could have gone for a little over $1,000.00. Hell, it could have been drawn by anyone and generated some money. But $3,500+? 

Sekowsky, IMO, was a better artist. His art is addressed to children, which may become evident if you look at how he displays anatomy and character poses. Showy and not necessarily realistic.

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On 12/7/2018 at 11:07 PM, Lee B. said:

I'm enjoying this lively discussion and am starting to think that I will have to start focusing on a Dillin piece every time I write up a Heritage weekly auction.  When I come up with my prediction (guesses), I look back at Heritage auctions over the past several months.  Dillin panel pages had been bopping along at around $700 until the past few weeks.  I doubt the $3K+ prices will because a steady thing, but I have been wrong before.  Cheers, Lee

Something else to consider are the power of words posted here. Since my lively debate with Vodou on Friday evening, I have been monitoring another Dillin piece on Heritage. It was moving up nicely, and as the discussion ended, no more bidding—leaving it exactly within your predicted range. While bidding is still open as I write this, it leads me to think people are paying attention to what we write, and we are contributing to setting prices.

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5 hours ago, Rick2you2 said:

Something else to consider are the power of words posted here. Since my lively debate with Vodou on Friday evening, I have been monitoring another Dillin piece on Heritage. It was moving up nicely, and as the discussion ended, no more bidding—leaving it exactly within your predicted range. While bidding is still open as I write this, it leads me to think people are paying attention to what we write, and we are contributing to setting prices.

Speak for yourself--my prediction of a $825 final price for the Gene Colan Captain America #123 page certainly didn't set any prices as the page finished at $384 today.  That's a decent bargain in my book.  Congrats to the winner! 

So, are there still possible Dillin market shenanigans, or are they taking a break due to the board chatter of the past few days?  Best, Lee

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6 hours ago, Lee B. said:

Speak for yourself--my prediction of a $825 final price for the Gene Colan Captain America #123 page certainly didn't set any prices as the page finished at $384 today.  That's a decent bargain in my book.  Congrats to the winner! 

So, are there still possible Dillin market shenanigans, or are they taking a break due to the board chatter of the past few days?  Best, Lee

It ended higher at $1,380 with BP. Higher than previous market but not insanely higher. I could see that as the result of regular bidders. If that price holds, well, I hope the owners enjoy their wins.

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9 hours ago, Will_K said:

Well, I hope the owner of the $3000+ Dillin page is also enjoying the win.  I hope the new owner emerges and there is actually a good story behind the bidding war. 

It wasn't just the JLA page with the Phantom Stranger on it. It was also $3,840 for the Adam Strange wedding page--a character so lacking in current appeal that DC just cancelled the planned two volume reprint of his Strange Adventure stories. I would be surprised if this happens again for a long time. 

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