Misidentified Auction Artwork 0

[cesium_7]

I come across misidentified artwork on auction sites on occasion, but was wondering what others thought about it.  Usually one finds artists misidentified, but in this recent case both the issue and the inker are wrong.  It sold surprisingly high on Heritage yesterday.

https://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic-art/marshall-rogers-and-al-williamson-marvel-comics-presents-81-daredevil-story-page-3-original-art-marvel-1991-/a/121842-13161.s?ic4=GalleryView-ShortDescription-071515

This page is not from MCP 81, but rather from an unpublished Rogers MCP Daredevil story, partially inked by him most likely.  Several of the pages from this story have been previously for sale on a few dealer sites, including this page.  I let Heritage know about the identity of the page, but they chose to ignore the information.

There was another example at a recent Comicconnect (or Comiclink?) auction which had the wrong artists/volume number of a few Ka-Zar pages, credited to Larry Hama instead of Brent Anderson.

In the Heritage example, having it being a published work and inked by someone like Williamson, likely helped up its final sale.  It bothers me on a few different levels, but is this a concern to anyone else?   Does this happen more often than I notice?  Is it done on purpose?

Jason

 

Edited October 22, 2018 by cesium_7

[aokartman]

That would bother me if I discovered it was unpublished, since there is a premium attached to published art vs. inventory or commission art.  Eventually, this distinction will hopefully resonate with the auction houses.  Best, David

[Twanj]

I noticed that page was unpublished, but thought it was just a page that was cut from the story.

[Greenlake]

I bought a piece HA sold as published in a certain issue when it's unpublished, but in that case I didn't care. What bothers me is clearly the auction sites don't spend even a single minute to verify each piece. It seems inevitable that there will be a scandal involving someone taking advantage of that.

[MIL0S]

11 hours ago, aokartman said:

That would bother me if I discovered it was unpublished, since there is a premium attached to published art vs. inventory or commission art.  Eventually, this distinction will hopefully resonate with the auction houses.  Best, David

Agreed, if an unpublished page was erroneously described as being published I would have a problem with that. You would hope that when contacted with additional information while the listing was live the auction house would look into the matter and update the description. Comiclink sold an unpublished unsigned cover layout this past year that was erroneously credited to John Buscema when it clearly was not by him.  I happen to own an actual Buscema prelim for that very cover and I contacted them and all they did was change the listing to say "attributed to John Buscema" which was disappointing. 

[vodou]

6 hours ago, Oddball said:

I’ve seen several innacurate descriptions over the last few Heritage auctions some of which were minor.

Heritage catalogers make mistakes in other categories too, sometimes major ones. I've tried to work with them on this, but have been largely ignored. I think a well-grounded lawsuit (or even just serious thread of) would wake them up a bit to the reality of their liability here. Otherwise, we all can only try to be good guys about it and call things out not just to them but also around here and other sites where folks with $$ to spend hang out.