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August HA Auction
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Started by batman_fan,

502 posts in this topic

delekkerste

delekkerste

Posted
Posted
16 hours ago, cstojano said:

And another BWS Conan cover is on offer. How many is that?

Here's my list:

#4 - Nov. 2013 (Heritage)
#9 - Aug. 2014 (Heritage)
#16 - Feb. 2015 (private sale)
#8 - Nov. 2016 (Heritage)
#2 - Mar 2017 (private sale)
#13 - Apr. 2018 (private sale)
#5 - Aug. 2018 (Heritage)
#10 - May 2019 (Heritage)
#5 (again) - June 2019 (ComicLink)
#11 - August 2019 (Heritage)
 
I'm not sure if the #6 traded hands during this time as well or if the owner bought it before the first entry here...
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Will_K

Will_K

Posted
Posted
7 hours ago, batman_fan said:

 I didn’t realize he sold anything.  

He wasn't selling just to sell.  Not directly related to any specific art but in the FelixComicArt ( @Nexus ) podcast, I think Mandel mentioned that he was offsetting the cost of the DK splash. 

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delekkerste

delekkerste

Posted
Posted
16 hours ago, batman_fan said:

:whatthe:  I didn’t realize he sold anything. 

Not shocking...he periodically sells art (both privately and at auction). 

As far as I know, though, this is the only BWS Conan cover he has. It may well be that other things mean more to him than this cover (and he certainly has other great BWS art like the X-Men #212 cover), but, I remember a time when a BWS Conan cover was an essential, must-have cornerstone in a broad-based, top-tier OA collection (Dave had this one; Bill Woo had the #2 and now another BSD, Tom Fish, owns it; Eric Roberts still has the #1; Albert still has at least one; Fishler has one; Thibodeaux at least one...and more recently, they've ended up with other very serious collectors like myself, Bill J., Josh N., Zaddick, etc.)    

I guess I'm just surprised at how quickly these covers are turning over, and how BWS Conan art in general just seems to not be viewed as essential as it used to be. :sorry: 

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Bronty

Bronty

Posted
Posted
15 minutes ago, delekkerste said:

Not shocking...he periodically sells art (both privately and at auction). 

As far as I know, though, this is the only BWS Conan cover he has. It may well be that other things mean more to him than this cover (and he certainly has other great BWS art like the X-Men #212 cover), but, I remember a time when a BWS Conan cover was an essential, must-have cornerstone in a broad-based, top-tier OA collection (Dave had this one; Bill Woo had the #2 and now another BSD, Tom Fish, owns it; Eric Roberts still has the #1; Albert still has at least one; Fishler has one; Thibodeaux at least one...and more recently, they've ended up with other very serious collectors like myself, Bill J., Josh N., Zaddick, etc.)    

I guess I'm just surprised at how quickly these covers are turning over, and how BWS Conan art in general just seems to not be viewed as essential as it used to be. :sorry: 

People need to come up with MTG money somehow!

It does seem like a little shine has come off the apple.    I'm not quite sure why that is.    The artist hasn't done anything in comics in a long time, but really, which artist working in the early 70s has?

The character feels irrelevant, but then again, its apparently been pretty well continuously in print at dark horse and now back at marvel, and had a movie recently, so that's more relevant than most.   

Without peeing in your cornflakes its nice progressive material for the early 70s dateline but also marred by some awkward work here and there before the artist reached his stride.   

So, why a loss of shine?    

Its hard to pin down, but I'd say its some combination of BWS's fan base aging out a bit, the character being away from marvel the last 15 years, and the character not being a superhero and not easily fitting into the rest of the MCU.    Comics have basically been a 'superhero' hobby for a long time now.   Those types of factors can power a hulk 180 last page result, and they can also take wind out of the sails of something like conan.        

 

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batman_fan

batman_fan

Posted
  • Author
Posted
2 minutes ago, Bronty said:

People need to come up with MTG money somehow!

It does seem like a little shine has come off the apple.    I'm not quite sure why that is.    The artist hasn't done anything in comics in a long time, but really, which artist working in the early 70s has?

The character feels irrelevant, but then again, its apparently been pretty well continuously in print at dark horse and now back at marvel, and had a movie recently, so that's more relevant than most.   

Without peeing in your cornflakes its nice progressive material for the early 70s dateline but also marred by some awkward work here and there before the artist reached his stride.   

So, why a loss of shine?    

Its hard to pin down, but I'd say its some combination of BWS's fan base aging out a bit, the character being away from marvel the last 15 years, and the character not being a superhero and not easily fitting into the rest of the MCU.    Comics have basically been a 'superhero' hobby for a long time now.   Those types of factors can power a hulk 180 last page result, and they can also take wind out of the sails of something like conan.        

 

BWS was a okay artist in my opinion but he was no John Buscema

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Bronty

Bronty

Posted
Posted

If I had to guess I'd say the single biggest reason is the property being away from marvel for the last 15 years.    Maybe the trend will slowly reverse itself if Conan stays at Marvel and Marvel, you know, continues to publish comics.

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cstojano

cstojano

Posted
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59 minutes ago, Bronty said:

If I had to guess I'd say the single biggest reason is the property being away from marvel for the last 15 years.    Maybe the trend will slowly reverse itself if Conan stays at Marvel and Marvel, you know, continues to publish comics.

I am a fan of Conan. I collect Conan. But I am shocked that the art segment can maintain the prices it has given just how much material there is out there. It seems every week you can bid on multiple pages from SSOC across multiple auction houses. Honestly I thought a lot of the SSOC pages would be <100 dollar purchases. The collectror base must be pretty broad at some level. 

 

Reagrding the cover to 11, I am not even sure what I am looking at here. Just what is going on?

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cstojano

cstojano

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, batman_fan said:

BWS was a okay artist in my opinion but he was no John Buscema

Anyone collect Warhammer art? BWS was John Blanche (divided opinions on his genius or lack thereof), Buscema was David Gallagher (long time artist that defined the "classic" look of the genre).

Chris

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jjonahjameson11

jjonahjameson11

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, cstojano said:

I am a fan of Conan. I collect Conan. But I am shocked that the art segment can maintain the prices it has given just how much material there is out there. It seems every week you can bid on multiple pages from SSOC across multiple auction houses. Honestly I thought a lot of the SSOC pages would be <100 dollar purchases. The collectror base must be pretty broad at some level.

I feel the same way about prices for Kirby art. There’s so much of it out there.

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vodou

vodou

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, cstojano said:

...I am shocked that the art segment can maintain the prices it has given just how much material there is out there. It seems every week you can bid on multiple pages from SSOC across multiple auction houses. Honestly I thought a lot of the SSOC pages would be <100 dollar purchases. The collectror base must be pretty broad at some level.

Great observation. Maybe there's no problem with "Conan" but today's market is more type-collector, "some" Conan is broadly more important than "a BWS cover"?

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Bronty

Bronty

Posted
Posted (edited)

A price ceiling issue in other words.

Another example is cerebus.   Seems like they are all 1k++ pages now unless they have no cerebus on them.    There's always one for sale, etc.   But how many of the covers would do 50k+?   Only the earliest ones IMO

Edited by Bronty
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cstojano

cstojano

Posted
Posted

Regarding SSOC, as a fairly new collector to this hobby I admit I put some bids in on random SSOC pages just to have an example, as vodou suggests. But it doesn't take many auction cycles to realize the supply is quite high and you can be very choosy. Unless a particular page has nostalgic value for you I can't see laying down the big bucks, which is why I am surprised to see seemingly random and not particularly great pages sell for multiple hundreds of dollars seemingly all the time. 

After maybe 6 months of following the market on these I finally came to realize, eh, I don't need any at all. I'd rather have a great CTB page. Now if I only knew what meant ;)

 

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Rick2you2

Rick2you2

Posted
Posted
17 hours ago, jjonahjameson11 said:

I feel the same way about prices for Kirby art. There’s so much of it out there.

When it was carefully done, it was very good. But, it can also look too rushed and cluttered, not surprising under the circumstances at early Marvel, with occasional bits of strange anatomical positions.

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