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November HA auction
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1,042 posts in this topic

9 hours ago, BCarter27 said:

Cap is so tiny on there. Red Skull fans out there? Personally, I don't like this above $80-90K.

For a twice up Kirby Cap cover? 

The cover would have had about two dozen immediate buyers, that I can think of off the top of my head, at San Diego if it had been priced sub 100k. 

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9 hours ago, comix4fun said:

For a twice up Kirby Cap cover? 

The cover would have had about two dozen immediate buyers, that I can think of off the top of my head, at San Diego if it had been priced sub 100k. 

Prime example of box ticking. What do the Golden Age slab guys say... "Buy the book, not the label."? This is the equivalent. Buy the art, not the checklist.

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2 minutes ago, BCarter27 said:

Prime example of box ticking. What do the Golden Age slab guys say... "Buy the book, not the label."? This is the equivalent. Buy the art, not the checklist.

There are a tiny handful of Cap covers by Kirby that exist, much less twice up ones. And the age of twice up Kirby covers going for $80k evaporated long before small art Sal B. covers were $100k. 

The golden age slab guys are probably thinking "I'll wait for another copy of this book to come along".  OA guys realize that's not an option. 

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8 minutes ago, comix4fun said:

There are a tiny handful of Cap covers by Kirby that exist, much less twice up ones. And the age of twice up Kirby covers going for $80k evaporated long before small art Sal B. covers were $100k. 

The golden age slab guys are probably thinking "I'll wait for another copy of this book to come along".  OA guys realize that's not an option. 

The 109 cover was light years better last year. That price made sense. And the Sal B. covers hit their prices because they had the right aesthetics. Lumping these groups together ("twice-up Kirby covers") is only proving my point -- box ticking. Two covers sitting next to each other in a run are not necessarily comps. You have to actually look at the thing. And this one doesn't have much Cap on it.

Sure the market will do its thing on this piece because of the bull. But...

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I think the Cap #103 cover is terrific, small Cap and all. It's really striking in person. I think $200K hammer/$240K all-in is a good guess. I'm guessing it goes for somewhere between $170 and $210K hammer ($204-252K all-in) with the absolute worst case scenario at $150K hammer/$180K all-in. 

 

 

Edited by delekkerste
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3 minutes ago, BCarter27 said:

The 109 cover was light years better last year. That price made sense. And the Sal B. covers hit their prices because they had the right aesthetics. Lumping these groups together ("twice-up Kirby covers") is only proving my point -- box ticking. Two covers sitting next to each other in a run are not necessarily comps. You have to actually look at the thing. And this one doesn't have much Cap on it.

Sure the market will do its thing on this piece because of the bull. But...

A big part of collecting comic OA is "box ticking". 

People collect by Penciler, or by Inker, or by Character, Title, or Era, or whether it's 2x or small, whether it's from their birth month, or from a key story arc. 

It's all box ticking because NONE of this hobby is purely aesthetics or purely art, the nostalgic, character-driven, box-ticking is an integral and inalienable part of what's made it the hobby it is today. 

And, seriously, Red Skull has been and will always will be THE Cap villain. I can't imagine dismissing this cover because we're only looking at Cap. 

More simply put, and to paraphrase someone who's far more of a Kirby scholar than I am, there are far fewer Kirby Cap covers out there than his Thor or FF covers. In terms of the Kirby Cap Covers that are known to exist there are 11 large art and 8 small art, and a couple of those are have serious condition issues. If you're not going to make Kirby Cap covers comparables for other Kirby Cap covers, what exactly would make a better comp? There are so few of them that they are forced to be comps for each other. Sure you have to make adjustments, size of art, composition, overall quality, condition, layout...but they are ABSOLUTELY comparables for each other when reasonably adjusted for those factors.

The Cap 109 cover was a superior Cap image, no question. It was also small art, which is about as material a difference as one can have when gauging market value for this type of OA. 

The 109 being a superior Cap image, and small art and basically a single figure with no background in terms of art went for $264,000. I don't know what kind of adjustments that could possibly be made to take a large art Kirby Cap Cover that's so well remembered and make the assumption that it's worth only 30% of the 109. 

 

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27 minutes ago, BCarter27 said:

The 109 cover was light years better last year. That price made sense. And the Sal B. covers hit their prices because they had the right aesthetics. Lumping these groups together ("twice-up Kirby covers") is only proving my point -- box ticking. Two covers sitting next to each other in a run are not necessarily comps. You have to actually look at the thing. And this one doesn't have much Cap on it.

Sure the market will do its thing on this piece because of the bull. But...

I really don't see a striking, well composed cover like this being an example of box ticking at all, which has more to do with the motivation of the buyer than the art itself anyway. 

If you mean "settling" or "buying a placeholder" or "buying just to have an example", it would again depend somewhat on the means and motivation of the buyer IMO. In any case, I would think such a label would be more appropriate for covers like the #104 or #105 than this one. 

While I think that, as a general rule of thumb, small principal character(s), being out of costume, back(s) turned, sparse backgrounds, lack of action, etc. can all be potential downgrades to a piece, I think there are exceptions to each and every one of these. In the case of the #103, I think it has enough else going for it to make up for the small Cap. There are certainly other covers/splashes where a prime villain taking center stage (thinking offhand of some Doctor Doom and Galactus/Surfer FF ones) can more than make up for small or nonexistent heroes in the page/cover.

 

Edited by delekkerste
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Looking at the Cap 103 in person at SDCC it was just such an imposing image of Skull and such a large piece of art that it's just so impressive in person and hanging on the wall of a collectors home it's one of those pieces that just would HIT you. 

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5 minutes ago, vodou said:

Of the early non-100 Cap covers, this is probably my favorite, even being stiff in the posing:

image.png.ca8dbe334340758f18490003457a7b68.png

Love that one. If I had had any inkling that Hans would have come down to the level where he sold it, I would have snapped it up in a heartbeat myself. It looks amazeboats in person. 

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