July Heritage Auction Sorta Shaping Up! 3 3

[cstojano]

3 hours ago, Bronty said:

Not everybody’s bag I know but anyone with a passing interest have thoughts on the game art results?    I thought the banjo advertisement art and knuckles sega visions mag cover were very strong at 17 and 18, and everything else seemed to meet expectations at a minimum and generally strong for what it was.

I got my first and likely only piece of video game art - the Warren Chang Raiders of the Lost Ark interior (pharaoh not sphynx). I was right in the middle of a conference call when those lots hit, may have gone in more on the sphynx to keep them together but I was speaking when the "you've been outbid" alert rung, not sure if the rest of the call heard or not, a bit mortified. No clue if it was good value. I think it was the stronger of the two and the price difference in the end felt like a better deal to me. The size is decent as well. I think these were being offered initially at a gallery for 4500 if I am not mistaken.

[delekkerste]

1 hour ago, comix4fun said:

Did you see his lesser Web Cover in the last auction that went for $19k? 

There wasn't a chance this cover, with a Spider-man image leaps and bounds ahead of the last Vess Web Cover to sell in May, was going for just a few thousand more. 

There's only one or two Vess covers with Spider-man that I would put on par with this one. This was a VERY popular lot among the many folks I talked to before the live auction. I was hoping it wouldn't be and I would have been THRILLED if your estimate was correct because then I would own it right now.  

In an informal poll among some collectors my own estimate for this one was $30k exactly , and mine was the lowest estimate among the several seasoned collectors involved. 

I thought it "should" be $25-30K, but, my official guess was $35-40K since it was fresh and I thought scarcity value would play a role (there's one of a kind and then there's one of a kind without a lot of comparables). As such, I thought $30K was a little on the disappointing side; one seasoned/prominent collector I know had it pegged at $40-50K.

[delekkerste]

1 hour ago, zhamlau said:

Thats a great page, with an iconic image of spidey on top. it feels right, perfect display page.

I think it's a good page, but, would stop short of calling it great, personally. 

I've learned that people who really want to scratch an itch sometimes just bid up whatever is available at the moment (rather than risk having to wait for another example to come down the pike and/or prices to rise further), which can cause good pieces to be priced like great pieces.  This often happens for pieces where demand swamps supply like Killing Joke and McSpidey and people are worried about getting frozen out or priced out if they don't jump on what's available at the moment. 

Edited July 11, 2020 by delekkerste

[comix4fun]

10 minutes ago, delekkerste said:

I thought it "should" be $25-30K, but, my official guess was $35-40K since it was fresh and I thought scarcity value would play a role (there's one of a kind and then there's one of a kind without a lot of comparables). As such, I thought $30K was a little on the disappointing side; one seasoned/prominent collector I know had it pegged at $40-50K.

Yeah could have certainly gone for more...my $30k was a bit of wishful thinking/hoping it would stumble and I could scoop it. 

It's so rare that we go from having zero good comps for an artist on a title (Vess Web Covers for example) then get two in back to back auctions. This one struck me as so much better than the Web Annual #2 cover that went for $19 that I felt there was no chance of a low $20k's or even mid-$20k's finish. That kind of comparison rarely gets thrown at collectors. It was right there in my face and my logic sensors couldn't avoid it. 

This time the market thought it was a little more than 50% better than the last Vess. Hard to argue it was at least that, although all this covers are really special on this title. 

 

Edited July 11, 2020 by comix4fun

[Mephisto]

55 minutes ago, cstojano said:

I got my first and likely only piece of video game art - the Warren Chang Raiders of the Lost Ark interior (pharaoh not sphynx). I was right in the middle of a conference call when those lots hit, may have gone in more on the sphynx to keep them together but I was speaking when the "you've been outbid" alert rung, not sure if the rest of the call heard or not, a bit mortified. No clue if it was good value. I think it was the stronger of the two and the price difference in the end felt like a better deal to me. The size is decent as well. I think these were being offered initially at a gallery for 4500 if I am not mistaken.

The Pharaoh piece is way better. Bronty had been nudging me towards it knowing my love of Indiana Jones but at this point I haven’t been buying much art. There wasn’t enough direct Indiana Jones elements to get me to take the plunge. I was going to check out where the price was but just kept forgetting. For a little over a grand it’s cool published Atari piece for sure, which was another hurdle for me to take the plunge. I’m not a video game art collector. I own the box art to the first Sega X-Men game and that too will likely be my only video game art going forward.

[cstojano]

1 hour ago, Mephisto said:

The Pharaoh piece is way better. Bronty had been nudging me towards it knowing my love of Indiana Jones but at this point I haven’t been buying much art. There wasn’t enough direct Indiana Jones elements to get me to take the plunge. I was going to check out where the price was but just kept forgetting. For a little over a grand it’s cool published Atari piece for sure, which was another hurdle for me to take the plunge. I’m not a video game art collector. I own the box art to the first Sega X-Men game and that too will likely be my only video game art going forward.

Thanks, I am pretty happy to have some small piece of Atari-dom myself. The cover did end up selling I think, lots of angst about the sun damage on that one. Such a shame. 

[Bronty]

2 hours ago, cstojano said:

I got my first and likely only piece of video game art - the Warren Chang Raiders of the Lost Ark interior (pharaoh not sphynx). I was right in the middle of a conference call when those lots hit, may have gone in more on the sphynx to keep them together but I was speaking when the "you've been outbid" alert rung, not sure if the rest of the call heard or not, a bit mortified. No clue if it was good value. I think it was the stronger of the two and the price difference in the end felt like a better deal to me. The size is decent as well. I think these were being offered initially at a gallery for 4500 if I am not mistaken.

Stronger of the two for sure, congrats!   And for 1k good value too

Edited July 11, 2020 by Bronty

[Bronty]

1 hour ago, cstojano said:

Thanks, I am pretty happy to have some small piece of Atari-dom myself. The cover did end up selling I think, lots of angst about the sun damage on that one. Such a shame. 

Yes exactly right.   It was listed high and didn’t sell and then listed at auction and passed and then sold privately, something like that.   Around 40k or something in the end I think .  But yeah, the sun damage was really bad.

Edited July 11, 2020 by Bronty

[RBerman]

14 hours ago, romitaman said:

ON the ASM 97 unpub cover.......Spider-man was all completely drawn under the stat....(just moved 1/4 inch) There is ALSO a bottle with pills falling onto the ground drawn under the drawn empty hand of Harry Osborn under the drawn art

(I had zero knowledge Spider-Man was drawn...) I just had a strong feeling that art would be drawn underneath the stat as i didn't believe in 1971 they would have blank area under the stat and that marvel editors just moved the art hopefully.

I'm glad I was right!

 

I also bought the Andru ASM 185 cover from Heritage and they listed the Spider-man head as STAT....while that was true...the beautiful  Andru / Esposito Spiderman drawn head was directly under the Romita Spiderman head stat.

 

I also won in 2018 the Carmine Infantino Spider-Woman #13 Unpublished Cover

They listed the Spider-Woman character on the cover as ALL STAT..... and i bought it and the original drawn Spider-Woman image is directly under the stat,  (just moved over 1/4 inch)

 

the best one i ever got from heritage was the Large Art Strange Tales #168 cover..... listed as art in layers........ and part stat.....

well......... under the very bottom layer of art was........a completely drawn full size different large art cover image  right under the top layers of art with a completely different Dr Strange cover scene with the space scene also drawn in slightly different poses.....

 

For the ignorant among us... how can one tell what is underneath a stat which is affixed to the page?

[Brian Peck]

I ended up just winning the Sub-Mariner #5 page with Dorma, its a good price.

I didn't get the New Teen Titans #23 page with Kory and , that went alot higher ($3600) than expected. The other Titans DPS by Perez went for $5K I figured this would be much less since they are out of costume I still went higher than I expected.

I wish they had put the Perez Titans page today earlier in the auction, Losing on that early I would have bid on the Avengers #50 Buscema page and Submariner #11 Colan/Kelin pages as those went Especially the Colan (both went for about $1500). I have been wanting a nice Dorma page by Big John so I am satisfied.

[jjonahjameson11]

2 minutes ago, Brian Peck said:

I ended up just winning the Sub-Mariner #5 page with Dorma, its a good price.

I didn't get the New Teen Titans #23 page with Kory and , that went alot higher ($3600) than expected. The other Titans DPS by Perez went for $5K I figured this would be much less since they are out of costume I still went higher than I expected.

I wish they had put the Perez Titans page today earlier in the auction, Losing on that early I would have bid on the Avengers #50 Buscema page and Submariner #11 Colan/Kelin pages as those went Especially the Colan (both went for about $1500). I have been wanting a nice Dorma page by Big John so I am satisfied.

The only chance to pick up a Perez page at a reasonable price if if Mike Lovitz is in a coma!

[grapeape]

4 hours ago, cheekyj2112 said:

Didn't the price to some degree reflect the damage? I wasn't to bothered by the description of condition as I hadn't enlarged the picture until a friend mentioned it. Once I saw the scoring right the way through it would definitely factor into my bidding.

You might be right. It didn’t bother me on this one but there are times when damage will influence my interest.
Excellent point you make to consider!

 

[jjonahjameson11]

4 hours ago, comix4fun said:

Did you see his lesser Web Cover in the last auction that went for $19k? 

There wasn't a chance this cover, with a Spider-man image leaps and bounds ahead of the last Vess Web Cover to sell in May, was going for just a few thousand more. 

There's only one or two Vess covers with Spider-man that I would put on par with this one. This was a VERY popular lot among the many folks I talked to before the live auction. I was hoping it wouldn't be and I would have been THRILLED if your estimate was correct because then I would own it right now.  

In an informal poll among some collectors my own estimate for this one was $30k exactly , and mine was the lowest estimate among the several seasoned collectors involved. 

Yes, I did see the Web Annual 2 cover sell for 19K.  The #2 Annual has much more vibrant colours and was a more significant issue (Art Adams interiors) than Web 8, and was a hot back issue for a while and hits more nostalgia funny bones than the Web 8 cover.  That’s why I don’t think it was a safe assumption to think that the Web 8 cover should go for 2x or 2.5x the Annual 2 cover.

 

[grapeape]

9 minutes ago, Brian Peck said:

I ended up just winning the Sub-Mariner #5 page with Dorma, its a good price.

I didn't get the New Teen Titans #23 page with Kory and , that went alot higher ($3600) than expected. The other Titans DPS by Perez went for $5K I figured this would be much less since they are out of costume I still went higher than I expected.

I wish they had put the Perez Titans page today earlier in the auction, Losing on that early I would have bid on the Avengers #50 Buscema page and Submariner #11 Colan/Kelin pages as those went Especially the Colan (both went for about $1500). I have been wanting a nice Dorma page by Big John so I am satisfied.

I thought the Avengers 50 Page was a great bargain. However you scored on that Submariner page!

[grapeape]

2 hours ago, delekkerste said:

I think it's a good page, but, would stop short of calling it great, personally. 

I've learned that people who really want to scratch an itch sometimes just bid up whatever is available at the moment (rather than risk having to wait for another example to come down the pike and/or prices to rise further), which can cause good pieces to be priced like great pieces.  This often happens for pieces where demand swamps supply like Killing Joke and McSpidey and people are worried about getting frozen out or priced out if they don't jump on what's available at the moment. 

That’s exactly right!!

[Skizz]

I tried going after the Understanding Comics pages. But someone else just wanted it more and wouldn’t be denied. 

First time I’ve bid on Heritage. First time I’ve even considered paying more than $1,000 on comic art. But what a thrill! 

Edited July 11, 2020 by Skizz

[comix4fun]

18 minutes ago, jjonahjameson11 said:

Yes, I did see the Web Annual 2 cover sell for 19K.  The #2 Annual has much more vibrant colours and was a more significant issue (Art Adams interiors) than Web 8, and was a hot back issue for a while and hits more nostalgia funny bones than the Web 8 cover.  That’s why I don’t think it was a safe assumption to think that the Web 8 cover should go for 2x or 2.5x the Annual 2 cover.

 

Well we all know what sells Spider-man covers, right?......Spider-man...and not the Bat er Spidey-signal

 

That's why I noted that there was no chance that the Web #8 was going for $23k (which is 30% less than what it went for, which is what you said you expected it to go for) because I don't see a world where these two covers are a couple bidding increments apart. 

And you're right, it wasn't a safe assumption to say it would go for 2x or 2.5x the Web annual cover..40-50k is a lot of cash for any modern cover with not much in terms of market comps to drive confidence in bidding. That's why my guess, as I noted earlier,  was $30k. 1.5x the web cover. It felt like it could go to $32-33k with just a nudge (my finger was all over the button) but I felt $40k would not happen. So you're right on the number, and I'll let those images speak for themselves.  

Edited July 11, 2020 by comix4fun

[Brian Peck]

27 minutes ago, jjonahjameson11 said:

The only chance to pick up a Perez page at a reasonable price if if Mike Lovitz is in a coma!

Michael posted the New Teen Titans DPS from friday he won.

[Brian Peck]

22 minutes ago, grapeape said:

I thought the Avengers 50 Page was a great bargain. However you scored on that Submariner page!

The Avengers #50 is a good bargain, but I have two nice examples already. I used to own two more but had to let them go as part of a trade to get an Avengers #58 page.

[grapeape]

1 hour ago, RBerman said:

For the ignorant among us... how can one tell what is underneath a stat which is affixed to the page?

Often you can see the original art through the stat or by lifting the stat up off the panel.