How big is the pool of buyers for six-figure O/A? 0

[Nexus]

19 hours ago, ShallowDan said:

The on-going thread concerning ASM 299 has prompted me to ask something I've wondered about for quite a while: how many folks in the world are bidding on and buying pieces at these price levels?

More with each passing year. Since I've been in the hobby.

[Rick2you2]

12 minutes ago, Varanis said:

Wealth is relative.

It is, but I cannot get around the fact that we are looking at 1 page out of a comic book of 20 or so, that probably took a day to do. Covers, more time, but not weeks. And, both are based upon scripted ideas. I realize that price is a function of supply and demand, not pure quality, and not cost of labor and material, but wealth to me isn’t the key factor. It is value received. That is what I find missing from the equation. But, it is their money to throw around. Let me add that my views are not about budget buying due to limited wealth. More like is the additional value received justified by the higher price.

Edited December 7, 2020 by Rick2you2

[jjonahjameson11]

1 minute ago, Rick2you2 said:

It is, but I cannot get around the fact that we are looking at 1 page out of a comic book of 20 or so, that probably took a day to do. Covers, more time, but not weeks. And, both are based upon scripted ideas. I realize that price is a function of supply and demand, not pure quality, and not cost of labor and material, but wealth to me isn’t the key factor. It is value received. That is what I find missing from the equation. But, it is their money to throw around.

For me, this hobby is 99.99% nostalgia driven.  The artist and title that provide the most nostalgia from my youth (value received) is a Todd McFarlane Spidey cover.  Moreso than a Ditko Spidey cover, Wood EC cover, Krazy Kat, (feel free to insert creator and comic book/strip title here), etc.

I am willing to pay more for it than any other artists' work on any title because it will provide me with the most value received.

I can't explain it any simpler than this. and I'm not going to try.

[ShallowDan]

14 minutes ago, jjonahjameson11 said:

For me, this hobby is 99.99% nostalgia driven.  The artist and title that provide the most nostalgia from my youth (value received) is a Todd McFarlane Spidey cover.  Moreso than a Ditko Spidey cover, Wood EC cover, Krazy Kat, (feel free to insert creator and comic book/strip title here), etc.

I am willing to pay more for it than any other artists' work on any title because it will provide me with the most value received.

I can't explain it any simpler than this. and I'm not going to try.

I mentioned earlier that a great thing about the O/A hobby is there's something to be found at every price point, but this is another great aspect of it: how unique each collector's interest is.

Everyone brings their experiences and points of nostalgia to the hobby and with O/A being one-of-a-kind, each collection thus reflects the individual collector in a way it doesn't with something like slabbed books.

A couple of pieces I'd most love to find are from Charlton comics (and not even Ditko ones).  They were battered, flea market pick ups that I loved as a kid, with covers I made amateurish copies of.  They represent a bit of nostalgia that is unique to me. 

So, yep there's no point trying to explain your particular nostalgia.  Everyone's is different.

[Carlo M]

2 hours ago, jjonahjameson11 said:

For me, this hobby is 99.99% nostalgia driven.  The artist and title that provide the most nostalgia from my youth (value received) is a Todd McFarlane Spidey cover.  Moreso than a Ditko Spidey cover, Wood EC cover, Krazy Kat, (feel free to insert creator and comic book/strip title here), etc.

I am willing to pay more for it than any other artists' work on any title because it will provide me with the most value received.

I can't explain it any simpler than this. and I'm not going to try.

Well said.  Still it would be nice to ascertain that there is a sort of intrinsic value to comic art.  I think there is a quality that transcends sheer nostalgia.  The likes of Kirby, Ditko, Byrne, J Lee and yes absolutely McFarlane (just nto name a few!) have achieved a level of artistic quality and POPular recognition that their work has achieved a standard VALUE that is not only due to the nostalgia factor of the buyer.

 

 

[Rick2you2]

4 hours ago, jjonahjameson11 said:

For me, this hobby is 99.99% nostalgia driven.  The artist and title that provide the most nostalgia from my youth (value received) is a Todd McFarlane Spidey cover.  Moreso than a Ditko Spidey cover, Wood EC cover, Krazy Kat, (feel free to insert creator and comic book/strip title here), etc.

I am willing to pay more for it than any other artists' work on any title because it will provide me with the most value received.

I can't explain it any simpler than this. and I'm not going to try.

I get that. But, for me, nostalgia has its limits. Perhaps if I had Bill Gates’ money, I wouldn’t care, but I’m a few billion shy of that (and then some). There has to be a level of intrinsic value for me to spend that kind of money, and I don’t get it for this work. My nostalgia will be funded some cheaper way; there is no going back to my youth with expensive paper products.

[buttock]

7 hours ago, Carlo M said:

If I understand correctly, the post was about how many buyers there are out there for OA priced at above USD100.000.  Assuming we are talking abut people who can buy regularly in that price range (say at least one piece every couple of years), my totally uneducated guess would be 25-30.  Am in the ballpark here?

It's got to be way more than that.  Way more.  

[PhilipB2k17]

6 hours ago, jjonahjameson11 said:

For me, this hobby is 99.99% nostalgia driven.  The artist and title that provide the most nostalgia from my youth (value received) is a Todd McFarlane Spidey cover.  Moreso than a Ditko Spidey cover, Wood EC cover, Krazy Kat, (feel free to insert creator and comic book/strip title here), etc.

I am willing to pay more for it than any other artists' work on any title because it will provide me with the most value received.

I can't explain it any simpler than this. and I'm not going to try.

I actually do not like that ASM 299 cover. At all. I am not a huge McSpidey fan to begin with, and that’s not anywhere close to one of his best pieces. I’ve seen over a dozen interior McSpidey pages I’d much rather own. More power to the people that want it, though. 

Edited December 8, 2020 by PhilipB2k17

[PhilipB2k17]

Here’s an irony for you. Due to life circumstances, I have been saving up a lot of cash. I now have enough to go buy some of the nicer pieces in my OA wheelhouse (Still talking high 4 figures though). But I find the more abstain, the easier it gets to be disciplined and not impulse buy. There’s really only been one piece that popped up that I tried pulling the trigger on, but someone beat me to it. I’ve kicked the tires in a couple others. But I’m really not in the buying mood right now. 
 

it’s weird. The more cash I have on hand, the less I want to spend it. 

Edited December 8, 2020 by PhilipB2k17

[ShallowDan]

30 minutes ago, PhilipB2k17 said:

Here’s an irony for you. Due to life circumstances, I have been saving up a lot of cash. I now have enough to go buy some of the nicer pieces in my OA wheelhouse (Still talking high 4 figures though). But I find the more abstain, the easier it gets to be disciplined and not impulse buy. There’s really only been one piece that popped up that I tried pulling the trigger on, but someone beat me to it. I’ve kicked the tires in a couple others. But I’m really not in the buying mood right now. 
 

it’s weird. The more cash I have on hand, the less I want to spend it. 

Not weird at all.  It's always easier to spend your future self's money than it is to spend that from your present self.   One of the better pieces of advice I've seen given to young people trying to rein in spending is to pay cash whenever possible.  It drives home the cost in a way that swiping (even if swiping a debit card, rather than credit card) never does.

I've definitely saved up for a purchase, only to have the thrill of the potential buy wear off by the time I got to my goal.  And as you allude to, the discipline of saving can be self-reinforcing.

Edited December 8, 2020 by ShallowDan

[Will_K]

To sell 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10... 20... 30 "seasoned" pieces to pay for one $100,000+ piece ??  That may mean you're not really all that attached to those pieces... or you've got so much more of them just sitting around.  How many people would be willing to sell enough pieces in their collection to raise $100,000+  ??  After all, one should have an attachment to them. 

There may be a lot of "new money" (new collectors) in the hobby.  But even then would their 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th acquisition be in the $100,000 range ?  Someone would have so much cash that they wouldn't even miss $100,000 ??  I mean... W O W !!  There's a very persuasive personal shopper out there.

Time will tell how many pieces can will actually fetch $100,000+ without bringing seasoned pieces out of the woodwork. 

Edited December 8, 2020 by Will_K

[jjonahjameson11]

12 hours ago, Will_K said:

To sell 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10... 20... 30 "seasoned" pieces to pay for one $100,000+ piece ??  That may mean you're not really all that attached to those pieces... or you've got so much more of them just sitting around.  How many people would be willing to sell enough pieces in their collection to raise $100,000+  ??  After all, one should have an attachment to them. 

OR, it could mean that your grail piece has become available and is worth more to you than the other pieces in your collection that you have an attachment to, and enjoyed for many years.

BUT, it is your Grail piece, the holiest of holies to you is now available, and you have one shot at getting it.

there are other scenarios I can cite in response to Will, but I’m feeling lazy this morning 😉

[Bronty]

16 hours ago, Rick2you2 said:

I get that. But, for me, nostalgia has its limits. Perhaps if I had Bill Gates’ money, I wouldn’t care, but I’m a few billion shy of that (and then some). There has to be a level of intrinsic value for me to spend that kind of money, and I don’t get it for this work. My nostalgia will be funded some cheaper way; there is no going back to my youth with expensive paper products.

At the end of the day you have to realize that your attitude (and sometimes mine!) amounts to the old man waving his fist at the neighborhood kids.

First of all, nothing is in a vacuum and we can't really consider the art totally void of context even if we try.    

Secondly, if we make a point of saying we appreciate comic art "for the art" only and not for nostalgia and/or context we are lying to ourselves.    If we were able to truly appreciate art only for the sake of the art we would not be limiting ourselves to comic art in the first place.

As an example - let's say I only like Chaykin Star Wars pages "for the art."    How pompous am I ?    I limit myself to a specific medium, artist, and even title and then tell myself that I am only in it for the art?    In that example, I'm a ridiculous tuh-watte.

To make a long story short art has little to no 'intrinic value'.   Almost all of the value (at least as viewed by a marketplace) is dependent everything besides the image - the artist's body of work, and fame, the subject matter, etc etc ad nauseam.       Looking for intrinsic value is searching for something that isn't there.

So that's my canned rant on context and image.   Now, as it relates to this image, those who just want the cover as a 'cultural totem' as Seffinga puts it won't care about the sparse image.     You may not like the sparse image and may want more lines on the page for your money.    I agree actually as pieces that are too sparse don't do much for me.    However, lots of lines, few lines... neither has any intrinsic value.   As decoration art stripped of all context its a $100 piece either way.

Edited December 8, 2020 by Bronty

[tth2]

47

[sfilosa]

I few random points:

* On the $100k or more discussion, it doesn't matter if some one is a long time collector and has built up a million dollar collection that they bought/sold with only $20k 30 years ago. That's the same with every investment/investor. There are only a few actual "jobs" that pay incredibly high salaries. Most billionaires invested a small amount in their business, but over time but their equity/stock in their company became worth billions. It's not like they "physically worked" more than anyone else. My saying is if you are really rich, it's because you got lots of other people to "work hard" not that you had to work hard. Only 24 hours in a day.

* After spending the past five years very active in this hobby, I realized how many collectors DON'T post on any boards (especially CAF). There are so many pieces that I would be interested in buying but search CAF, all of Heritage's auctions over the past 20 years and other auction sites, and maybe 10-15% of high quality material is shown or sold. So there are plenty of other collectors who have hundreds to million dollar collections that we don't "see". Maybe some dealers know most of these people. I actually went back to a Heritage Auction after six months and looked at the top 30+ sales to see how many were posted on CAF. I think it was 2.

 

  

[rlextherobot]

I'm super fascinated by this auction for all the different factors that are at play: Spidey being all over the broader cultural consciousness via the MCU and Spiderverse movies, McFarlane's becoming something of a legend (seriously, the Toddmeister has a crazy amount of cultural capital thanks to things like putting himself in his awful Spawn cartoons and buying his home run baseballs, people outside comics know the name), the shortage of comparable art being available... seems like a real perfect storm. 

[vodou]

1 hour ago, Bronty said:

If we were able to truly appreciate art only for the sake of the art we would not be limiting ourselves to comic art in the first place.

My favorite (for the Art) acquisition this year cost less than $500 'all in' and is not comic art.

However it is from an out of favor market sector, a massive oil on canvas with a $1,200 frame job included

But really, you guys should all keep beating each other up (and your net worth too) by all bidding on the same 250 lots every Monday night

[Bronty]

3 minutes ago, vodou said:

My favorite (for the Art) acquisition this year cost less than $500 'all in' and is not comic art.

However it is from an out of favor market sector, a massive oil on canvas with a $1,200 frame job included

 

ha, nice!

As for concentrating in one sector, I don't think there's anything wrong with that... if eyes wide open

[vodou]

1 minute ago, Bronty said:

As for concentrating in one sector, I don't think there's anything wrong with that... if eyes wide open

Nothing wrong with concentrating at all, over half my collection is grouping (artist, genre, both) of 50 or more pieces per group.

But the fact that I work so many groups is diversification in itself and as one (or more groups) get overheated, others are cooling and that's where I put new money to work. Standard cyclical value rotation method.

[ShallowDan]

5 minutes ago, vodou said:

My favorite (for the Art) acquisition this year cost less than $500 'all in' and is not comic art.

However it is from an out of favor market sector, a massive oil on canvas with a $1,200 frame job included

But really, you guys should all keep beating each other up (and your net worth too) by all bidding on the same 250 lots every Monday night

Funny you should mention this.  I've been renovating an older house with wide halls and high ceilings and decided that it could use something with more visual ummph than offered by a standard size piece of art.  During Heritage's Fine Art auction earlier this year I picked up an oil landscape that is absolutely huge (65" x 43" IIRC).  Same as yours, it was less than $500.  The dedicated freight required to ship it was obviously much greater than a typical buy, but it's still the most affordable thing on a per-square-inch basis I'll probably ever have hanging on the walls.