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The OFFICIAL "This week in your ORIGINAL ART collection?"
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12,725 posts in this topic

2 hours ago, sfilosa said:

Was able to buy this from a CAF member after making it known that if he ever wanted to sell, I was a buyer. After three years, I've add another nice piece to my collection. Any other collectors who might have SSOC covers they want to sell, please email me at sfilosa@aol.com.

1669239398_NoremEarl-SavageSwordofConan164.thumb.jpg.84958a2b8ca25391eb76410d257c415b.jpg

Very, very nice.

Earl offered your painting direct to me in 2002 (or 03?) for $2k.

He was not up on e-mail; we exchanged hand-written letters through the United States Postal Service :) 

Can you imagine that I didn't leap all over that? Yeah. But it was always on my mind, there's just so much art out there...always 100 ways to spend the same money, and usually any of them are equal in visual and ROI appeal too. At the time I was trying to put together a 3-4 painting deal for $1,500/ea or something, but it just never quite worked out to everyone's satisfaction. So the $5k or whatever went off to other artworks instead.

At some point, many years later (2014ish?), whoever (daughter, niece, something like that?) was helping him on eBay listed it for $10-12k. I gave up at that point ;)

Congratulations!

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Cool story. $2k sounds like around the right price in 2002. I'm guessing whatever art you bought increased proportionately to this one. I am going to start a thread at some point on this topic, but I do feel that this type of art is undervalued. I say that because Frazetta's are incredibly expensive (sketches going for $70k and crappy paintings for $300k or more), yet there is no "second tier" artist getting anywhere near that price. Their best art is not getting what his worst art gets in general. At some point, some of the second tier artist's best work will break open on pricing. ^^

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On 9/2/2020 at 11:03 AM, Nuttzo said:

As a newbie I'm hoping I'm able to keep my collection villain heavy and pre-2000's. 

That’s my collecting standard as well, only my era of Marvel Comics art collecting is 1970’s to early 1990’s.

 

11 hours ago, ADAMANTIUM said:

I enjoy the last panel of this! The way mojirn or thor's hammer hits the head and ricochet's

All that's missing is a tink sound :)

 

Thanks!  I enjoy the large art panels of action that focuses on the villains and agree with rebounding effect of Mjolnir.

Edited by Benedict Judas Hel
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32 minutes ago, sfilosa said:

but I do feel that this type of art is undervalued.

For as long as I've been an observer and participant (buyer), 30 years, and looking back to 70s and 80s catalogs too..."painted" art has broadly lagged and in a major way. I could write a sweet little essay on "why" but instead...just ask Mitch. I'm sure he can explain very easily the ratio of buyers b/w to painted for his 45+ years dealing both!

Painted art...buy what you love, cuz you may never get out (inflation/opportunity cost adjusted) "even" even :(

35 minutes ago, sfilosa said:

Cool story. $2k sounds like around the right price in 2002. I'm guessing whatever art you bought increased proportionately to this one.

No. See paragraphs directly above.

I've done much, much better...unless you paid significantly more than $30k, cuz what I bought instead (many multiples of Cockrum 2nd run X-Men pages, splashes, and numerous 1980s Marvel covers...all in the "low hundreds" per each then), easily and universally exceeds 15x ROI (net of all taxes and SP/fees too). But I love it the way I love all my babies...NFS...so it doesn't really matter, except that I could afford to buy the Norem today but not what I bought instead, "today".

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Both your points are spot on. That will be the topic of my thread, color vs. line art. And yes, what you bought was way better of a return. I would guess a lot of art one could have bought had a better return, but not everything. Older DC art has lagged tremendously. Obviously I didn't know your specifics, but as you probably know, it is call opportunity costs. That said, based on your story, you didn't consciously say, "I don't want these paintings because I think X-Men art will be a better investment". You basically couldn't get the deal for the Norem paintings worked out, didn't buy them and bought something else (which is what happens). Sometimes that works out to your advantage and sometimes not.

And yes, you have to buy what you love!!!:foryou:

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25 minutes ago, sfilosa said:

That said, based on your story, you didn't consciously say, "I don't want these paintings because I think X-Men art will be a better investment". You basically couldn't get the deal for the Norem paintings worked out, didn't buy them and bought something else (which is what happens).

Kinda, sorta. Back then (well, let's not start lying today, so..."still" lol too lol ) all the money after basic bills went into art. At the time that was a healthy five figures annually. So, $5k going toward Bucket B instead of Bucket A wasn't going to change -notably- how fast Bucket A was filling otherwise. I always bought what I love (and is available as a value proposition -very important), with an eye toward what others seem to like too and that diversification is a good idea and fun as well. That's ("what I love") always been my benchmark against which all other deals had to (and have to) win against. In other words, let's come up with a deal so sexy in content and/or price that I just have to take a break from buying what I love to buying what I like...but only as an exception :)

In this case, the deal I tried to work with Norem would have resulted in my getting four paintings, let's say, and flipping three back out and keeping the best one back for myself, "for free". That math (free Norem SSOC painting and return of capital within a short period of time to be redeployed to...Buck A fillin'...) beat the benchmark, if it had worked, so I'd have gone with it. No deal? No problem - right back to Bucket A fillin' ;)

Let's credit a minor amount of genius to this whole thing but also a greater than usual appetite for risk taking in down so much Cockrum 2nd run X-Men at a time when anything other than Byrne and 1st run was...junk!! (Example: Paul Smith "good" panel pages...$300 or less, couldn't barely give 'em away!) Those Cockrums were plentiful "at the money", until...they weren't lol , and...NEXT!

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24 minutes ago, vodou said:

Kinda, sorta. Back then (well, let's not start lying today, so..."still" lol too lol ) all the money after basic bills went into art. At the time that was a healthy five figures annually. So, $5k going toward Bucket B instead of Bucket A wasn't going to change -notably- how fast Bucket A was filling otherwise. I always bought what I love (and is available as a value proposition -very important), with an eye toward what others seem to like too and that diversification is a good idea and fun as well. That's ("what I love") always been my benchmark against which all other deals had to (and have to) win against. In other words, let's come up with a deal so sexy in content and/or price that I just have to take a break from buying what I love to buying what I like...but only as an exception :)

In this case, the deal I tried to work with Norem would have resulted in my getting four paintings, let's say, and flipping three back out and keeping the best one back for myself, "for free". That math (free Norem SSOC painting and return of capital within a short period of time to be redeployed to...Buck A fillin'...) beat the benchmark, if it had worked, so I'd have gone with it. No deal? No problem - right back to Bucket A fillin' ;)

Let's credit a minor amount of genius to this whole thing but also a greater than usual appetite for risk taking in down so much Cockrum 2nd run X-Men at a time when anything other than Byrne and 1st run was...junk!! (Example: Paul Smith "good" panel pages...$300 or less, couldn't barely give 'em away!) Those Cockrums were plentiful "at the money", until...they weren't lol , and...NEXT!

First line is so true. Not calling you out, but revisionist history happens all the time. Ask someone who says they bought lots Amazon stock back in the late 90's instead of AOL stock and they can make up any story that makes them seem like a genius. They analyzed all the on-line sellers at the time and thought Amazon had the best model. But it could have been that they read a very bullish article one day about Amazon, bought the stock and the rest is history. If they read another article that day that said Amazon will never make it, they don't buy.  

I do think your buy four, sell three and keep the fourth for free is ALWAYS a good model. :golfclap:

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