Hi all...coming out of lurk mode to add my 65,725 cents...

I was the underbidder on this page.

People tend to pigeonhole a person's motivations for doing something outside the norm...in this case bidding more than expected amount of money for a page of comic art.  Although I can't speak for my competitor who won the page, I had several reasons for bidding that high....but I don't think 'status' would be up on that list...as I'm sure most of you will attest to the fact that you've never even heard of me.  :) 

Although this is the penultimate page of the death of Phoenix...and not a splash and not a cover...for me that didn't matter...this page was the best page of the book, if not the whole run.  The emotion portrayed in her face in the 2nd and the last panels is unmatched....exhaustion, surprise, sadnesss, realization/revelation---then to fear, desperation and loss of self-control.  Without even reading the words...those two panels essentially tell the whole story of her descent. 

So for me it really wasn't so much status...nor a commodity to profit from.  Rather it's an awesome piece of artwork from the main title I collected as a kid...and I figured it was my only opportunity to ever buy it.

I have always wanted a page from 137...and this was the one page in 137 that I was willing to 'sell the farm' for...unfortunately my farm wasn't worth enough. :)  

BTW....I would not expect the prices of pages from your run on X-men to drop anytime soon...at least not until the people that collected the book when they were kids get older and die off in 40-50 years or so.  The collecting bug + a little nostalgia is a huge driving force for many people to empty their wallets (including myself!).  Later artists (or the latest 'hot' artist) will never carry the same nostalgic weight...

Thanks for reading!

-Will

"Here's a way to test the true personal value of art: "

I know, the fact that prices in the original art market are highly subjective is my point.

Because in terms of "fine art considerations" such as age, historical importance, placement within a stylistic development phase, technical skill and contemporary popularity, size and complexity of artwork, the fact that the artist is dead etc. that may to some extent be labelled "objective", a series like Caniff's Terry and the Pirates, especially a Sunday page, would be considered a comics equivalent of a Rembrandt.

In assessing its intrinsic "value", one would suppose such a piece to be worth more than a recent, small and fairly simple, yet beautiful piece with no special significance by an artist who is still very much alive.

That is what makes a lot of the current original art pricing so evocative of the speculator boom of the '90s.

Everybody knows that there is a multitude of reasons why a copy of Action Comics 1 from 1938 is worth a lot of money. A lot of those are fairly objective, having to do with historical significance, scarcity et al.

While in the 90s, freshly published comics with a million copy print-run were being squeezed into the stratosphere in terms of price.

That's my point. Something like a Terry and the Pirates page is like a copy of Action Comics issue 1.

Though I don't object to the fact that deep-pocket collectors aren't clued in on this. It means that at some point I might afford one, too.

John Byrne wrote: ...When civilians find out I have a comicbook collection, their first questions are "What's the oldest comic you have?" and "What's the most valuable comic you have?" Not necessarily in that order...

Those are also the most common two questions I am asked by the civilians who pop up at my shop.

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Is that her name these days? Given that Kara become Kara Zoe-El I would not be surprised. But "Ra's al Ghul" is (or was) a title, not a name.