Heritage March 2020 Signature Auction
Welcome to our Heritage March 2020 Signature auction recap! As always there was plenty of great material in this auction. With the current macroeconomic happenings and stock market volatility I was wondering if bidding may be a little more timid than usual.
In general I don’t think there was much of an effect. Who knows what would of happened however if the auction had been a week later. Off to the art!
The featured pieces were 3 John Romita covers. Two silver age Amazing Spider-man covers and the cover for Luke Cage, Hero For Hire #1. The ASM #51 cover finished at a strong $312k for the content and the ASM #72 which had no Spider-man finished at an “affordable” $84k. These results show the effect on price having the main character on a cover is. Artistically I actually like the #72 cover better and I can’t imagine many 12 cent Amazing Spider-man covers selling cheaper. The Luke Cage cover is a first appearance and “key” piece but boy, the actual art is not necessarily jaw dropping. At $156k it closed about $25k higher than I think the majority of collectors would expect.
Also available was a rare Bill Watterson Calvin and Hobbes strip that finished just over $100k, as well as an amazing Winsor McCay Little Nemo in Slumberland piece that finished at $168k. There were also a few other major pieces that had high reserves that were not met so we won’t cover them.
My personal favorites in this auction were the ridiculous Frank Brunner Doctor Strange pieces. These pieces were all choice material and i’m sure collectors of the art were very excited to have such a strong selection at auction. I know looking at the pieces helped me form a new appreciation, and a Brunner Doctor Strange example is now on my want list radar. My favorite, the least expensive, a Shuma-Gorath page from the Marvel Premiere run.
Up for grabs was this wonderful Bill Sienkiewicz New Mutants cover which hammered for $46k. Right on target price wise for such a splendid piece.
Next up was an impactful and significant page from the infamous Miracleman #15. A very strong result at $26k for this piece of comic history Now let’s talk about some crazy prices. The biggest candidates to me have to be the three Erik Larsen Amazing Spider-man pieces up for grabs. A MJ page sold for a whopping $14k, a splashy Spidey page sold for a serious $26k and an ok cover sold for a mind boggling $50k. I think a lot of people looked at the Larsen Spidey market as art you could settle for if you could not afford McFarlane. These results crush those notions.
Staying in the early 90’s Jim Lee X-men continues to be strong. A great team panel page with Wolverine claws out action fetch $26k(same price that the Larsen ASM page got, which is absolutely insane to me as I view the Jim Lee piece as drastically more desirable.) A mediocre double page spread fetched almost $20k, i’m guessing because of the Psylocke panel? Late 80’s early 90’s Marvel art was very strong overall in this auction.
Heritage is usually pretty strong when it comes to results. However their auctions are always big enough for a few pieces to slip under the radar. The best deal of the auction in my opinion was the very early 2000AD #3 Judge Dredd 4 page story that sold for $18k. $4500 per page for these seems like a steal value wise.
Finally let’s finish by talking about the Mike Mignola pieces. There are usually a few in every signature auction and this one had a variety of pieces at different price levels. As a fan I follow the Mignola art market closely and sometime results can be a bit all over the place. In this auction however prices all made sense! At the bottom a Phantom Stranger page sold for a very reasonable $960. It’s nice that budget conscious collectors can still purchase Mignola art for three figures. My personal pick as a fan of Roger and the late 90’s early 2000’s Mignola style was a nice page from Conqueror Worm that sold for just under $2k. The top dog was a nice Wolves of St. August splash that sold for a very strong $19k. CAG will be doing a writeup focusing solely on Mignola art eventually so look for that in the future.
Heritage Signature auctions always have a lot of material(over 600 pieces in this auction) so it is impossible to talk about them all. I will however try to cover different material in each auction, but will usually have some bias towards pieces I personally find the most interesting. The next big one starts in April. Until then happy Collecting!
