Post-auction analysis - OMGs!, LOLs!, WTFs!, whatev....

[kovacs01]

Yeah haha I think a few APF names have been there.  I like to know or at least potentially have an idea who I'm bidding against. 

I preferred it on eBay also.  Some people would see who bought fakes and what not and would email them to let them know.  It's also fun to see familiar names - dealers, homies from APF, etc.

My name is usually known, but I do change it from time to time.  It isn't FickenChucker anymore!

[eatbrie]

I just checked Bruce's upcoming print auction and WOW, I am totally amazed at what some people are willing to spend on pieces of paper that were made in the last decade.  I buy prints from time to time when they drop but I don't follow the market and it's always a shock.  The sale hasn't even happened yet so there is room for prices to go much higher.

Bonkers.

T

[Neo]

The print genre is thriving.  When there are limited editions that are in the hundreds - the highest bids currently at eMovie are editions of around 400-500, it shows how many people are looking for them.  Kinda like Star Wars with collectors in the hundreds of thousands to millions, some stuff that isn't extremely rare sells for tens to a couple hundred thousand bucks.  I was looking at the prices from low to high in this eMovie auction, and some of my favorites are the less popular ones.

[eatbrie]

I just checked it all. 

I like the way Emovie arranged them.  Since I don't really collect anything smaller than 24x36in, they made it easy.  Also, a print should be flawless.  I like my posters in very good condition, but prints are above that.

I came up with 15 prints I might be interested in.  So many I already own (I guess about half of the 24x36in ones), so it will be interesting to see how high some of them go.  Like I said, I don't follow the market, so this will be a good gauge.  Also, I just can't spend $1k + on something that dropped at $65.  It's just not right.  I own the Moss C3PO, but for some reasons, I missed out on the others.  Never thought they would be so expensive.  So these are prints I will never own unfortunately.  So be it.

T

[BruceH]

I came up with 15 prints I might be interested in. 
T

How many did you get?

[Tob]

I had a few things on my watch list, but they went for beyond what I wanted to pay.

It was a fun auction to watch - it's nice to see them all lined up and presented so well and interesting to see which prints folk are willing to spend the big bucks on. I think the print market is quite soft at the moment, so the results look pretty good to me. The Paul Mann James Bond prints are lovely, I wasn't surprised to see them go high.

[BruceH]

I had a few things on my watch list, but they went for beyond what I wanted to pay.

It was a fun auction to watch - it's nice to see them all lined up and presented so well and interesting to see which prints folk are willing to spend the big bucks on. I think the print market is quite soft at the moment, so the results look pretty good to me. The Paul Mann James Bond prints are lovely, I wasn't surprised to see them go high.

That was exactly my reaction. It will be interesting to see if the new MUTANT company revives interest. If done well, I think it surely will.

[eatbrie]

I wasn't aware that the print market was soft.  So are these results below normal?  They seem quite high to me.  Like you mentioned the Bonds.  I own them all and didn't spend more than $100 on any of them less than 5 years ago.  Bruce, were you expecting more or are you happy with the results?  And I got 2, but very small things.  Like I said, because I usually get what I want at drops, it's very difficult for me to spend 2x on a print, let alone x20 (like the Bonds).

T

[Tob]

I wasn't aware that the print market was soft.

From what I see in online collector groups, the 'mid range' prints seem to be selling for a bit less over the last year or so - perhaps some oversupply for certain titles, collectors streamlining their collections, increased cost of commissions mean less money for secondary market, high cost of shipping, cost of living priorities etc. So yes, I agree with you that results from last night look pretty healthy. I'd be happy if I was a consignor!

[Neo]

The high bids on the 2 in my watch list quadrupled in the last few minutes.  A lot of interesting work was fun to browse through, though.

[Neo]

My name is usually known, but I do change it from time to time.  It isn't FickenChucker anymore!

Wow.   It must've been tough to think of a better name than that.

There were some prints at eMovie from an artist with a similar style name: Rucking Fotten.

[ddilts399]

Interesting, I was thinking I would not be happy if that was my collection that just sold. The first 2 pages realized good returns, next few pages were average, after about page 5 it was brutal.  A good percentage of these were sold at a loss to the consignor.

[Neo]

Looks like at least the first 20 pages, probably up to about page 25 (out of 30) everything sold for more than what they originally sold for.  Of course fixed price sales can net more $, but who knows how long those will take, plus the labor of selling each individually, of course.  What other print auctions this size with the same or similar material have been better?  I haven't done a lot of research on the topic, but all in all it seems like it was pretty darn good results. 

[ddilts399]

Set to 80 per page, starting top of page 6 the high price is 136.00. You cant get in a commission for under 125 with shipping right now. Galleries will still run around 75.00 shipped, but page 6-8 MIGHT be break even, everything after are money losers for the consignor. Yes they get some of it back on the high end, but I would not want to look at the per piece breakdown of that payment in the mail.

[Neo]

OK, with the commission, those are money losers for consignors who bought them at the drop price.  Don't all places have fees for sellers?  Even eBay has higher fees at that price.  It seems like a fairly high percentage of this stuff has gained a lot of popularity and is selling many times higher than initially, and a lot still has some folks interested months to years after the drops, at around and often above their original drop prices.

[BruceH]

I told the consignors to only send "better" quality ones. THOSE are the ones that do well at auction.

Lesser ones rarely do well, and why should they? Plus, there were a fair amount in lesser condition, and with prints, which all started out perfect, that really hurts the selling price.

But the nice ones did quite well overall!

[marklawd]

Lesser ones rarely do well.

I seem to remember ALL my mondo prints including lesser ones did well when Bruce sold them in April 2022.

Mark

[eatbrie]

Interesting, I was thinking I would not be happy if that was my collection that just sold. The first 2 pages realized good returns, next few pages were average, after about page 5 it was brutal.  A good percentage of these were sold at a loss to the consignor.

I've said it before, I really have no idea what these things are worth (and I still don't, to be honest).  I collect them for the same reason I collect posters, because I love movies and some of them have good designs.  Out of 1,000 I own, probably 300 were mistakes (prints I didn't see prior to purchasing them).  The rest I consider fairly good, good or excellent.  Most of the prints I own were in the first 3 pages (of 80), so to me it seemed very high, considering those prints initially sold for something between $60-150.  The lower half of the sale were bad prints, bad designs, smaller size and not in pristine condition, so it does make total sense to me.

Also, at some point, there might just be too many.  I am still waiting for 60 prints that I have paid for and not yet received.  Half of those, I don't even know what they look like.  That's ridiculous.  I need to do better.

T

[Neo]

When Marklawd sold his collection at eMovie, I think the market was at about its hottest point, and the sale got an additional boost with the top Mondo guys linking to eMovie on their social media.  Of course that kind of promotion can't be done for every sale and it seems like that was about the peak and best possible result of this stuff.

It's still a hot market though, IMO.  Some of the most popular works have soared at the upper end of the market; many are from the early to mid 2010s and are still very popular.  The less popular stuff may never gain that kind of traction but who knows?  A lot of the stuff that is not at the extreme high end still sells for a few times the drop prices.  Personally, most of my favorites are not from the most popular, but they're popular enough that they sell high enough above the drop prices that I'm too cheap to pay that much haha.  Thankfully I acquired a few of my favorites way back before the spike in the market. 

[BwanaDik]

Yet, too many (and they don't stop producing) and we have reached the hottest point, agree.  Buyers are realising this so they are selling now which doesn't help.   I was collecting fine art before (prints, lithos, etc.) and got tired of the fine art market (that's a decade ago); so, I looked for something new to collect and for sure my choice was mondo or movie posters.  I chose movie posters for two reasons: a) I found movie posters to be more authentic, mondos have authenticity to me, even if done by well-known designers... b) not keen with the design, it is very US, very ExpressoBeans.   Still shocked by the price that some prints reached.

I have an "anonymous" username on Emovie.  My online nickname is also problematic, "Fuko uchi" means "naked mole rat" in kiswahili (and also "empty pocket/bag").  Some website will simply refuse "fuko" as nickname, too close to "f*ck you"... so I do like "Rucking Fotten", I register by mixing letters. 

[BruceH]

I feel that greed set in in the late 2010s. Too many prints (many not very good quality), edition sizes too big, and too many smaller ones (cheaper to print, but most collectors like Thierry prefer the 24x36). Some are cheesily photoshopped and look like they took 5 minutes to create.

Personally I would think the lesser ones will likely never go up in value, and I would prefer to never auction them. I am making a greater and greater effort to get consignors to stop sending them. Hopefully the low prices on these will cause that to happen.

marklawd's prints all did well because of two reasons. He did a great job picking which ones to buy, AND they were mostly all super early ones. If I get another collection like that I feel it too will do well.

[Neo]

It's difficult to impossible to say whether something will become popular.  The photoshopped stuff that some folks view as not as good as hand painted, etc. styles, may be more popular in the future.  It's like a Jackson Pollock vs. an intricate hand done design that arguably took much more effort to make. 

When the scalpers saw their opportunity to buy anything from Mondo or other popular places, I think that was an important time in the market.  The market gets more and more flooded with new stuff but it's interesting to see people's new work.

[Crazy Vick]

The print genre is thriving.  When there are limited editions that are in the hundreds - the highest bids currently at eMovie are editions of around 400-500, it shows how many people are looking for them.  Kinda like Star Wars with collectors in the hundreds of thousands to millions, some stuff that isn't extremely rare sells for tens to a couple hundred thousand bucks.  I was looking at the prices from low to high in this eMovie auction, and some of my favorites are the less popular ones.

Pffft, prints. No ephemera there, just manufactured value from someone younger than me.
Give me a dirty smelly pinholed paper poster with tape and writing on the back my dad or his dad seen at a dive cinema, any day. 
My opinion!

[Neo]

Pffft, prints. No ephemera there, just manufactured value from someone younger than me.
Give me a dirty smelly pinholed paper poster with tape and writing on the back my dad or his dad seen at a dive cinema, any day. 
My opinion!

It's of course much different than original posters.  I see what you mean though, how they're "instant collectibles."  The "dirty, smelly" posters that somehow survived are interesting in the sense that they're in limited quantities because they are ephemera and were not made to be collectible.

[Neo]

This sold within a few hours of it being listed.  Not the best condition, and pretty good result.