Another year is coming to a close and with it another crop of impressive auction results. Scoop spoke to Barry Sandoval, director of comic operations for Heritage Auctions about the company’s comics and comic art auctions, animation art auctions, surprises and pricing trends, plus an exclusive on what’s to come in 2017.

Scoop: How many major auctions did you hold in 2016?
Barry Sandoval (BS): Well, we had four comics and comic art auctions and two animation auctions.

Scoop: What was your sell-through rate?
BS: Well over 99%. The auction we just had a couple of weeks ago was 100%. I think we’ve literally had less than ten unsold lots, total, over the entire year. Of course, we don’t have that many reserves in the first place, so that helps.

Scoop: Is that on par for Heritage?
BS: Well, in our early years when we were just starting we had quite a few reserves. Now that we’ve built up so much pricing history people don’t feel that they need them anymore. I think we’ve been above 99% for a couple of years now.

Scoop: Let’s talk about pricing trends of the year for comics. Which titles excelled in 2016?
BS: Well, everything with Detective and Batman those are two titles that have been great. We had a lot of quality material from those series. The auction two weeks ago had the Mile High pedigree run of Pep Comics #1-21 those did well over half a million dollars just for 21 comics, but I ascribe that less to the Pep title, although it’s a desirable title, than to the ridiculously nice copies we had.

Scoop: Which first appearances saw the biggest draw?
BS: All the movie related stuff that you would expect, Action #1, Amazing Fantasy #15.

Scoop: How about original art, which covers garnered impressive prices?
BS: As for comic book covers, our top result was the Swamp Thing #1 cover which was about $191,200. That was our highest cover result of the year. The second highest price for a cover this year was the John Romita Spider-Man #62 cover that was $179,250.

Scoop: What about within animation?
BS: In our June auction we had a Fantasia concept painting from 1940 sell for $65,725. Our second biggest lot of the year was concept art by Eyvind Earle from 1957 and that sold for $40,630. The other stat that we’re pretty proud of is that we’ve now had four animation art auctions in a row that were more than $1 million. I think it’s been a while since anybody has done that and we’re excited about that category for that reason to have a hand in reviving that market.

Scoop: For those particular auctions, how many lots were included to garner that kind of result?
BS: We usually have somewhere between 800 to 1,200 lots per auction. The exception to that was in 2015 when we did the art of Laika Studios auction. That only had about 250 lots and that was over $1 million. I think the number of lots in those auctions is probably going to go down even further as we get more and more high end animation material. Our weekly comic auctions used to have a relatively small animation section and now we’re selling 50 to 100 animation lots a week in our weekly auctions. We want to do the same thing we’ve done with comics, to try and make those weekly auctions something that you can’t afford not to check every week for animation the way it already is for comics.  

Scoop: What prices surprised you this year?
BS: A couple that come to mind are when we had the Startling #49 Mile High copy graded 9.6 that was in our August auction that sold for $101,575. We certainly thought that it was very desirable, but we saw that more as being in the mid-five figures. I certainly didn’t see that being a six-figure piece. That’s one that comes to mind in the comic book field.

In the comic art field, also in our August auction, the Michael Golden original art for the envelop that the Doctor Strange portfolio came out in back in 1983. We definitely thought it was a very cool piece, a very large piece, so we brought it to San Diego to show off a little bit. Typically, things that aren’t published comic art don’t do as well as an actual cover and Doctor Strange, over the years, hasn’t been the highest dollar character this ended up selling for $62,737. A lot of people at San Diego Con hoped we’d bring it and wanted to take a look at it. Obviously a couple of bidders fell in love with it even more than we thought.

Another one that comes to mind is the George Pérez Justice League #200 cover that sold for $77,000. I’m pretty sure that’s a record for George Pérez.

In the strip art field, we had some really, for us, heartwarming prices. We had Terry and the Pirates daily from 1936 featuring the Dragon Lady that sold for $26,000. Those were a few examples of things that we certainly all thought would do well but we’d be lying if we said we thought it would get to quite that level.

The most obvious example of all was the Action Comics #1 graded 5.5. That was close to $1 million, it was $956,000. That’s another one where we thought it would be mid to high six-figures but we didn’t exactly see $956,000 coming.

Scoop: Did you see a lot of growth in your customer base throughout 2016?
BS: We do definitely think it’s been expanding. Some of the crossover interest from the various movies and TV shows, I think, has definitely helped. We’ve got a pretty strong oversees presence too. We have European offices we have a Hong Kong office. Certain categories do well with European bidders in particular, vintage strip art being an example there. We’ve seen some international growth and then we’ve gotten some increased interest too from people who are already Heritage customers in some other category, be it vintage hand bags or coins or natural history or what have you, who might’ve known we were doing comic stuff all along but now with some of the characters being even bigger household names than they were before, that’s gotten people to venture into the hobby a little bit farther.

Scoop: You mentioned the characters from movies and TV that have boosted sales because people are learning more about a character or didn’t know a character at all and are now interested. Can you forecast any expectations for 2017 of titles or characters you expect will do well in auctions?
BS: It’s tough to say just because it seems like in the last year that even just first appearances of characters who haven’t yet been in any movie or TV show seemed to have gone up. I guess from people thinking, “Okay I want to get ahead of whatever the next trend is for any good character. I want to secure a copy of their first appearance.” So it just seems like no key book can be had cheaply anymore and all it takes is a rumor sometimes that’s not even confirmed just for something to take off. I’d love to be able to predict what will happen next year. I could invest accordingly! It’s really hard to say because nothing’s cheap. That’s the key right now. What’s going to go up even farther from there is tough to say.

Scoop: Can you give us a preview now of art and comics you’ll offer next year?
BS: I’ve been putting together brochures and stuff for our next auction. One thing we’re really excited about for February, I mentioned that the Mile High Pep Comics did so well, we’re going to have Mile High runs of Blue Ribbon Comics and Hit Comics in the February sale. If they sell for anywhere near what we just got for the Peps, we’d certainly be thrilled. Another highlight has carried over from the last sale in that we debuted the Eric Sack Collection, which was called “Masterpieces of Underground Art.” The first round of that was well over $1 million, actually more than $1 million and a half. We’re going to have even more from that collection in February. It was very interesting to see how well the best quality underground material can do.

Then, I actually have a world exclusive for you. You’re the first person outside of our company to hear about this, we just got a very nice consignment from the family of R.F. Outcault. This is a group of Buster Brown Sunday originals and there’s also some Yellow Kid art that’s from the 1895 to 1918 range. We just had a Buster Brown sell for about $38,000 a couple weeks ago. We’re very excited to have a new group of these. Fresh material that’s been in the family’s hands all along. Like I mentioned earlier, there’s a lot of interest in vintage strip art lately, so that’s something we’re really excited about for the next auction.

Scoop: Have you had much Buster Brown and Yellow Kid in the past couple of years?
BS: Very little. If we sell two Buster Browns in a year, that’s a lot. I think there’s been years where we haven’t sold a single one in the entire year. I don’t think we’ve even sold ten total in the 15 years that we’ve been doing this. I believe in our 15 years we’ve only sold one piece of Yellow Kid art that’s from Outcault’s hand and this will be just the second one. That’s why it’s great to have a few at once. We were telling the consigners we’ve never even seen two originals next to each other at the same time before.

Scoop: Have you set dates for upcoming auctions?
BS: The next comic auction is definitely going to be in February 23-24 in Dallas. The next animation sale will be sometime in the spring, but that doesn’t have a set date. But then a third thing that we’re going to be doing that also doesn’t have a date yet, but will also be sometime in the spring is doing an auction out in California in conjunction with Knott’s Berry Farm where it’s treasures from the amusement park, from their whole history. That’s not strictly a comic art auction, but it’s something our department’s doing that we’re also excited about.