New High Prices for Viper Artwork

[uphillbattle]

New set put up. Just under 2 days left remaining for these.

they're pretty low overall, but I'm expecting some of them, especially the Viper Sampler Vol. 1 cover art and an H scene frame from F-40 (for some reason) to skyrocket during the last half hour. But I'm going to see If I can snipe one or two. If anyone from here also plans to try and claim some let me know so we can avoid a bidding war with eachother lol.

[黒い灯影]

shame i couldn't bid on this round, i put in like 5000 yen on the miki drawing, but i was traveling during the ending times

[uphillbattle]

Seller made just about $3900. 

They were all relatively low, with one frame selling for just over $100. The auctions were extended by almost 2 hours because of sniping wars for a few frames. The Viper Sampler Vol. 1 promo art shot close to $1000 in a span of like 2 minutes. I was auto outbid immediately as well for the CTR and RSR frames after I put in a max bid of $150.

Time to wait and see what line work he has for next month 

[JG]

I put about $200 toward the CTR and M1 art but lost them.

On the other hand, no one else seemed to notice a couple of other real gems pass though during the same hour: a pair of posters (or double-sided?) for original Guyna-rock and Reserve. I got them at base price, 1000 yen each (or about $9 for the pair) because no one else noticed how utterly rare these must be after about 33 years. (I'd never seen a set of either in the nearly 20 years I've been buying up Sogna/VIPER goodies.)

[uphillbattle]

Those posters are great JG, I'm jealous. I honestly would probably value those even more; literally because of the fact they are very rare but official Sogna merch.



And honestly, as much as I'd love to win and own one of these "original" pieces at auction that are constantly going up once a month, it just makes me ponder the authenticity of them even more. We know it comes from the same seller who we can confidently assume is a freelance work-for-hire artist, possibly the real deal and has been doing it for decades, at least to the point he knows how valuable Sogna stuff are. 

I get it, there can be hundreds of slides per game, and he probably has done work for all of them, but so many promotional and cover art production pieces are being put up every month as well; there can't be many of those compared to animation slides. For all we know, this guy could be replicating the pieces and passing them off as original production pieces when he puts them up for auction. If he doesn't have any leftover stock of animation sheets, one can still buy cel sheets (more expensive now, but still available) and the animation paper that goes with them too, including the ACME style hole punched ones. So it can be a little sketch (pun intended) when bidding on these. But a lot of the pieces he puts up do have wear and tear marks over the years and really do look like the real deal, I probably just have sore loser auction syndrome    Oh well, I can't help it and will probably keep putting in bid attempts anyway

[uphillbattle]

Talk about timing, but I checked right after my last post, and true enough, a new batch is on auction with about 4 days left! This is a pretty good batch if you ask me! One of them is an actual painted animation cel for Viper BTR!

[uphillbattle]

I think i'm going to try and focus on getting this piece. 

[JG]

So I did win an art auction lately, but not one from that seller whose bids tend to reach 40,000 yen or more.

I got this one for a more "bargain" price of 27,280 yen ($183.87) - which I think is fair given that it's unique art and not one frame of a sequence. Plus its one of the few The Devil Came arts I really like because of the facial expressions.

This was the only Sogna piece they offered at the time (along with a dozen or so other animation draqings, most of which were animes I didn't recognize) and they haven't posted more so I think it was a one-time seller.

[uphillbattle]

So I did win an art auction lately, but not one from that seller whose bids tend to reach 40,000 yen or more.

I got this one for a more "bargain" price of 27,280 yen ($183.87) - which I think is fair given that it's unique art and not one frame of a sequence. Plus its one of the few The Devil Came arts I really like because of the facial expressions.

This was the only Sogna piece they offered at the time (along with a dozen or so other animation draqings, most of which were animes I didn't recognize) and they haven't posted more so I think it was a one-time seller.

I'd say that is more than worth it given the other options we have. Great pick-up as usual

[uphillbattle]

just wow, the V16 Rise girls cat piece I kept my eye on was extended for 2 hours and went to a final tally of just above $1430, way above the range i expected. Absolutely insane

Another easy $3000 in total for this set. CTR pieces seem to consistently be a favorite to bid on.

[JG]

Yeah, and a couple of them weren't even good pictures in my opinion. Neither the Lilia photo nor the Miki ending wearing bath towel seemed particularly worth the money they got. The Miki heart shirt looked to be better quality then either of those two but went for less (but still north of $200.) The others were all in the several hundred dollar range.

I was in on the colored Ruri cel up to 35,000 yen but tapped out at that point and let the other bidder have it for slightly above that amount (35,800 final price.) I thought it was good art, colored, and a lesser known character drawn by one of the lesser known artists in the series, so I rightly suspected it would be the best deal. But I didn't like it enough to keep bidding upwards on it.

I kind of expected the Rise cat girl art to be highly desirable, and sure enough it was. I'd have loved that art, but expected it to be well beyond what I wanted to pay for it (and was.)


Frankly, I was more surprised that one of the rare RSR telecas was also on Yahoo Auctions ending this morning and topped out at a staggering 101,000 yen, blowing way past the previous 40,600 record I'd seen on the Series 3 art book cover teleca. The previous two times I'd seen this RSR teleca were a more modest (and reasonable) 5,000 and 8,000 yen. I really don't see how anyone can pay $650-ish for a single teleca, given how small they are and non-uniqueness. Clearly anything very rare in VIPER world is just skyrocketing in premium pricing, if even telecas are now topping 100K.

[uphillbattle]

right, a lot of CTR pieces which are very basic and non unique seem to still go for prices well beyond I can/would pay. CTR must have been very popular in Japan. Once I saw those going for the prices they were getting, I knew it was going to be another folly to try and bid on anything. 

speaking of.. Yowza!  that is one expensive teleca! That one snuck by me. It's literally an in-game frame with teleca info slapped over it!! The seller only had to post a single low quality front picture for people to go bonkers over it; didn't even put up a picture of the back of it.


All of this just solidifies our conclusion all along with Sogna material.
If it's very rare at all it will always go for a very high amount, and if it happens to be a promotional art piece, be prepared to pay a premium on top of that, and if it's an H-scene period (In-game frame or not) be prepared to pay an absolutely insane premium. 

[JG]

Games, art books, and most figurines have pretty much stayed in the same price range for the last 10 years or so. Its really only the original art and telephone cards that seem to be accelerating upwards.

And with the Japanese yen dropping like a ten ton weight over the last couple of years compared to dollar (see attachment), we westerners really should be seeing better prices now than we did, but we aren't. People just gone crazy I guess.

[uphillbattle]

Games, art books, and most figurines have pretty much stayed in the same price range for the last 10 years or so. Its really only the original art and telephone cards that seem to be accelerating upwards.

And with the Japanese yen dropping like a ten ton weight over the last couple of years compared to dollar (see attachment), we westerners really should be seeing better prices now than we did, but we aren't. People just gone crazy I guess.

I wish that were so, but my cost of living has gone up dramatically the past few years, practically offsetting any better pricing we aren’t seeing, so its actually been worse for me personally 

[JG]

Well, I mean it doesn't help within your own market. But US dollars and British Pounds (and to a bit lesser extent, Euro as well) should have greater buying power in Japan. Five years ago if I wanted to buy something priced 5000 yen, I'd expect to pay about $45 USD. Now I can buy it for about $32. So all this art that used to start about 20,000 yen used to be about $180 and should now be about $130. Instead its approaching twice that for even the cheapest art (I'd say 35,000 is the new floor)

[JG]

The art prices could be coming back down a bit in prices. Today's batch had several items under the 35,000 "new floor" I mentioned, including a Cala black and white for 30,009 yen ($195.66) and two different Miki black and white pieces for 19,601 yen ($127.80) and 15,009 yen ($97.86) Though the Rise girls art piece came just shy of the record at 300,000 yen even (the record remains 300,099 yen) though with the exchange rate continuing to slide we're nowhere near the top USD equivalent value.

I did win one of today's art pieces up for auction though: the Devil Came piece with suspicious giggling Ratty and Carrera upset in the background. 41,400 yen, $269.94. This was my second favorite piece in the auctions and ended at less than 1/7th the cost of my first choice, the Rise piece.

[Moge]

Appreciate you posting these. Being able to see the raw sketches is very cool.

[黒い灯影]

https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/r1153952464
that's the highest i've seen a viper cel go for 371,200 yen

[JG]

Yeah, that would be a new record, both in yen and in converted dollars (which fluctuates due to exchange rates) - $2,611.22, breaking the old records of 300,099 yen and $2,340.71.

I bid up on this one but came up short. I really wanted it because its hard to find the non-naked ones, its unique art, cover art for a product, and actually two cels, one of Chomi and one of Ruri laid atop each other.