Has the world of crypto-currency and money laundering at last intruded upon comic-book collecting?
As reported here, a single page of Mike Zeck's art for Secret Wars #8, featuring the first appearance of the black symbiote that would become first Spider-Man's new costume and then the villainous Venom, sold for a record $3.36 million dollars at auction on Friday. It's said that the reason for the high price is Venom's role in the recent Spider-Man films, making the character a "hot property".
It is further speculated that the price was actually paid in crypto-currency; such deals for artwork (though never before for comics art, as far as anyone knows) are said to be a frequent method for laundering illicit income, especially by foreign entities.
Certainly, absent the current interest in Venom, the page would never have reached such an astronomical price--the pre-auction estimate was $330,000 (and I think even that is incredibly inflated).
1 comment:
What an interesting thought. I saw this had happened but not the larger ramifications.
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