Re: Rainmans New Project: 'No Country Killer'
No disrespect to any collectors, but I kinda wish some of the old timers (Day 1) Rainman collectors would chime in a little more.
I guess that would include me...my first Rainman figure was his initial version of Chaplin, and that was back in 2006.
For some time now, there has seemed to me to be a disjoint between Rainman's enterprise and the audience he's found here. In case anyone didn't know, before he began doing 1:6 figures Rainman was already a respected artist in the BJD (ball jointed doll) world. His company, Elfdoll, was and is quite well known in that realm. He was widely respected before his work was introduced here on the forum board.
The business model he and other figure artists follow can be researched (start with Tom Wolfe) if you use the term "fine art" to describe the "market." This business model is the same whether the artist is producing lithographs, photographs, silk screen, sculpture, or any work made in a reproducible medium. An edition is either "open," which means the artist may produce copies in perpetuity, or "closed," in which case it will usually be numbered. There is an implicit promise that all copies will be made in the same way, using exactly the same materials, and that when the edition is finished, the mold, negative, plate, etc will be retired and very possibly made unusable by scratching or breaking.
Resale prices that exceed the original price will lead to higher initial prices for new works as the artist grows in reputation. True value is literally whatever the market will bear, either when the artist releases it or on the resale market.
The buyers who gather here are, in the majority, collecting representations of characters from their favorite films. Most don't care whether the figure is the work of a lone artist's studio or a mass release from a commercial company. They just want it to look good. So naturally, conversations about why the "fine art" figures cost so much crop up. Most but not all of the collectors who gather in these custom threads have wandered into a very different environment without really realizing it. Building a collection of figures by world-class artists entails thinking about what you're going to do with your collection: catalog it, insure it, decide whether your eventual intention is to bequeath or liquidate, and remain engaged in the appropriate collecting market so you're attuned to your collections's current likely worth.
I own the Hot Toys Hellboy for which Howard Chan hired Gorae (Sang-Hyan Kim). I also own one of the original 20 Hellboy figures made earlier by Gorae, complete with the box and authenticity plaque. Honestly, I think most of the people here, looking at them side by side, would prefer the Hot Toys version, and think the Gorae original's coat wasn't screen-accurate, or that its hand-made system of moveable eyes was crude. But which do you suppose is more valuable? And which makes mine a collection either of figure art....or else very expensive tulip bulbs? Whichever turns out to be the case, I patronize (collect) artists, and sometimes they introduce me to characters I was unaware of. It's a nice arrangement that I find rewarding.
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and sorry to drone on so. Ain't it a blessing that I don't post as often as I used to?
