“More times than I can remember, a spouse or child has
said to me, ‘If he wasn’t dead, I’d kill him all over again for leaving me with
this mess,’ ” said Greg Rohan, the president of Heritage Auctions.
اضافة اعلان
Most people tend to know what to do with traditional
investments after someone dies, he said, but when it comes to baseball cards,
first-edition books, coins and other collectibles, the loved ones dealing with
the estate can be stumped (and annoyed).
If some collectors of, say, vinyl figurines, seem to
have a gene that spurs them to dedicate entire rooms of their home to inanimate
rubbery friends, they are also, in many ways, just like everyone else. “People
don’t want to think about dying,” said Maggie Thompson, 80, a former senior
editor of Comic Buyer’s Guide, which was a newsmagazine that covered the comic
book industry. “I realize as I look around my rooms, my family is not going to
know what things are.”
Thompson, whose eclectic collection includes Polaroid
photos, film posters and comic book art, knows firsthand that not having a plan
can mean a lot of responsibility for survivors. Her brother, Paul Edgar Curtis,
died last year, and her family spent months dealing with his comic books and
other mementos.
The market for many collectibles has been heated of
late. In April, a rare Pokémon card sold for $300,000 at Heritage Auctions.
Last year, the original art for a comic book page featuring Spider-Man in his
black costume sold for $3.36 million at Heritage, and a copy of Superman No. 1
went for $5.3 million in a private sale. In 2021, a Nintendo Mario 64 game in
its original packaging sold for $1.5 million.
Those rarities — and their enriched owners — aside,
collectors can have a disconnect from their families. “I’m not going home and
talking to my partner or to my kids about what I collect because 9 times out of
10, they don’t care,” said Josh Benesh, 38, the chief strategy officer and
general counsel for Heritage Auctions. (His own collectibles include television
and film props, American regional art and modernist jewelry.)
Many collectors keep a mental log of their wares, but
they would be wise to keep a physical list and address their collections in
their wills. “It’s not really about doing it for the sake of money, but it’s
making sure that the responsible stewardship of your collection extends beyond
your life,” Benesh said.
Karl Heitmueller Jr., 58, runs The Daily Superman on
Instagram, where he highlights his Man of Steel memorabilia. He has grappled
often with the fate of his collection. “All the people to whom I plan on
passing on my collections are close to my age,” he said. “So it’s a crapshoot.
Who is going to kick first?”
Heitmueller said that his brother, who has collected
more than 10,000 vinyl records, would be the primary beneficiary, with other
items earmarked for friends. “It’s one of those things I need to work on,” he
said. “If he were to die first, I wouldn’t know which of his things were worth
a lot of money and vice versa.”
Still, Heitmueller has a vision of what he’d like to
see after his demise. “I don’t want a funeral,” he said. “I don’t want a
memorial service. I don’t want money wasted on any of that stuff.”
Instead, he would like his family and friends to
browse his collection and take what they want. “If I were to die tomorrow, I
would like to think that all of them would not mind having a Superman action
figure of mine to keep to remember me by,” he said.
Richard Pini and Wendy Pini, whose comic book fantasy
series ElfQuest debuted in 1978, wrestled with what to do with her body of work
for most of their professional lives.
Over the years, they had amassed thousands of pages,
including all the original art for the series, which was edited by Richard
Pini, 73, and drawn and written by Wendy Pini, 72. “He would never envision
selling off the work individually,” Wendy Pini said.
Richard Pini said it would have been heartbreaking to
sell it piecemeal. “I saw lines being put down,” he said. “I heard the curses
when she needed to reach for the white-out. It was all very personal.”
Selling the artwork could have been lucrative. “There
are art dealers who come up to Richard at conventions,” Wendy Pini said.
“They’ve never even met him before, and the first thing they say is, ‘You
idiot. You could have made millions off of selling the artwork.’”
Richard Pini said that they knew they wouldn’t be
leaving their collections to their families, who weren’t particularly interested
in ElfQuest in the first place. The fear, then, was that the material would end
up at a garage sale.
Their knight in shining armor came in the form of
Karen L. Green, the curator for comics and cartoons at Columbia University,
which acquired the Pinis’ work in 2013. “We treasured the idea of students and
fans studying it in the future after we’re long gone,” Wendy Pini said.
Read more Entertainment
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
