Upper Deck's Marvel Premier is one of those high-end hit-driven products that I will probably never bust a box of on my own. Each box contains just five cards, which break down as two base / parallel cards, one insert card, one standard sketch card, and one 2-, 3, or 4-panel sketch card. Although I won't ever bust a box of it on my own, that doesn't stop me from trolling eBay looking for good deals on sketches by my favorite artists. The sketch card booklets are double-sided, so you actually get extra panels depending on the size of the booklet. A 2-panel booklet actually has three panels for art, a 3-panel booklet has 5 sketch panels, and a 4-panel booklet has a whopping 7 panels available.
I was able to pick up this Scarlet Witch 2-panel booklet by artist Mary Bellamy for a decent sum. The multi-panel format really gives artists a chance to open up. Some do multiple shots of the same character, as seen on this card. Some do a large shot of one character that takes up all of the space on a side, some do group shots featuring multiple characters, and some do a mixture of the above. I am not even really a Scarlet Witch fan, but for whatever reason sketches of her seems to bring out the best in artists. Based on my non-scientific evaluation (looking at tons of sketch cards on eBay), something about her costume / color scheme / power set just lends itself to sketch card art.
The outside of the booklet features a sketch panel on the front cover and all the legal stuff on the back cover, where many artists choose to place their signature. I was pretty happy to land this sketch booklet, and I like Bellamy's art style. I like that she tends to use a lot of bright colors and her cartoony style appeals to me. I have built a nice little collection of her work through various avenues. I've e-mailed back and forth with her, interacted with her briefly on Twitter, purchased a couple of her published My Little Pony variant covers, commissioned some PSCs (Personal Sketch Cards) from her, purchased an artist return from her, and now I've bought some of her work from eBay.
This is the first time I have seen one of these booklets. I'm almost afraid to see what they go for on Ebay.
ReplyDeleteThis one actually didn't run me too much. I got a good deal on it. The price on sketch cards really depends on the character(s) depicted, whether the artist is a big name or not, the quality of the piece, and then factors like how well the seller describes it in the auction listing, whether the set the card came from is overshadowed by a newer release, and how many people like the card well enough to bid on it. Some sellers will leave out the artist name, the character name, or the set name and that means fewer eyes on the listing.
Delete