DCML digest #914

[Don Rosa]

> From: bi442 at lafn.org (Rob Klein)
> I'll be interested to read what Don has to say.

About the color of the coins in $crooge's Bin?! Oh, please, I've said all I
can say about that subject the other two or three times it has come up.

> From: jgarvin <jgarvin at bendcable.com>
> Maybe Don can answer this, or another artist who might be on the list:
> How do you feel when you see a drawing you have done for a "fan" end up on
EBAY selling for $$$ ?

Well, I see every single item that appears on eBay that has my name anywhere
in the title or auction item description... and of all the many many
hundreds of drawings I've done for fans for the past 15 years, very few are
sold on eBay, relatively speaking. Virtually none that I do for Europeans
ever appear on eBay.... now and then just a few go on sale from Germany, but
not many.
The ones I have done at American conventions I have always charged a modest
amount for. Well, not at first, I did them for free at first back around
1988... but America is a totally different culture than Europe. Americans
take too great an advantage of "free", and I also noticed that I irritated
the other American artists who always charged for their drawings. So I
started charging a modest amount but I wanted to make sure I did an extra
good job if I was getting paid, so I would take time and do the drawings in
full color. (Besides, I'd have extra time since not that many Americans are
interested in what I do.) And most of the $ would go to a wildlife charity
(though I would certainly buy dinner at the hotel with a bit of it!). So, I
could have no real objection if someone decided to sell what I sold to them.
After all, I realized that in America many of the people asking for a
drawing had no idea who I was or what I did, but they wanted a drawing
because they knew that a Di$ney drawing was "collectible"!
But, yeah, when I first got onto eBay and saw that some of these people were
taking the drawings that I did for them for $30 and *immediately* putting
them on eBay and getting a quick $400-800, that seemed a *bit* disturbing to
me. *I* could use that kind of money... working on Disney comics is not a
high paying livelihood. "How I felt" was that I was done drawing pictures at
American conventions... the few bad apples ruin it for everyone... but I
would continue to do free drawings at European conventions where I can
virtually always be sure that everyone who requests a drawing does so
because they know and love the characters and know my work. When I'm at a
European convention, it's like being at an American comic convention of
1968... a whole different philosophy of life! Americans would just get
autographs. Yes, they put those on eBay for sale, too... but they wouldn't
get so much, and it was not a matter of giving them a huge profit at the
expense of my 30-45 minutes of pretty intense effort (drawing is not
something that comes really easy to me, as the stiffness of my work can
attest).
I mean, let me give you an idea about Americans and eBay... when I attended
American conventions, I would carry with me stacks of new Egmont comics that
the publishers send me (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, etc.) and give them away
free to kiddies. When I started getting on eBay, I saw that right after such
conventions, people were putting those brand new Egmont weeklies onto eBay
for $5-10 each (!!!), not to mention taking the free toys out of the bags
and selling those on eBay separately for a similar amount.