Second Appearance of Skeezix, Gasoline Alley Daily, 15 Feb 1921

In the second strip, which undoubtedly takes place on the same day that Walt Wallet found Skeezix on his doorstep, the yet-unnamed baby first meets his new neighbors, Avery and his wife, Emily. We also learn what was written in the note addressed to Walt, which was left on top of Skeezix in his basket. And, I'm almost embarrassed to say, this is the first Gasoline Alley strip to feature both Walt and Skeezix in every one of the four panels. Personally, I don't think that the value of original comic art should depend so much on how many times a character appears in a strip, but I am probably in the minority on that issue these days.

The caption for this strip was very clever: "Feeding time for the lost and found."

***
Continuation of story re. buying the first two Skeezix strips.

As I said, if someone had the first four, they probably wouldn't care if someone was going to compete with them for the first, even if that someone had thrown down a gauntlet and had proven himself to be a serious collector of Gasoline Alley through many earlier purchases in Cochran's auctions. I really didn't anticipate that I would have to pay such a high price to stop my assumed opposition for number 2, especially since none of the other originals from the first week of Skeezix strips had sold for more than $6,000. Nonetheless, I had to pay something like $28,000 hammer for the second one. So much for trying to save money to be used toward bidding on the first strip.

Well, everyone knows by this late date that this story had a happy ending for me. Someone did, in fact, put up a pretty decent fight for number one, but not nearly good enough to prevail over my win at any cost determination. And, while I had to pay much more than expected for the second Skeezix, it might have actually been less expensive to have paid the price for both than what I might have had to pay for just the first strip if I had been going against a much more determined competitor, one who hadn't already lost out on the chance of owning all five originals from the first week of Skeezix.

My final satisfaction came a few months later when Russ Cochran told me that the buyer of the other three strips was selling them, since he was frustrated in his attempt to buy all five. My instincts, perhaps guided by many years of experience with auctions, had proven to be correct after all.

Oh, and the aspect of my opponent's method of bidding during the first three actions was his insistence of always placing his bids immediately before the clock would have run out for the auction. Such sniping makes sense when there is a fixed end time for a lot, such as on eBay, but serves no purpose when, as with Cochran's auction, any bid within the last three minutes of the scheduled end time results in a three minute extension during which others who have bid on the item can still enter a bid against the last minute bidder. I find such pointless attempted gamesmanship very annoying, since the tactic just wastes time and increases tension while waiting time and again for a possible conclusion of the bidding. No one who has been participating right up to the time of the snipping is ever going to simply go away, and I am sure than many, like myself, just become more determined to win due to disgust for their opponent's lack of common sense.