Post a picture of your most recent purchase....(not poker chips) (28 Viewers)

AlbinoDragon said:
A couple of gems arrived on Friday that expand on my second biggest money-sink hobby after poker chips... animation art:

https://www.pokerchipforum.com/threads/things-you-collect-besides-poker-chips.74301/#post-1506098

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(no room to get a picture with the Nixie clock here... so my LEGO build station with a 1/3 complete T-Rex will have to do.)


A month ago, the gallery in Los Angeles that is the main source for my animation art "habit" announced an auction of items from the Bob Clampett estate. Bob was part of the group of directors at Warner Brothers who made many of the unforgettable Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes cartoons during the "golden age of animation" in the 1940s and early 1950s.

Nearly 1000 items were up for bid from his early sketchbooks as a child, his high-school yearbooks all the way through to his time making the Beany and Cecil TV show were made available.

I made a list, prioritized those as best I could within my budget and started taking a stab on auction day... especially day two when the items I was most interested went up.


I got out bid... severely... on a few items I wanted to add to the collection, including production used art from "Falling Hare" as well as a model sheet for the Gremlin from that short (one of the few Looney Tunes where Bugs Bunny gets bested by another character). When the dust settled on the items I was interested in, I came out of it a bit lighter in the bankroll, but with two pretty great items.


The drawing for the title card(s) from the early 1940s re-defined the layout and look of the presentation of the cartoons in that era. The "Warner Bros. Present" had been used previously and is still used in a similar form even today, but this particular version from 1944 was the standard bearer for most of the rest of the decade. Minor changes were made, but this version held for quite some time. A small variation of this was used for the "Blue Ribbon" re-issues in the early 1950s as well.

The bids on the "Merrie Melodies" layout sheet went beyond my range before I started in earnest on auction day, which disappointed me a bit, but having 1/3 of the iconic set (the others being Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes) doesn't hurt my feelings.

I have a title card sheet from Tom and Jerry (seen in the thread I posted above) that will make a nice pair on the wall once this gets framed.


The Bugs Bunny model sheet was my no. 2 in the auction (after the Gremlin model sheet). This is the first model sheet of the "modern" and still current design for Bugs. (Model sheets would have been handed out to the animators to maintain consistency of the character throughout the production of a single short and often across several shorts. A director would create a model sheet before production to make sure things met their expectation.)

It's fascinating to see the details that were emphasized here ("lots of teeth when necessary!").


A couple of really cool items to add to the animation art collection. I wish I had the budget to expend on a couple of the items I wound up losing. There were so many brilliant and iconic pieces in this particular sale that just browsing the auction catalog was a treat in itself.
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That’s cool…so how much does this stuff cost?
 
AlbinoDragon said:
They were both auction wins, but the pair before the premiums from the auction house were $4k. Not the most I've spent on animation art by any means, but definitely up there on the list.
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Animation cel collectors are no joke, and rightfully so. History, artwork, and childhood nostalgia rolled into one. It's almost surprising they don't sell for more

There was a local auction I attended 10 years ago or so that had cels and sketches for the original Raid advertisements for SC Johnson Wax. I tried so hard to take some (even just one) home, but walked away totally empty handed. And I was bidding WAY over my means at the time, over $1000/cel. I'm pretty sure a rep from the company walked in with an unlimited budget with the only directive to "get them back". My only win that day was making the family of the artist fat bank that day because I was the only other person bidding
 
Benjaminotaur said:
Animation cel collectors are no joke, and rightfully so. History, artwork, and childhood nostalgia rolled into one. It's almost surprising they don't sell for more

There was a local auction I attended 10 years ago or so that had cels and sketches for the original Raid advertisements for SC Johnson Wax. I tried so hard to take some (even just one) home, but walked away totally empty handed. And I was bidding WAY over my means at the time, over $1000/cel. I'm pretty sure a rep from the company walked in with an unlimited budget with the only directive to "get them back". My only win that day was making the family of the artist fat bank that day because I was the only other person bidding
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The Gremlin model sheet in this auction was my no. 1 item I was shooting for, and when I was out-bid at $6k (3x the high estimate for that piece) I knew I was bidding against folks with money to burn that I didn't have (I saw two bidders alternate bids on that after I bowed out!).

Once I lost that one, I made attempts at another piece from "Falling Hare" and a great model piece of Bugs on the WB shield that both went over $6k and were outside my budget by quite a bit.

I was watching the live/online auction for a while before and between the items I wanted and was stunned at the number of items that were going for 3x the high estimate price, but also perfectly respectable pieces that were outside my bubble of interest that went unsold. You think the collector community here is crazy, the items that do and don't sell in the animation art community are equally insane... if not more.

A model cel (not production) of Beaky Buzzard from 1942 sold for $25k!! Carl Stalling's conductor's baton that he used writing and scoring the music for many of the cartoons you know went for $20k. :wow:

Just watching most of the items from this really cool collection come and go was a lot of fun and downright stunning. Must be nice to have money to burn! :ROFL: :ROFLMAO:


(for those who are interested, the catalog of items from this auction is here:

https://vegalleries.com/releases/th...e-4371349&mc_cid=c694524e07&mc_eid=39a0fa0eb9

...not trying to be a shill, but this is the gallery that I have got many of the items in my collection from. They do more than their auctions, but this recent one was a special creature with a lot of rare and iconic art that I wish I had the budget to unload on. As I said, we think we chip collectors are crazy... the animation art folks are at a whole other level. :))
 
Fantastic book, whether consumed by eye or ear!

“A Gentleman in Moscow”

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