Charles Schulz Comic Strip Art, ca. 1955

Appraised on: August 13, 2005

Appraised in: Los Angeles, California

Appraised by: Philip Weiss

Category: Collectibles

Episode Info: Fame & Fortune (#1016)
Los Angeles, Hour 3 (#1009)

Originally Aired: March 27, 2006

IMAGE: 1 of 4  

Appraisal Video: (4:02)

GUEST: I worked for Hallmark Cards in Kansas City, Missouri, before moving to California 33 years ago. I was a "Peanuts" fan for a long time and came up with the idea to use "Peanuts" on greeting cards. And I had to sell the idea to the creative committee, and they reluctantly tried four cards in test purposes. As a result, they ended up with a whole big line of Hallmark Peanuts' products. And I went out to work with Charles Schulz in 1960 for the first time, and worked with him for 12 years in developing all the Hallmark Peanuts' products. And he gave me some of the original strips and some of the original artwork. This was a group of drawings that he did for a product we called "Snoopy's Daily Dozen." It was an exercise booklet.

APPRAISER: Okay.

GUEST: And this is an original strip that he signed and gave to me. These are pencil drawings of some of the greeting cards that we developed. We would come up with the ideas for the greeting cards, he would do the pencil sketches, send them back, and we'd come back with little fixes, like "Make this a full figure," or "Add bells here." And this is Schulz's pencil, and these are my pencil comments on them. These are Sunday strips, and then this is an original strip that he did
from 1957 to '59 that I didn't even know existed till he gave me these. And it's called, "It's Only A Game." He was a great, humble person, that had a tremendous insight into human nature, as millions of "Peanuts" fans will tell you.

APPRAISER: Sure.

GUEST: I idolized this man's talent. You know, and to meet him and work with him for 12 years was just great.

APPRAISER: Let me give you an idea on what you have and what the value is.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: There are three factors, when I'm doing an appraisal like this, that I'm going to take into consideration. First is freshness to the market. And, obviously, it's never been out on the market, totally fresh, you've had it all these years. Nobody really knows it exists, which is tremendous. Second is the age of the material, and it's really vintage, perfect "Peanuts" period-- late '50s, into the early '60s, nothing later than that. And the third factor is the characters involved. Everywhere you look, you see nothing but key characters: Snoopy, Charlie, Linus, Lucy. What we have here in the bottom panel, you have 14 of these "Daily Exercise," large panels. The estimates I'm going to give you are basically conservative, auction estimates. And the sky's the limit when it comes to Charles Schulz stuff-- it's the hottest comic art right now on the market. I would say, easily-- and, again, conservatively-- I would estimate each of these at $6,000 to $9,000.

GUEST: Each?

APPRAISER: Each. Each piece. Now, there's 14 of them, okay?

GUEST: Right.

APPRAISER: Now, when we go up here onto your daily... It's fantastic. You have Charlie in all four panels. Just a great, great daily, and it's early '60s, I think, if I'm not mistaken, or '61.

GUEST: '61, right.

APPRAISER: Okay, again, conservative estimate: $8,000 to $10,000 for that daily. When you jump up here to the pencil roughs, you have a nice little grouping here. Not as attractive to collectors, but still historically very important. And a conservative estimate on that would be $4,000 to $6,000 as a group. When you come over here to "It's Only a Game," since it's not a "Peanuts"-related strip, I don't know if it's going to be as interesting to the "Peanuts" collector as it might be if it had any of the characters in it. But, still, just from a historic point of view, you got to estimate these at $4,000 to $6,000 each. Now, Sunday pages are really desirable, and these are terrific. You have Linus and Lucy, you have Linus, Lucy and Snoopy. Great years, I think these are '59. And, on a conservative side, I'm going to estimate these anywhere from $12,000 to $18,000 each.

GUEST: My God!

APPRAISER: I think if you add it all up-- if you decide you're going to sell it, and through an auction venue-- I wouldn't be surprised to see you come out anywhere from $150,000 to $200,000 on a piece-by-piece basis.

GUEST: You're kidding.

APPRAISER: Absolutely not. And, if you're going to insure it, you'd probably want to insure it for a little bit more than the high estimate.

GUEST: I was going to say, I had these on a shelf in my closet, and I think...

APPRAISER: Not a good place for them anymore.

GUEST: Not a good place for them anymore.

APPRAISER: No, absolutely not.

GUEST: Wow.