Expert: Chris Brown - 8/25/2009

Question
Hi Chris,
I have an original ink drawn Peanuts daily comic from 1962 that was given to my father by Charles Schulz. They both worked for United Feature Syndicate at that time.
The drawing is in excellent condition with just one fold in the center, has two major characters in each panel of the four panel strip (Charlie and Linus), and I also have a print of the six dailies for that week. No Sunday unfortunately.
If you have an idea of the value I'd appreciate it. I have no intentions of selling it but would like to know something for insurance purposes.
Hope you can help. If not, maybe you can steer me in the right direction.
Thanks in advance.

Answer
Hi Kevin

You asked me a question about a Peanuts strip several months ago on the website AllExperts.  Answers to questions that are not designated as private can pop up on Google and other web search engines.  Anyway, I recently received an email from someone else that you may find of interest:

"When I stumbled across the below correspondence I had to read it three times to make sure it wasn't referring to me but it is from someone named Kevin which is a total trip because my dad also worked at United Features in 1962 and was given a Peanuts daily by Chareles Shultz. My dad actually had a very fun strip too back then called Blast Blair. Wondering if my dad knew or worked with Kevin's dad??? Wondering if you could maybe go back in your archives and find him and send him a message for me?? Below is the correspondence you had with him and the date."

If you are interested in contacting this other person or having him contact you, please send me a response in the next couple days.  I don't know anything about him, except that he posted the above question to me on the AllExperts site.

Chris






Hi Kevin

Sounds like a great item.  I just looked on the Heritage.com website, which has access to its past auction results online.

You can check it out at http://comics.ha.com

You would have to create an account to see the actual prices realized, but it won't cost you anything to do so.  

Anyway, it looks like a strip from that era in nice condition could sell in the $20,000 range, plus or minus 10 or 20%.  That is the final hammer price and includes buyer and seller commissions, so your take if you were to sell your strip there would be less.  I realize that isn't your goal but am not sure if you would want to use the full price for insurance purposes or deduct a percentage to get to the amount of money you yourself could reasonably expect to get if the art were to be put up for sale.

Commissions can be significant: I believe Heritage is currently charging around 19.5% to both the buyer and the seller.

Sorry I'm not really clear what the second item you describe is: the print of the dailies.  If this is a vintage item, it would probably have some value, especially if it is not a mass-produced item.  However, I don't expect it would be worth anything like the original artwork.

Chris