Confession time. I’m a huge fan of Garfield the Cat – and Comic Strips in general.
Heck I practically learned to read with The Peanuts Comic Strips, which used to be published in paperback books that I would run to Toots Store to buy after Saturday Matinees at the Odeon on Main Street.
Wow, now I feel old…..
I discovered Garfield in Junior High I think, and started collecting his books too. Garfield is cynical, a little lazy and absolutely hilarious.
Now, you could own your very own Garfield Comic Strip!
Jim Davis, Garfield’s creator drew the strip by hand from his creation in 1978 through 2011. Now the strip is done digitally. But Jim has somewhere around 11,000 strips in his home, and he wants to get rid of them. Like a gigantic Spring Cleaning Project!
“There are just so many, and it was such a daunting task to figure what to do with them so that they could be out there where people enjoy them too,” Davis told the Hollywood Reporter. The comics, up until this point, have been sealed in a climate-controlled vault, and will now be sold at a rate of two daily strips a week.
Dallas-based Heritage Auctions is the company auctioning them off. They sell two daily strips each week, along with longer Sunday strips being offered during the large-scale auctions throughout the year. This has been happening since last August, but at that rate, the process will take years.
Brian Wiedman, a comic grader at Heritage, says the daily strips are currently selling on average from around $500 to $700, and the longer Sunday strips are selling for $1,500 to $3,000. That’s in US dollars.
As a guy with a love of collecting everything, I have to say I’d love to have one!
