2009.05.12 Whitman Original Art eBay Sales

eBay Auction #120414065307-01

I thought I'd put up a post before the latest eBay Roundup to talk a bit about the Whitman artwork that's made it to eBay over the course of the past year. I believe the first piece was the Coloring Book, followed by the Tray Puzzle, Round Boxed Puzzle, Big Little Book and finally the Punch-out Book (if anyone has different information, please let me know and I'll correct it). The seller is/was "goldentreasures-nyc" and appears to have been contracted to sell the remnants of the Whitman/Golden warehouse - he's been selling items periodically for the last couple of years - initially it was all file copies (if you were lucky enough to get one of these there's a stamp on the inside cover indicating that it's a file copy). Most older publishers would keep copies of materials as file copies to reinforce copyright - this could be as few as a couple and as many as 10-25, depending on the publisher. OSS examples as file copies of the MMM Whitman items started appearing and sold very well, until the market became saturated - the Press-Out book sold for $300+ when it first appeared, then eventually dropped to a final price of about $70 before the seller either ran out of them or realized that the market was saturated and stopped posting.

Bidding for the original artwork was fierce - I believe the most was paid for the Press-Out book - I managed to snag the Frame Tray Puzzle, one of my friends got the Round Puzzle, Coloring Book and Punch-out Book. Alec Peters got the BLB. In most if not all cases the artwork came complete with the original color cover illustration and color or interior line art (if a book). The Frame Tray Puzzle I purchased had a white tracing paper overlay with the puzzle title located in tape-on lettering. Alec's BLB came with all the interior illustrations plus a typed manuscript of the text. As the listing for the Punch-Out Book is still active, here are the details:

MAJOR MATT MASON PRESS-OUT BOOK ORIGINAL ARTWORK 1969

eBay Auction #120414065307
Ending Bid: $4,150.00
End Date: May 12, 2009 06:00:00 PM PDT

Description:
Up for auction is the original artwork for the MAJOR MATT MASON PRESS-OUT BOOK published by Whitman in 1969.

Includes:
Interior Page Art 13 1/2"x 19" 3 pages
Back Cover Art 13 1/2"x 19"
Press-out Book

All art is in very good condition.

Thanks for looking and happy bidding!!

eBay Auction #120414065307-02

eBay Auction #120414065307-03

eBay Auction #120414065307-04

eBay Auction #120414065307-05

My Take:
These are all one-of-a-kind items that haven't seen the light of day previously - each sold in the thousands (yes, thousand"S") and are about as rare as a prototype item. The only thing preventing the bidding from going even higher is that most MMM collectors only search for Mattel items - so these are a bit esoteric for them.

To keep the images in a single post, here are those that were in the earlier ads.

Frame Tray Puzzle:

Frame Tray Puzzle Art

Frame Tray Puzzle Text Overlay

Stamp on File Copies:
Western Publishing Stamp

Round Puzzle Art:
Round Puzzle Art
Coloring Book Art:

Image from eBay Listing
Image from eBay Listing
Big Little Book Art:
Moon Mission BLB Cover Color Separations
Moon Mission BLB Cover  Text Layer
Moon Mission BLB Cover  Art Pages
Moon Mission BLB Cover Art Pages
Moon Mission BLB Cover Page Layout
Moon Mission BLB Cover Typewritten Script

-- John

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