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. 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 this 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. 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, with... Little fixes, like, "Make this a full figure," or, "Add bells here." And this is Schulz's pencil, and these are my penciled comments on them. These are Sunday strips, and then this is an original strip that he did from 1957 to '59, and it's called "It's Only a Game." He was a great, humble person, that had a tremendous insight into human nature, as, as millions of "Peanuts" fans will tell you.
APPRAISER: Sure.
GUEST: I idolized this man's talent. To meet him and work with him for 12 years was, was just great, yeah.
APPRAISER: Great, that's great. 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 gonna 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.
GUEST: Right, right.
APPRAISER: 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...
GUEST: Linus.
APPRAISER: Linus, Lucy. What we have here in the bottom panel, you have 14 of these daily exercise large panels. The estimates I'm gonna 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.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: Easily, I would estimate each of these at $6,000 to $9,000.
GUEST: Each?!
APPRAISER: Each-- each piece.
GUEST (laughs)
APPRAISER: 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, and it's early '60s, I think '61.
GUEST: '61.
APPRAISER: '61, 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 gonna 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 gotta 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 the conservative side, I'm gonna estimate these anywhere from $12,000 to $18,000 each.
GUEST: My God... (chuckling)
APPRAISER: I think, if you add it all up, 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 gonna insure it, you'd probably want to insure it for a little bit more than the high estimate.
GUEST: I, I was going to say, I had these on a shelf in my closet, and I think, uh...
APPRAISER: Not a good place for them anymore.
GUEST: Not a good place for them anymore.
APPRAISER: No, absolutely not.
GUEST: Wow.
