DALLAS, TX.- Heritage’s The Art of Anime and Everything Cool Signature® Auction keeps getting cooler – and more popular with collectors of everything from original comic-strip and trading-card artwork to cels from beloved animated films and cartoons.

The third installment of this sold-out four-day event, which closed late Monday night, outpaced its predecessors regarding final results and the number of bidders who participated. The sale realized $3,115,598 to shatter the record high set last December, with numerous lots far exceeding their initial estimates. And more than 4,700 bidders competed for their slices of history online, over the phone and in person, the largest turn-out yet.

“We were thrilled with the success of our December Animation Art auction, which brought more than $2.6 million, and this sold-out sale of more than 2,200 lots went well above and beyond that,” says Heritage Auctions Vice President and Director of Animation & Anime Art Jim Lentz. “Animation art in all its forms has never been more popular among collectors, as evidenced by the results of this auction and its predecessors. It has been enormously rewarding and thrilling to curate these sales at Heritage Auctions, and a jump in bidders by nearly 1,000 this time suggests the upward trend will only continue.”

And, perhaps most surprising, it was done without a single lot of Disney art, long the most popular and covered cels among collectors. Those historic pieces will be offered separately from Dec. 9-12 during The Art of All Things Disney Animation Art Signature® Auction.

Here’s how eclectic this September sale was: The leading lots in this event ranged from an original Feb. 21, 1954, Peanuts Sunday comic strip by Charles Schulz, which realized $72,000; to a production cel and animated drawing from Hayao Miyazaki’s 1989 Studio Ghibli masterpiece Kiki's Delivery Service, which sold for $40,800; to a painting of Wolverine made by Greg and Tim Hildebrandt for Marvel Comics’ popular 1994 Masterpieces Powerblast trading-card series, which opened the four-day event by selling for $33,600.




Also included in this sale were 49 lots from Akira, the extremely popular 1988 Japanese animated cyberpunk action film directed by Katsuhiro Otomo and based on Otomo’s 1982 manga of the same name. Not surprisingly, a production cel and animation drawing from Akira featuring Kaneda speeding on his iconic bike ranked among the event’s top lots when it sold for $33,600.

If one needed further proof of this auction’s variety, look no further than the stop-motion puppet of Sally, one of the stars of the Henry Selick-directed, Tim Burton-produced The Nightmare Before Christmas. This scarce, masterfully crafted, hand-painted work also realized $33,600.

The 57 Studio Ghibli offerings in this auction proved covered keepsakes among collectors, who fought over such works as this production cel from 1986’s Castle in the Sky, which realized $30,000; and this grinning Catbus from 1988’s My Neighbor Totoro, which sold for $26,400.

One of the most sought-after pieces in this auction didn’t come from a cartoon but a network: Nickelodeon. When Universal Studios in Orlando opened on June 7, 1990, Nickelodeon Studios opened alongside it; two years later, a time capsule for the network was planted “as a gift to kids of the future.” Eventually, the capsule was moved to Burbank, where it’s still scheduled to be opened on April 30, 2042, but the enormous time-capsule cover – more than 42 inches in diameter, more than 45 pounds in weight – sold last weekend for $19,200.

This was also a landmark auction for The Flintstones, largely thanks to the original concept drawings by Hanna-Barbera animation greats Ed Benedict and Dick Bickenbach that were once displayed in the Norman Rockwell Museum. That modern Stone Age family from the town of Bedrock saw many pages right out of history sell for historic sums – 55 pages, in one case, as a complete set of original storyboard artwork for the 1963 episode “The Blessed Event” realized $18,000. One collector now has the entirety of Pebbles’ first baby album. Benedict’s 1960 model sheet featuring Betty Rubble and Dino sold for $12,000.

And not to be outdone, several collectors dreamed of Jeannie – but only one could win the I Dream of Jeannie opening sequence production cel featuring Jeannie and her bottle. That sold for $16,800.