Last March 30, the Artcurial Auction House located in Paris was holding its annual comic book auction. More than 600 pieces including signed prints, original editions and, of course, original artwork were looking for new owners. The main and most prized of these items: an original Hergé painting for the cover of the first Tintin album “Tintin en Amérique” made in 1932. Estimated at about 280,000 euros it was supposed to become the new highest comic book art ever sold in the world. The previous record holder was an Enki Bilal painting called “Bleu sang” sold in March 2007 for 177,000 euros. At the end of the day, the Hergé painting finally did become the highest comic book art ever sold in the world, but with a far wider margin than everyone expected, with the auction finally closing at 650, 000 euros (764, 200 euros with the fees).

But this was not the only surprise of the day since many more pieces sold over their initial values. Most notably was an Enki Bilal original painting made for one of the pages of his “tétralogie du Monstre” which sold for 145, 000 euros (excluding fees). It was previously estimated at 20, 000 euros. The other important surprise was a Corto Maltese portrait made by creator Hugo Pratt, estimated at 30, 000 euros, but the auction closed at more the 8 times that amount (250, 000 euros excluding fees). Most of the other auctions' final prices have not yet been officially released by Artcurial but the total amount of the sale is rumoured to be around 3.4 millions euros.

Source: Comicbookbin.com

Article by Patrick Bérubé