Antiques Roadshow

my dad jack kent was a cartoonist but before he became a cartoonist when he was a teenager in the 1930s 1940s he wrote to all of his favorite cartoon artists and asked for original comic strips which in those days they sent to him and many of them sent them with comments and signatures specifically to him my dad unfortunately passed away fairly young in 1985 been in storage for many decades comic art itself wasn't as appreciated as it is in the market now and we look back on these strips and they're really beautiful beautiful art so the earliest one that you do have is the george harriman crazy cat and crazy cat was started in 1913. he was this kind of surrealist goofy simple cat that was annoyed by this mouse ignatz that would hit him with bricks this is a particularly interesting comment on people on the dole with this character lil thin dime who just complains about taxes and i love that it's a very early strip probably from 1938 and hand tinted it's just beautiful the biggest newspaper hearst produced the syndicate for crazy cat the next one is prince valiant prince valiant actually started in 1937 which is so interesting because this is a king features from april 17 1937. so it's talking about when prince valiant was still young and that's why it has such a poignant message to it these sunday strips are so large and so beautiful and even though there were over 4 000 of these sunday strips i think this is a really beautiful example and the full title was prince valiant in the days of king arthur the other one out of the hundreds of things that you have in your archive is this mickey mouse and i love it because it's hello howdy texas jack sincerely with a signature from walt disney himself another piece walt disney did for a sunday daily and it is also 1937 and the disney would also be reprinted in many sunday and daily strips and that was by walt disney studios we are so thrilled to see them in terms of auction i would say the mickey mouse which is a beautiful example in very very good condition would sell for between 15 and 20 thousand dollars oh my god could even be a little more because it's a very early strip the prince valiant has a little bit of condition problems but it's on the edges because it's him as youthful it doesn't have as many fighting or vigorous scenes that one would expect from a piece but um this one is very desirable being so early and i would put a value on this at auction of forty to sixty thousand dollars but honestly your prize is the harriman harriman is extraordinarily collectible it is as harriman goes a plus plus plus plus this is about as good as it gets for any collector it brings tears to my eyes it's so great i would put an estimate on this of 50 to 60 thousand dollars very honestly i think it could bring more and everything that you brought in that portfolio which is just seminal cartoons well in excess of two hundred thousand dollars i i mean goodness ah you can see why my heart just went pitter pat pitter pat when you opened that portfolio i'm astonished really when you brought it in i was shaking you