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Lichtenstein piece sold for $43M, comic that inspired it? $431

1 minute 11 comments

Last week I posted news about a Roy Lichtenstein painting had sold at auction for $43 million. Jeff Darcy (in the comments) noted the original comic art upon which the Pop Art painting was based was recently sold on eBay for “a few hundred bucks.” Turns out it was $431 to be exact.

Here’s a piece in Art Info on the contrast between the two art pieces:

Barsalou has his own auction story to tell, in fact, tying the frayed thread between Overgard and Lichtenstein. Last August, the cartoon aficionado found the original Overgard panel on eBay and outdueled four other remote bidders to snag the prize for $431. Overgard had donated his 3,000-plus cartoon archive to the Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University, but that panel is not part of that protected trove.

“To me,” said Barsalou, “it was the steal of the century.”

Steal of the century indeed.

Steve Roper by Allen Saunders and William Overgard)

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Comments 11

  1. Well, if comics were a REAL art form…

  2. Rumor has it, he also has a basement full of Cambell’s soup cans.

  3. The funny thing is, beyond everything else, that the painting is just terrible compared to the original artwork.

  4. @Mark: That’s the case with most of his reproductions, IMO.

  5. This might qualify as the most ridiculous thing I have ever witnessed.

  6. I was one of the 4 bidders on that. I couldn’t remember the
    exact price it sold for when I wrote the comment. But I do
    remember disbelief and amazement that such an iconic comic
    strip was being sold on ebay with such a low starting bid price.
    So much so that I wondered if it might be a copy, even though
    the seller appeared legit. That influenced my bid and willingness to bid further…that and having to make my mortgage payment.

    If my memory is correct it was one of a number of comic strips
    Overgard panels the seller had listed.

  7. $431 was a steal. Based on its connection to the Lichtenstein work, I’d bet the owner could turn around and get five-to-ten times that amount if he were to auction it off to fine art collectors.

  8. Except for the way the word balloon tangents the peephole cover, everything about the original panel is better-designed and more solid-feeling than the Lichtenstein

  9. If that had been put up for sale at a trad. auction house and advertised,
    it would have gone for a lot more than $431 but still well under
    43 million.
    The starting bid on that was really low. Maybe $100-200
    If it was a trad auction house that starting/opening bid may have been
    around $500 to $1000
    I had just happened upon it while doing a search of the seller items knowing he had sold editorial cartoons before, and
    was the only bidder for a number of days.
    The fact that it only had 4 bids shows that it was kinda buried
    away so much so that even regular ebay cartoon art
    buyers didn’t even know it was listed.

    I’ll be watching to see if the seller lists the Mona Lisa next

  11. Why isn’t this copyright infringement?

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