Heritage Auctions’ ongoing “The Art of Everything Cool” series has been connecting animation collectors with iconic and one-of-a-kind items for years. Last year, one of King of the Hill’s animators sold her collection of almost 2,500 pieces, with bids for some coveted animation cels exceeding four thousand dollars apiece. Last week, Heritage conducted a massive auction of production-used materials for the 60th anniversary of the original How the Grinch Stole Christmas television special, and the timing couldn’t have been better: last Friday, plans were announced for a sequel to the 2000 live-action Grinch remake.
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With lots including original animation cels, production used slides, and pre-production sketches, the auction was “believed to be the largest group of original hand-painted Master and Key Master backgrounds ever brought to market from the special.” Already potentially record-setting, the auction’s bidding set records with more than $500k in bids on its fifty plus items, with one lot alone selling for more than $100k.
Why This Auction Turned Collectors’ Heads
Made for television in 1966, How the Grinch Stole Christmas has become one of the most revered showcases for the legendary talents of animator Chuck Jones. Jones, famed for his work on Warner Brothers’ Looney Tunes cartoons, served as director and producer of the animated special, working directly with author Dr. Seuss.
After serving alongside Seuss (under his civilian name of Theodore Geisel) during World War II, Jones had sought for years to collaborate with him on an animated adaptation of one of his children’s books. The pair settled on The Grinch in 1965, with production commencing in summer of that year ahead of a November 1966 airdate. The items on offer with this auction represented all stages of that process from concept to production.
How This Auction Set Record High Prices
The auction’s “featured lots” contained the most unique items on offer, with each of this high-ticket collectibles the only one of their kind, and most on auction for the first time ever. One lot featured a production cel of Whoville alongside its colored, unfinished draft sketch and its initial pencil sketch layout. A similar lot pairs a production cel of the singing Whos with the pencil sketch laying out the scene and characters, complete with Jones’ notes on their design, positioning, and movement.
The star item was a pair of hand-inked, hand-painted cels from the special’s climactic Christmas feast, these sold for a record-smashing $115,900. In 2021, Heritage sold the master set-up for this cel at a price of $26,400, less than a quarter of this lot’s eye-watering price.
Demonstrated by the announcement of a sequel twenty-six years after Jim Carrey’s Grinch hit theaters, and almost sixty years after the original special’s release, How the Grinch Stole Christmas is timeless. Auctions like this are a virtually once in a lifetime chance for fans to own a piece of animation history, making these prices no surprise. Like the price of iconic comic book debuts or classic Hollywood props, these tangible pieces of our pop cultural heritage only appreciate with time.
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