Q & A

R.L. of Saint John, NB writes:

I had the pleasure of being at the May evaluation at the Imperial Theatre in Saint John. The weeks prior to the event I was even interviewed on CBC Radio in Saint John about the item I hoped to have evaluated. Alas, there wasn't anyone in the evaluators that had the expertise in the area of popular culture to provide an educated guess on the potential value of my item. They knew that the item (book with a number of original sketches and autographs of famous cartoonists who attended a wedding party) was a unique "one of" but could only offer encouragement. One gentleman said that my item was the first one to stump the Roadshow. I know that he meant the evaluators in Saint John were unable to offer an evaluation. I was disappointed but said to my wife before going to the Imperial, "I bet that they won't have anyone who has the knowledge of pop culture to evaluate this book?" I didn't say that with disdain only a grasp of the reality of a very, highly specialized item that a fan like me of pop culture might know of.

Any chances of someone with expertise in pop culture giving it a second crack? The neat aspect of the book is that I bought it at a flea market for just $2.00 and it is likely valued, from my personal perspective and being a fan of comic strip art, at least in the 100's if not a bit higher due to the fact that you'd never usually have the combination of cartoonists in the same place offering their sketches as gifts.

A listing of the sketches and the artists follows:

The Book - "More Cuties in Arms" - 1943, by E. Simms Campbell includes sketches from:

• Dick Tregaskis - "Guadalcanal Diary" author,
• Milton Caniff - famous award winning comic strip artist of "Terry and The Pirates", "Steve Canyon" and the featured ink sketch of "Miss Lace", a World War 2 beauty drawn by Caniff just for the men serving in the forces during World War 2. It was featured in forces newspapers such as "Stars and Stripes".
• Jay Irving - drew the comic strip called "Pottsey" about a policeman. Besides his autograph there is a sketch of Pottsey.
• Otto Soglow - drew the award winning strip "The Little King".
• George McManus - famous artist of "Bringing Up Father" ("Maggie & Jiggs").
• Bela Zaboly - artist who drew "Popeye" (Thimble Theatre in the 1940's).
• Paul Frehm - artist who drew a strip called "Ted Towers - Animal Master".
  
  Back Cover :
  
• Gus Edson - artist on the comic strip "The Gumps".
• Dow Walling - artist of "Jimmy’s Jobs".
• Bill Holman - famous comic strip artist of "Smokey Stover". Zany off-beat humourist who popularized "Foo", "N. Sojac", etc.
• Elmer Woggon - artist of "Big Chief Wahoo" and "Steve Roper".
  

There are numerous other autographs, sentiments and some sketches of persons I could not locate or understand the spelling of their names.

We asked Ed Locke to respond:

The book is very interesting. An autograph of a cartoonist that is accompanied by a sketch is more desirable and more valuable than a signature only or a signed photograph.

In this book I believe the most desirable name is Milton Caniff, which alone would be worth approximately $300.00 followed by George McManus at $200.00 to $250.00 and Otto Soglow at $100.00.

Autographs of Jay Irving and Elmer Woggon are less valuable because their cartoon characters were not as popular and the value would be in the $20.00 to $50.00 range each.

Bela Zaboly, Paul Frehm and Gus Edson were not the original cartoonists for their characters but were hired to draw the characters later in their runs and would be valued at $20.00 to $50.00 each.

The nice part is that all of these were done in this book at the same function and I think this adds to the desirability of the piece and I would think that it should be worth between $1000.00 & $1500.00. Please note that there is not much of a history on the sale of these things and this is only my opinion, but it certainly is a piece that an autograph collector or a collector of cartoon art would be very happy to own.

Ed Locke

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