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PRESS RELEASE SOURCE: HERITAGE AUCTIONS
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DALLAS, Texas (Oct. 13, 2022) — Add a few more zeroes to 007, as one of the most famous images of James Bond is now among the most valuable.
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Bidders were shaken and stirred Oct. 7, when Robert McGinnis’s original painting for the 1965 Thunderball poster sold for $275,000, which not only topped Heritage’s Illustration Art Signature® Auction but set a new auction record for the 96-year-old artist. This celebrated and oft-imitated rendering of Sean Connery’s Bond sparked a bidding war that helped shoot the work well past its high estimate.
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But that happened early and often throughout the event, which realized $1,739,130 and attracted more than 1,600 bidders from around the world. Indeed, the nearly sold-out auction began when nearly every lot selling for well above high estimate, including Virgil Finlay’s “Living Portrait” from the Nov. 1949 issue of Fantastic Novels. It sold for $13,750, more than twice its high estimate. And that was just the beginning.
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Gil Elvgren, always popular among collectors, clearly hit The Right Number, as this sultry piece from 1961 rang more than a few bells. The work subtitled “Telephone Talk” found one caller who dialed up a $100,000 sale price for the provocative pin-up.
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This auction proved that The Man of Bronze just might be made of gold, as James Elliott Bama’s cover for 1968’s Cold Death, the 21st novel in the Doc Savage series, opened live bidding at $18,500. A heated bidding war drove its final price to $68,750. And H.R. Giger’s terrifying Biomechanical Landscape from 1983 realized $52,500, also nearly twice its high estimate.
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A new Legend also emerged from this event: Thomas Blackshear’s art for director Ridley Scott’s 1985 film starring Tom Cruise, Mia Sara and the great Tim Curry as The Lord of Darkness. Bidders drove the final price for this original poster art to $50,000.
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And they may be creepy, kooky, mysterious, spooky and altogether ooky, but Charles Addams’s strange and deranged family remains beloved among bidders, who drove the price of this illustration to $45,000.
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Click here for complete results from the Oct. 7 Illustration Art Signature® Auction.
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Heritage Auctions is the largest fine art and collectibles auction house founded in the United States, and the world’s largest collectibles auctioneer. Heritage maintains offices in New York, Dallas, Beverly Hills, Chicago, Palm Beach, London, Paris, Geneva, Amsterdam and Hong Kong.
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