Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Alan Moore, Comics, Dave Gibbons, heritage auctions, original art, Watchmen

Watchmen #1-3 Original Art Covers Sell For A Total Of $216,892.50

Published Fri, 22 Feb 2013 11:53:11 -0600

Last updated Fri, 22 Feb 2013 11:59:38 -0600

The original cover art for Watchmen issues #1-3 by Dave Gibbons have just sold for a total of $216,892.50 at Heritage Auctions.

The cover of issue #1 sold for $155,350, the #2 cover sold for $38.837.50, and the #3 cover hammered at $22,705.00.

The Watchmen 12-issue series by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons from 1986 is considered among the most important comics ever, and the #1 cover in particular is one of the most iconic and memorable covers in comics history.

These covers are from a comic art collection that Heritage Auctions has dubbed the Shamus Modern Masterworks collection, a rather stellar group of original art from the 1980s and 1990s being sold by Martin Shamus, the father of Wizard Magazine founder Gareb Shamus. The collection has already produced a number of eye-popping hammer prices, including the $675,250 sale of the Todd McFarlane cover of Amazing Spider-Man #328, the record price for a piece of American comic book art.

Today's sale of the Watchmen #1 cover puts it within the top 10 sales of pencil and ink American comic book cover art ever sold publicly.

In 2010, we told you that Watchmen #1 page 1 sold for $33,460. I understand that the complete Watchmen #1-12 cover set sold for roughly $26,000 at Sotheby's in 1993.

Heritage will sell the covers for issues #4-12 in auctions later this year.