11,000 hand-drawn 'Garfield' comics go up at auction

Garfield creator Jim Davis is auctioning off his spare comic strips — but not all at once.

Heritage Auctions, based in Dallas, started auctioning off two comic strips per week in August, specifically the daily strips that appear in newspapers; they sell for around $500 to $700.

Longer strips, like those from a Sunday newspaper, will be available at the auction house's bigger events, and go from closer to $1,500 to $3,000. A comic grader at Heritage said strip price can increase depend on more character appearances or Garfield behaving in his signature way — hating Mondays, eating lasagna, and so on.

“There are just so many, and it was such a daunting task to figure what to do with them so that they could be out there where people enjoy them too,” Davis told the Associated Press. Davis' work has already been featured in museums and exhibitions and gifted by him to family and friends. He continues to draw Garfield comics with no plans to stop.

“[It] was just a logical thing to do with an awful lot of comic strips and an opportunity to allow not just collectors but a lot of the fans over the years to have access to the strips as well without me having to send them out one at a time,” he said.

[h/t Associated Press]