1938 Snow White Banner
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GUEST:
My grandparents lived in Lewiston, Idaho, and worked at a bakery there. And somehow they ended up with this, and they were working there about the 1930s, maybe early '40s. It got handed down through my mother to me, and my mother actually has the duplicate, the exact same canvas in her possession, and so that's how I ended up with it.
APPRAISER:
It's a great visual piece. I mean when it was unrolled and I looked at it, just the colors pop off of it. And when you said that your mother has it on canvas, what I wanted to point out is this is actually not a poster. It looks as though from a distance as though it's paper that's been linen-backed, but this is actually printed on the linen canvas, so it's a little bit different than how we're used to seeing posters and things like that that were made for films. And this is obviously not exactly a film poster. It's promotional in conjunction with the film. And when you said that they were at the bakery in the '30s, that makes perfect sense because Snow White came out in 1938. And what this illustrates is probably one of the greatest merchandising and licensing companies in the history of the world, which is Disney. And following the Mickey Mouse Club, they decided that having clubs for kids was probably a good idea promotionally. And what we see here is they're advertising Snow White Bread, but they're also advertising the Jingle Club, which was something for children. If they wanted to join they'd get that button and the little book that you see over there. It was trying to tie in to a lot of the serial promotional items that a lot of the comic strips were doing. Superman's in the same era. You had a lot of promotional items like the rings and things like that. So it was Disney's way of trying to get into that same market and get kids interested and excited about the movie. I don't think they really had to try too hard. Being Snow White, it obviously was a huge sensation, but it was a way to make kids feel really involved with the production, and like a special member of a club. And there is a little bit of writing over here.
GUEST:
And I don't know what that is.
APPRAISER:
It looks like somebody just decided to write on it.
GUEST:
Yeah.
APPRAISER:
From my eye, it actually looks like pencil, it looks like graphite. It'd be really easy for someone to remove and you could have it easily restored. You don't really need to do anything to the color. I mean the color just pops off of this thing, which is amazing. But up until 1991, I don't think a lot of collectors had seen this. And then in 1991 there were ten of these found in a warehouse somewhere in Ohio, and they came out, and we don't think they were ever used. They were in perfect condition. One of those that we could find record of that sold publicly was in 2001, and it sold for $6,500. Which brings us to, what does that mean for today? That was 14 years ago. So in today's market, we think every bit of at least $8,000 to $10,000, but who knows, a lot of time has passed. So if there are a lot of collectors out there who have wanted to get their hands on one, and have been waiting for 14 years to see another one come up, it very well could do better than that.
GUEST:
Wow. (laughs) I didn't expect that. Thank you.
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