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| ©Disney (via http://protagonist.wikia.com/) |
...Usually it's Donald Duck. However this lucky duck just scored some awesome! The week before Christmas my mom and I on a whim decided to poke our noses in to one of her favorite antique shops downtown– the place is a hoarders candy land! At any rate it's loaded with ALL kinds of collectibles and memorabilia from a bygone era. You can find anything from authentic Old West tools and architectural pieces to 1950's era cheap Hollywood "Old West" knock off props. They have a few merchandising pieces from the Walt Disney Co. in there from time to time so I went in with a mission.
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| "Donald Duck" Illustrated by the Staff of the Walt Disney Studios, 1936 1st edition, (photo ©The Backyard Imagineer) |
There were a few items that didn't impress me much (like that Mickey Mouse rotary phone where Mickey holds the receiver– do any of you 20 somethings even know what a rotary is?!?), but as I was flipping through a stack of old books crowded into a corner of a back room I came across a little gem. A book with "donald duck" emblazoned on the cover! Obviously dated, worn, and loved there also is the name Kratz written in marker above the title. The two things on the cover that grabbed my attention before I even opened it though was that Donald's hands were still illustrated in the style when they were wings and feathers before he had been given actual hands and fingers. The other part was the text at the bottom which read "Illustrated by the staff of the Walt Disney Studios." This to me said RARE, and OLD.
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| from Mickey's Polo Team, 1936 ©Disney (via http://www.disneyfilmproject.com/) |
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| from Mickey's Polo Team, 1936 ©Disney (via http://www.wearysloth.com/) |
I proceeded to gingerly open the cover, written on the inside flap in pencil above a page of wonderful illustrations of the Duck in question was "1936 First Ed. $8.00"; I knew this was rare. The next page over had a child's obvious doodles in pencil and the title page was torn, but I didn't care... this was a piece not produced by the Walt Disney® conglomerate we are familiar with today, this was a piece produced by Uncle Walt's very own staff at the studios. 1936 was the first year Donald appeared in animation alongside Goofy and Mickey in Mickey's Polo Team; Disney began work on his ground breaking Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1936. This was smack in the middle of the time that Disney Studios was producing their Silly Symphonies cartoons. This was a piece of history from a company that has captured my attention and imagination since before I knew what a "company" was.
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| from Donald Duck, 1936 © Disney (photo © The Backyard Imagineer) |
Well, Christmas happened and I set it down and forgot about it until the other day. I saw it laying there and decided to do a little research (Google of course) and discovered that it's actually very rare, as well as being sold upwards to $350! Not bad for an $8 purchase!! I got it because it is a piece of history that I care about though, not because I was looking to make some bucks off of the Duck. I'm really excited to add this to my collection, and wanted to share a little piece of history with you all.
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