A Walt Disney-autographed ticket book cover from 1958 sold Wednesday for $21,996.
The winning bid, which includes buyer’s premium, is among the most paid for a Disney autograph. In May, the same auction house, RR Auction, sold a Disney autographed sketch of Mickey Mouse, dated to 1935, for $25,035.
A decade ago, Walt Disney signatures could be had for $2,000, but in recent years, interest has skyrocketed. A Disney-signed check sold for $6,989 on eBay earlier this month.
The premium for the signature likely had to do with the size and the clarity of the autograph and the beautiful artwork on the 10-ticket book cover, though the tickets themselves have all been removed
Disney could be seen at Disneyland in the early years and wasn’t shy to sign an autograph. A signed ticket to the Mark Twain steamboat ride sold last September for $9,353 at Iconic Auctions.
Disney opened Disneyland in 1955, but died in 1966, some five years before his vision for his Florida theme park, DisneyWorld, was realized.
Darren Rovell is the founder of cllct.com and one of the country's leading reporters on the collectibles market. He previously worked for ESPN, CNBC and The Action Network. He owns one of the nine graded tickets to the Tyson-Douglas fight in 1990.