A rare artwork of the boy-detective Tintin, together with his faithful dog Snowy, has been reportedly sold for almost $500,000 (£380,000) in an auction held in Paris.
The auction held in Paris took place on November 18, 2017, selling the rare piece in a whooping $500,000 (£380,000). On the other hand, an illustration from the 1939 comic album,'King Ottokar's Sceptre' was among items by Hergé, the Belgian, the artist who created Tintin, to go under the hammer.
To add to that, there was also an original strip from the book 'The Shooting Star', and was fetched $350,000.
Meanwhile, the duplicate of Tintin adventure 'Destination Moon', signed by US astronauts, failed to find a buyer. Other items by Hergé on sale at the Paris auction included books, sketches and drawings.
Running for more than five decades, the comic book series has also been read by the Dalai Lama, and influenced the art of Andy Warhol.
The rage about Tintin
Created by Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, who wrote under the pen name Hergé. The series was one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century. By 2007, a century after Hergé's birth in 1907, Tintin had been published in more than 70 languages with sales of more than 200 million copies, and have been adapted for radio, television, theatre, and film. Up until now, Tintin is still vastly popular to various audiences, be it children or adults.
Tintin is one of the most recognisable comic-book characters ever created.
Just last year, a comic strip from the Tintin book 'Explorers on the Moon' sold for a record $1.64m in Paris and in the same year, a rare drawing of Tintin in Shanghai from the book, 'The Blue Lotus', sold for $1.2m at auction in Hong Kong.
However, things are just getting better as the fans of Tintin may rejoice, because Hong Kong is set to host "The World of Tintin" exhibition in collaboration with the Hergé Museum.
The exhibit is set to run from Nov. 7 to Dec. 26 at ArtisTree, the event, presented by HOCA Foundation, is said to feature eight albums from The Adventures of Tintin series in "vivid scenography". Among the highlights are "three specially created models of Tintin scenes, including a model of Tintin's apartment; a large diorama of the ticker tape parade in Chicago from Tintin in America; and a collector's model of a street scene populated by signature Tintin cars."
