As much as I wanted the publicity drawing from Don Donald in a recent animation art auction, I wanted this drawing for the Mickey's Trailer poster much more. It represented one of my biggest collecting failures, a mistake which had haunted me for 35 years. Early in 1984, an east coast dealer had offered me three rare and important original drawings for Disney posters: Society Dog Show (with Mickey Mouse and Pluto), Donald's Golf Game (with Donald and his nephews), and Mickey's Trailer (the better of only two known poster drawing with Mickey, Donald, and Goofy). At the time, the price being asked, $1,000 each, was definitely on the high side, and, as much as I wanted all three drawings, I decided to take a chance by passing on them and hoping that the prices would be lowered when everyone else would also refuse to be gouged. Boy, did I miscalculate -- all three sold in short order.
In late 1984, I was able to track down and buy for $1,000 the Donald's Golf Game drawing from the dealer who had bought it a few months earlier. A couple of years later, I bought the Society Dog Show drawing at a slight savings. But the drawing I had wanted the most, for the Mickey's Trailer poster, had been purchased by a doctor who was not known for parting with anything he collected, so I basically gave up hope of ever owning it. Fortunately, about 13 years ago I was able to buy a very similar drawing that was used for a horizontal publicity still from Mickey's Trailer; but I still preferred the image used for the vertical poster -- in particular I liked the image of Donald better in the poster drawing.
While any sane person would have been content with the very similar drawing he already owned, after 35 years of waiting for the elusive poster drawing to re-appear, I knew I would have to pursue it when it finally turned up at auction. But I paid a high price for my earlier mistake of not paying the $1,000 that was being asked for one of he greatest of all Disney publicity drawings, which now cost me more than 10 times that amount.
