I also got my Cochran catalogues back, albeit with exhibit tabs attached and all the address lables cut out of the covers. I didn't expect or ask for more, even though I spent at least as much time and probably provided as much legal advice as that for which another lawyer had been handsomely paid. As I expected, Carl Harper bought a nice , matchng setup of Mickey Mouse from Thru the Mirror. For Marsha he bought the most expensive lot in the sale, a setup of Mickey killing seven flies in one blow from The Brave Little Tailor. The Basmajians were unhappy that the had to pay for their own legal problems and that they had received somewhat less than $500,000 (less commissions) for art that they had paid $0. The person who came out the worst was the one person involved who had nothing at all at stake. My friend, who sent Christie's a few expensive books at express mail rates, was never reimbursed for the expenses, despite his sending an invoice to Christie's.. All those who bought art at the sale or bought some of it at later times have no clue about what it took to keep that art from returning to Disney's studio...but now they can learn the story, 36 years after the fact, on CAF
At the 1985 San Diego Con, a collector was showing potential buyers photos of a handful of early Disney backgrounds that the family of Samuel Armstrong, the main background artist for Snow White, was interested in selling. What caught my eye was a background from The Tortoise and the Hare which showed the starting line for the race with a grandstand with many animal spectators. I offered $2,400, more than I had paid for my background with matching cell and more than what any of the other setups from the cartoons had sold fo at the Basmajian auction. Some time later, I received a call from the middleman, who informed me that the family was going to sell the backround to another collector for his offer of $1,600, only 2/3 of what I was willing to pay!!! I could not change their minds, since the other collector was saying that he would put the piece in a big, traveling animation exhibit, which would be an appropriate memorial to Armstrong's work. To my knowledge, that exhibit never took place. I did see the background several years later in a small , short-lived display of animation art in the lobby of the Motion Picture Academy's old headquarters in Beverly Hills.
