D&D General 1979 AD&D coloring album art sells for $57,500

Stormonu said:

Weapons and Warriors? Was that like Crossbows & Catapults or a D&D thing?

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Crossbows & Catapults with actual cannonballs instead of discs, but fundamentally similar. Made for 28mm awesome terrain, which I painted and still have today!

Stormonu said:

Weapons and Warriors? Was that like Crossbows & Catapults or a D&D thing?

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So a while ago WotC had a bunch of coloring book images up as free downloads (from a christmas advent thing?), it looks like some might have been from this book? It had that tavern one from the screenshot.

Voadam said:

So a while ago WotC had a bunch of coloring book images up as free downloads (from a christmas advent thing?), it looks like some might have been from this book? It had that tavern one from the screenshot.

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Yes, the beholder and the umber hulk pictures are from The Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Coloring Album (1979). The dragon and the mimic, however, are from the Adventures Outlined Coloring Book (2018).

Sacrosanct said:

Things like this remind of just how much value was destroyed when TSR filled the landfills of original work (art and manuscripts) when they were bought by WotC. I know some folks tried to save as much as possible, but most still went to the landfill.

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Starmaster said:

I heard the neato castle that TSR used for their mega-booth at Gen Con also went to the landfill along with the other stuff. Not right away, but eventually. I think it was when the con moved from Milwaukee to Indianapolis.

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Koloth said:

Such happenings are sad, but from the WOTC perspective, shipping a bunch of 2nd ed stuff from the soon to be closed TSR warehouse/HQ to the WOTC warehouse/HQ probably didn't make much sense, in light of plans to create and release 3rd ed. Neither shipping nor warehouse space are free. Plus the employee costs to sort, catalog and try to keep 'the good stuff'. Very possible that at the time, much of the stuff had little value. To the accountants of WOTC, the value of an original Caldwell, Bell or Elmore artwork wasn't worth the bother. Add in the issues of who owns what rights to the artwork, better it vanish then open up a later IP legal fight. Any good stuff that was thought to have real value at the time probably 'vanished' in the hustle to vacate the building. It is almost 30 years after the buyout. Plenty of time for things to appriciate in value.

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Sacrosanct said:

I know. IIRC, the first purge happened in the mid 90s. Diesel himself went and tried to save as much as he could, but only so much he could do.

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GreyLord said:

The craziest thing about this is I think this was all WotC and had nothing to do with HAS.

It's dirt easy to get rid of warehouse stuff (even back then) and not lose every nickel and dime on it. You won't make a profit, you may even lose money, but you won't lose as much money as you would shipping it to the dump or dumping it like that.

These days, you can sell it to an overseller or overstock company with such things as liquidation and other aspects of simply getting rid of items. They are normally more than happy to take it from you (if you want to give them a great deal, just let them take it for free. That at least saves you from paying employees to do this, and spending money on clearing out the warehouses. However, selling it for cheap will bring in some money on top of that)!.

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I think people are talking about and mixing up multiple different purges/dumps of old stuff.

I remember Ryan Dancy's piece talking about all the $0 value product stacked on pallets in the warehouse. I don't remember it saying anything about those products going to a landfill. It seems more likely that it got liquidated the way GreyLord describes. Anyone got a source to confirm or deny? This totally could have been covered in Slaying the Dragon or elsewhere and I may just not be remembering.

Of course the real tragedy is when original art and unique promotional materials are lost or trashed, much moreso than the umpteenth copy of DragonStrike!

@Starmaster , chapter 23 of Slaying the Dragon talks in some detail about two TSR staffers (Monte Cook and Harold Johnson) trying to save as much good stuff from TSR's storage unit in Racine, WI in 1997 when TSR was no longer paying for the unit, before the storage company changed the locks and would discard everything. "All the stuff that TSR had been utilizing at Gen Con for the last twenty years, that had been stored there." Including the Gen Con castle and all the dioramas and materials used for showcasing and demoing the game.

Cook told Riggs the story of arriving an hour before closing time and rushing to get as much stuff in his pickup truck as he could before it would be trashed.

"The rental unit was the size of a four-car garage and packed to the ceiling with splendors. There were dioramas of dungeons, graveyards, caves, villages, and fields. He discovered a floating castle, probably from Dragonlance. He also found boxes and boxes of miniatures."

"There was a spaceship shaped like a nautilus. Eleven two-by-two foot blocks made up a titanic desert diorama, over which rose a mountain. The top of the mountain came of to reveal layers of dungeon beneath. There was an asteroid with a dragon's lair within."

@Sacrosanct, @Koloth, can you point me to where I can read (or re-read) more about original art being trashed? I have vague recollections that some stuff might have been but I can't recall when or where. Slaying the Dragon has the story in chapter 26 (p271-272) of Peter Adkison returning all the original art TSR had locked up to the artists. Riggs writes that he heard about this gesture "dozens and dozens of times" from various employees during the research for the book, because it stood out so much an was such a contrast from TSR claiming ownership of all the art as work for hire.

Mannahnin said:

I think people are talking about and mixing up multiple different purges/dumps of old stuff.

I remember Ryan Dancy's piece talking about all the $0 value product stacked on pallets in the warehouse. I don't remember it saying anything about those products going to a landfill. It seems more likely that it got liquidated the way GreyLord describes. Anyone got a source to confirm or deny? This totally could have been covered in Slaying the Dragon or elsewhere and I may just not be remembering.

Of course the real tragedy is when original art and unique promotional materials are lost or trashed, much moreso than the umpteenth copy of DragonStrike!

@Starmaster , chapter 23 of Slaying the Dragon talks in some detail about two TSR staffers (Monte Cook and Harold Johnson) trying to save as much good stuff from TSR's storage unit in Racine, WI in 1997 when TSR was no longer paying for the unit, before the storage company changed the locks and would discard everything. "All the stuff that TSR had been utilizing at Gen Con for the last twenty years, that had been stored there." Including the Gen Con castle and all the dioramas and materials used for showcasing and demoing the game.

Cook told Riggs the story of arriving an hour before closing time and rushing to get as much stuff in his pickup truck as he could before it would be trashed.

"The rental unit was the size of a four-car garage and packed to the ceiling with splendors. There were dioramas of dungeons, graveyards, caves, villages, and fields. He discovered a floating castle, probably from Dragonlance. He also found boxes and boxes of miniatures."

"There was a spaceship shaped like a nautilus. Eleven two-by-two foot blocks made up a titanic desert diorama, over which rose a mountain. The top of the mountain came of to reveal layers of dungeon beneath. There was an asteroid with a dragon's lair within."

@Sacrosanct, @Koloth, can you point me to where I can read (or re-read) more about original art being trashed? I have vague recollections that some stuff might have been but I can't recall when or where. Slaying the Dragon has the story in chapter 26 (p271-272) of Peter Adkison returning all the original art TSR had locked up to the artists. Riggs writes that he heard about this gesture "dozens and dozens of times" from various employees during the research for the book, because it stood out so much an was such a contrast from TSR claiming ownership of all the art as work for hire.

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Besides the one you mention in 1997, I recall conversation at the Acaeum when Diesel tried to save as much as he could during a purge in 1994 or 1995 I think.

Mannahnin said:

chapter 23 of Slaying the Dragon talks in some detail about two TSR staffers (Monte Cook and Harold Johnson) trying to save as much good stuff from TSR's storage unit in Racine, WI in 1997 when TSR was no longer paying for the unit, before the storage company changed the locks and would discard everything. "All the stuff that TSR had been utilizing at Gen Con for the last twenty years, that had been stored there." Including the Gen Con castle and all the dioramas and materials used for showcasing and demoing the game.

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There was a purge of old stock in late 2012. I don't know if any original art or other unique items were offered. My understanding of the situation at the time (which may or may not be entirely accurate) was that somebody at WotC discovered that the company was still paying rent for a warehouse in Lake Geneva, so they flew some staffers there and found that it contained a lot of new old stock from the early TSR days. According to the story, the TSR lawyers from back then wanted the company to keep one copy of everything so they had proof of IP if it was ever needed. Again, from what I heard, the staffers took a lot of stuff for themselves and much or all of the remainder was auctioned off at Gen Con 2012. Perhaps what I heard was a conflated version of the 1997 Racine warehouse story but, if it is, I don't know why they would wait 15 years (1997 to 2012) before selling the stuff.

I drove to Gen Con 2012 specifically so I could bid on a set of 21 brand new Dragon magazines they found in the warehouse. The set included issues 6 through 26. Issues 17, 18, 21, 23, 25, & 26 still had the fancy mailing covers on them (without address labels, of course). I was fortunate enough to have the high bid at $725.00. There was a lot of other wonderful new old stock from the warehouse that they auctioned off as well but, after buying the set of Dragons, there was nothing left in my wallet but moths.

Sacrosanct said:

Besides the one you mention in 1997, I recall conversation at the Acaeum when Diesel tried to save as much as he could during a purge in 1994 or 1995 I think.

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I found the below thread from 2004, which is a bit sketchy on details. It claims that "only three major paintings" survived a purge in the mid '90s.

"Up until the mid 1980s, TSR kept all of the artwork that was produced by its staff illustrators. Then, at some point in the mid 90s, they destroyed almost all of it -- just threw it in the trash. The major stock of things that survived were actually pulled from a dumpster by Diesel (DSL) and subsequently sold.

I know of only three major paintings that have survived -- Gary Gygax has the Player's Handbook cover, supposedly. A collector I know owns the original Monster Manual cover, and another owns the original Deities and Demigods cover. Several of Jim Roslof's pieces survived as well -- Jim was art director for a while, and took all of his stuff with him when he left."

But a 2007 reply to that thread confirms that a collector has the 1979 DMG cover art as well.

Another 2007 comment from a person who apparently spoke to Jim Holloway "confirms that he burned almost all of his TSR art back in the 90's because he was so angry at his treatment by TSR and didn't think anyone would want it anyway."

A 2025 comment: "I know that Jim Holloway received a bunch of his earlier b&w’s from Diesel in the early 2000s. Never heard how Diesel acquired the artwork to begin with, but I’m assuming it was from one of the first art dumps. Illustrations from Dragon, Dungeon, and various TSR modules (i.e., I3 Pharaoh, Boot Hill, and R1, etc)."

Is there anything more substantial to this story? The idea that they "destroyed almost all" of the original art seems directly contradictory to the story in StD about WotC returning a ton of original art to the artists, which Riggs says he heard from dozens of staffers. OTOH the second report about Dave LaForce (Diesel) seems to confirm that he definitely did retrieve some discarded stuff. So it sounds like that's a real incident, but that the dump/purge wasn't as extensive as the OP in 2004 thought.

Mannahnin said:

I found the below thread from 2004, which is a bit sketchy on details. It claims that "only three major paintings" survived a purge in the mid '90s.

"Up until the mid 1980s, TSR kept all of the artwork that was produced by its staff illustrators. Then, at some point in the mid 90s, they destroyed almost all of it -- just threw it in the trash. The major stock of things that survived were actually pulled from a dumpster by Diesel (DSL) and subsequently sold.

I know of only three major paintings that have survived -- Gary Gygax has the Player's Handbook cover, supposedly. A collector I know owns the original Monster Manual cover, and another owns the original Deities and Demigods cover. Several of Jim Roslof's pieces survived as well -- Jim was art director for a while, and took all of his stuff with him when he left."

But a 2007 reply to that thread confirms that a collector has the 1979 DMG cover art as well.

Another 2007 comment from a person who apparently spoke to Jim Holloway "confirms that he burned almost all of his TSR art back in the 90's because he was so angry at his treatment by TSR and didn't think anyone would want it anyway."

A 2025 comment: "I know that Jim Holloway received a bunch of his earlier b&w’s from Diesel in the early 2000s. Never heard how Diesel acquired the artwork to begin with, but I’m assuming it was from one of the first art dumps. Illustrations from Dragon, Dungeon, and various TSR modules (i.e., I3 Pharaoh, Boot Hill, and R1, etc)."

Is there anything more substantial to this story? The idea that they "destroyed almost all" of the original art seems directly contradictory to the story in StD about WotC returning a ton of original art to the artists, which Riggs says he heard from dozens of staffers. OTOH the second report about Dave LaForce (Diesel) seems to confirm that he definitely did retrieve some discarded stuff. So it sounds like that's a real incident, but that the dump/purge wasn't as extensive as the OP in 2004 thought.

What Happened to the Vintage TSR Art • Collecting General • The Acaeum

Muaddib5 pinged me to ask what happened to all the vintage TSR art, and I thought the answer might interest others, too, so I figured I'd post the reply.

www.acaeum.com

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I asked Diesel and this was his response:

I do not know the year but it was long before Wizards took over. Late 80s or very early 90s. It was mostly pen and ink stuff. A few color pieces but not many. These were chucked out in at least 3 batches of which I got ahold of the last batch. A few of my own pieces were in that batch. Not sure of the fate of the previous ones. I also was able to rescue some concept art that was tossed after Wizards emptied the building. I do regret not grabbing the molds for TSRs miniature line. Those were left behind as well and are likely in the land fill.[/qoute]

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Sacrosanct said:

I asked Diesel and this was his response:

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Awesome, thanks!

I did some more digging and saw that the art for Supplement I: Greyhawk, including the original Greg Bell "Sphere of Doom" Beholder illustration was included in the batch that Diesel saved.

I also found more recent confirmation on the Acaeum that a lot of other original art survived and is now in the hands of private collectors, apparently foremost among them (in terms of # of items) Matthew Koder, President of Bank of America's Global Corporate and Investment Banking.

Found also a listing for a big D&D art exhibition at the 2024 Lucca Comics & Games festival in Italy, which prominently featured a lot of Koder's stuff.

On display will be works from the Koder Collection, the world's most complete collection of artworks related to Dungeons & Dragons and fantasy games, assembled over the course of more than two decades. The collection brings together original works of art, both published artworks and preparatory sketches, created over the last half century with the aim of preserving them and, in the future, founding an institution that will make them accessible to the public, highlighting the impact that this type of art has on popular culture.

“Art has had such a huge impact on the way people view and see fantasy, and the ways in which the genre has developed through games and literature. The contribution of artists to the fantasy genre has not always been sufficiently recognized and appreciated. The works of art were fragmented and dispersed, they had to be gathered so that people could appreciate them in their historical context. The goal of the collection is to be a real gateway to adventure, inviting to the exploration of fantasy art through the lens of D&D" comments Matthew Koder, owner of the collection.

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Here also is a sweet gallery of dozens of pieces of original art (three dozen covers, more interior) which are in the hands of a few private collectors, one in NYC known as The Scribe, and the Burntwire Brothers, Shawn and Devon Hibbs, of Indianapolis.


Oh, and you can see a picture of the beautifully-framed original cover painting for module C3 The Lost Island of Castanamir in this ENworld thread on their gaming room: