Tintin Strikes Gold in Belgian Auction

Published: May 12, 2009

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NAMUR, Belgium—"My only international rival is Tintin," President Charles de Gaulle of France once said, but in his native Belgium, the comic character has no equal.

The Rops auction house in Namur raised nearly twice the €650,000 ($887,000) it had expected on Sunday and Monday with a sale of items connected to the artist known as Herge, creator of the eternally popular journalist-turned-adventurer. According to the Agence France-Presse, the 586-lot sale brought in €1,172,000 ($1,600,000).

The highest price paid was €312,000 ($426,000) for a hand-drawn page from the 1963 book The Jewels of Castafiore, (the English translation was called The Castafiore Emerald), the AFP quotes Thibaut Van Houtte, an expert on hand for the sale, as saying.

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Herge, whose real name was Georges Remi, drew Tintin from 1929 until his death in 1983.

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