The recent posting of Daffydils and Bird Center Cartoons reminds me of one of my great "I wish I'd bought that" regrets. Thirty-some years ago my wife-to-be and I visited an antique store in Long Beach, California. It was one of the classier sort of store, not one of those wonderful dusty piles of buried treasure. The dealer had on display a remarkable comic-strip artifact. It was a Japanese-style folding paper fan which had circulated at some long-ago cartoonists' meeting or dinner. The fan had been signed and often drawn upon by a staggering group of noted old-time cartoonists, including McCutcheon. It's been so long I don't remember all the participants, but I recognized them as the cream of the crop in the early 1920s. The dealer didn't know what he had but he was aware it would be valuable to someone. In those pre-internet days he had no way of researching it. He wanted two hundred dollars firm. At the time $200 was far beyond my means and I passed on it. I have no idea what became of the fan. I hope it went to Rick Marschall or somebody like that. The fan was somewhat brittle; I imagine it should have been opened once, then displayed in a closed case. Given how many times I moved in those years, if I'd bought it I'd probably have wrecked it. But I still wish I'd hocked my 1967 Renault and taken the chance (well, okay, the Renault was worth maybe $25).
