Diamond Comic Distributors President and Chief Executive Officer Steve
Geppi has acquired The Bruce Hamilton Collection, a collection of premiere
quality material assembled by one of the most ardent proponents of Disneyana.
Terms of the deal between Geppi and Helen Hamilton, Bruce’s devoted wife, were
not disclosed.

The vast array of Disney items in the collection include
production art, works by Carl Barks, movie posters, bone china, hand-written
scripts, stuffed toys, and many other objects. One of the prizes “Parade
of Award Nominees,” original art, full-color, nitrate celluloid featuring
Mickey Mouse, as seen in the opening few seconds of a short-short shown
exclusively at the November 18, 1932 Academy Awards. The film was the first to
show Mickey Mouse in color, and its existence had been forgotten by The Walt
Disney Company until 1998.

Other key items in the collection include
Visitor From Underground (a money bin oil painting on slate by Carl
Barks), the only known copy of Don Donald (a 60” x 40”
linen-backed movie poster of the January 1937 release), a 6”4”
stuffed Mickey Mouse toy from the 1930s, Carl Barks’ 10-page hand-written script
of “The Not So Ancient Mariner,” Mickey Mouse Magazine #1 (1933) in
Near Mint condition, and Don Rosa’s 10-page original pencil drawings and ink
lettering of “The Money Pit.”

The collection also features the entire
Series II Gladstone comic series of Disney comics, comic albums, books and
lithographs published by Hamilton during the 1980s and 1990s.

Hamilton,
who passed away June 30, 2005, possessed an imposing stature, a radio
announcer’s voice, and a fiery drive. He was a primal force in getting the
comics industry organized, first as a dealer in Golden Age comics, then in other
diverse collectibles such as original art, movie posters, and cartoon cels. He
was among the first to suggest that classic material be repackaged into deluxe
formats. Together with Russ Cochran, he was largely responsible for promoting
Carl Barks into the superstar he became in the 1980s and onward. Barks’ work was
already known, thanks to the efforts of Malcolm Willits and others, but Hamilton
significantly made his work better-known.

He began a 20-year relationship
with The Walt Disney Company in 1980 when he and Cochran acquired a license to
produce The Fine art of Walt Disney’s Donald Duck, a collection of all of
the Carl Barks Disney-based oil paintings to that date. The book sold out
quickly and won an award for excellence in production values from the American
Bookbinders Association. The success of that project enabled Hamilton to acquire
the Disney license to produce limited edition lithographs based upon
newly-produced Barks oil paintings.

After Western Publishing dropped the
license to produce the Disney comics in the mid-1980s, he was granted the
license and the now-legendary Gladstone Publishing company was
created.

“I’ve said publicly a number of times that I considered Bruce to
be a mentor, as well as a friend and business associate. The knowledge we lost
in his passing is incalculable, but he’ll certainly live on in the hearts of his
family and friends, and in the collections of many thousands of Disney fans
around the world,” Geppi said.

Some components of The Bruce
Hamilton Collection will end up in Geppi’s Entertainment Museum at Camden Yards,
which is set to open this Summer. Other pieces will be featured in upcoming
auctions, the details of which will be announced at a later
date.

“Bruce left a great legacy for historians and collectors to
learn from and to simply enjoy,” Geppi said.