DCML Diges Issue 50

[Don Rosa]

> From: "Anders ChristianSiveb?k" <anders_sivebaek at nns.dk>
> The danish and norwegian translations are fine on this area, and on most
> others.
> I do wonder though how 1 object should be able to sell for half a million
> - and then
> 12 objects and their box should sell for half a billion?? That's what it
> says on the danish
> last page... in the norwegian version, the price the actioneer presumes is
> a bit higher
> than the price of 12...

All I can tell you is that in my original script I had each pen being worth
$40,000 and all 12 in their original box would be auctioned with the
starting bid at $500,000. And that would be low... in such cases, the
original box would be worth as much, if not more, than the contents, being
as the box is rarer than the contents since it is normally trashed. Mind
you, that's to those types of collectors... I am a toy collector (among many
other collections... just last week I bought a slew of 1964 Coke bottle caps
off eBay), but when I get a new item the box (with all tags and labels and
hokey "certificates of authenticity") goes into the trash, and if I ever get
an old item as-they-say MIB ("mint in box"), the item goes on display and
the box gets tossed into the back of a closet for future trade value to one
of those collectors. And speaking of other recent buys, just a few weeks ago
I bought a perfect, mint 1961 RCA talking Ludwig Von Drake doll, a big
sucker with a speaker in his belly that came with a huge tape cassette (of a
design that I never even knew they made prior to modern-style tape
cassettes) for your RCA tape deck, all in the original box, complete with a
perfect 1961 RCA battery in a transistorized (transistorized! obviously
*very* modern!) mini-amplifier, all museum-quality shape, from a retired RCA
employee who kept a few that were given out at the office 42 years back. But
that lovely box is in the back of my closet, waiting for an interested
collector... not me.

By the way, the value quoted for the 1910 Parker Aztec pen is by today's
standards, not those of the mid 1950's -- I couldn't resist that added shock
value. Somebody smack me.

Which leads me to another question (though I guess I can read at least well
enough to see this for myself as the issues arrive here): did the
translators take me seriously when I used the "1910 Parker Aztec" as the
most valuable pen in history? Or did they make up some silly name of their
own? (I know our buddy Stefan used the Parker.)

Also by the way, there are *far* more valuable pens than the 1910 Parker
Aztec, some "worth" a half-million bucks EACH, but those would be special
one-of-a-kind pens made for Presidents or Sultans. I needed a normal pen
that might have been peddled by the boxful to a businessman. Granted the
1910 Parker Aztec was a top-of-the-line pen, that's why (in my script) I
made it clear that a salesman left them *as free samples* to impress the
tycoon, as $crooge would never have paid for anything but the cheapest. But
perhaps the office staff of Hortense or Matilda or Quackmore or Miss
Quackfaster tried to convince $crooge to buy some when he passed through
Duckburg during his 1902-1932 globetrotting. As to why they would never have
used even one of the pens... um... I'll get back to you on that'n.... right
now I need to go to eBay and find a 1950's style RCA tape-cassette deck so I
can hear what Ludwig has to say.

> From: Olaf Solstrand <olaf at andebyonline.com>
> Question to Don:
> Speaking of pens... When Scrooge says on page 2 that "I got [the
> pens] from a
> salesman"... Is that a reference to US 24 "The Magic Ink"?

Nope. My implication in my original script was that the salesman left the
ink *with* the pens. $crooge would have bought those Parker Aztecs circa
1910 when a salesman would have been selling them, not nearly a half-century
later. Didn't the colorist (on my story) follow directions and make it clear
that was the same box of pens that were the ones that turned out to be so
valuable at the end of the tale? Besides, as I recall, that "Magic Ink"
salesman only sold him bottles of ink, right?