Over their four-decade run as America’s favorite cartoon family, “The Simpsons” has spawned a massive selection of collectibles to choose from.
As ESPN brings Homer, Marge, Lisa, Bart and Maggie onto their "Monday Night Football" broadcast of the Bengals-Cowboys game, cllct takes a look at some of the biggest and most interesting collectible sales in the history of Springfield.
Couch potatoes
Anyone who thinks of “The Simpsons” will undoubtedly have an image of the family gathered together on their living room couch come to mind, likely at the conclusion of one of their famed “couch gags.”
Back in March, a life-sized theater promo display of the character’s figures on the famed couch, built out of fiberglass by Idea Planet to coincide with the release of "The Simpsons Movie" in 2007, sold for $16,250.
Video game debut
By 1991, it was time for “The Simpsons” to expand from TV to video games, receiving their first video game title in “The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants.”
One sealed copy, graded Wata 9.6 A+ and identified as a first production variant for the NES, sold in 2022 for $15,600.
Lisa's saxophone
Lisa’s affinity for the saxophone, first unveiled in a pre-"Simpsons" short aired on "The Tracey Ullman Show," would grow throughout the series’ history.
Lisa’s work would even be released in albums such “Simpsons Sing the Blues,” which went Gold and Platinum. Doug Norwine was the musician behind much of Lisa’s early work and made sure to keep the saxophone he used to record popular songs from the blues album, as well as the Ray Charles “My World” album, selling it in 2007 for over $10,000.
Computer crossover
In 1989, Apple published a booklet called “Who Needs a Computer Anyway? A Students Guide,” with illustrations from Simpsons creator Matt Groening.
Copies of this student guide have become sought-after collectors items, representing a rare cross-over between two iconic American brands. One copy sold in 2023 for $656.
Art DeBart card
The most iconic Simpsons trading card is a limited-edition sketch card known as the Art DeBart card.
Available by redeeming cards issued in the 1993 SkyBox Simpsons set, Groening created unique sketches for lucky collectors. The top sale of one of these rare cards is $18,600 for a PSA/DNA 10 example in 2022.
Matt Groening's beginnings
A signed hardcover book of “The Big Book of Hell” by Matt Groening, released in 1990 and featuring characters from his famed “Life in Hell” cartoon, sold for $1,745 last week on eBay.
Speed the Plow
“Mr. Plow” is a shoe-in for the top tier of any list of best "Simpsons" episodes ever created.
So, it should come as no surprise that an animation cel from the 1992 episode is among the highest priced sales of any cels from the series, fetching $24,000 in 2020.
The Homer console
In 2007, 100 limited-edition Simpsons Xbox 360 consoles were given away in a sweepstakes.
One of those 100, featuring the top of Homer’s head, sold for $5,500 in October.
Signed scripts
A cast-signed production script cover from a 1992 episode sold for $4,864 in June.
During an auction of Simpsons co-creator Sam Simon’s memorabilia, Sotheby’s sold a lot of three scripts signed by celebrities including Dustin Hoffman, Ken Griffey Jr. and Jose Canseco for $1,000.
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct.