DALLAS, TX.- Add another to its ever-expanding list of auction records: Heritage Auctions recorded more than $924.9 million in total sales through the first half of 2024, the highest midyear total in Heritage’s 48-year history. Only 48 months ago, that would have been a record sales total for an entire year.

Heritage is now on pace for its fourth record-setting year in a row, following 2023’s $1.76 billion year.

That surge in sales has been led by several categories that have seen significant year-over-year growth while setting major auction records, led by Comics and Comic Art, Popular Culture and Hollywood/Entertainment, Sports and U.S. Currency and World Coins.

Heritage also continues its national and global expansion, with its affiliate Heritage Auctions–Europe Cooperatief recorded $9.7 million in sales through the end of June after realizing $14 million for all of 2023.

Heritage’s worldwide growth culminated this spring with its expansion into Tokyo. In October, Tokyo will be the first stop on a four-city world tour featuring the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz, which Heritage will offer on Dec. 7.

“Much has been made in the media about a slowdown in the auction world, which has been news to us at Heritage,” says CEO and Co-Chairman Steve Ivy. “As we near our 50th anniversary in 2026, the excitement continues to build: As the worldwide leader in the collectibles community, Heritage continues to add new offices worldwide, new categories, new records, new technological innovations and new clients, among them first-timers for whom popular culture serves as their introduction to the auction world.”

Indeed, Heritage began 2024 with the wildly successful Succession auction, which garnered worldwide attention and brought nearly 1,000 new (and younger) bidders to Heritage, adding to its more than 1.75 million registered bidder-members worldwide.

During the first half of 2024, Heritage held one of the world’s most successful Entertainment auctions (Treasures From Planet Hollywood, which realized more than $15.68 million); hosted the first Comics and Comic Art auction to surpass $28 million; and was responsible for the highest-selling Disneyland auction ever held (more than $3.6 million).

Already this year, Heritage has sold the world’s most valuable comic book, a copy of Action Comics No. 1 that realized $6 million in April; the world’s most valuable vintage toy, a rocket-firing Boba Fett action figure that sold for $525,000 in June; and the most valuable Sandy Koufax jersey ever offered at auction, a photo-matched rookie-season Brooklyn Dodgers top that realized $1.8 million. Just last month, Heritage also set numerous rare-book records when F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby realized $425,000, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit sold for $300,000, and Henry David Thoreau’s Walden; or Life in the Woods realized $275,000 during the $5.65 million William A. Strutz Library, Part I, Rare Books Signature® Auction.

So far this year, auction records have spanned numerous categories — from Russian Art (a Fabergé picture frame sold for $750,000) to rock concert posters (an advertisement for the Rolling Stones’ Altamont show realized $93,750), Comic Art (the original art for Black Cat Mystery No. 50’s cover sold for $840,000) to Japanese woodblock prints (including the $156,250 realized for the iconic Eight Views of the Ryukyu Islands). Heritage Auctions–Europe Cooperatief also sold the world’s most valuable Dutch coin for $1,130,376 in April.

The past six months will also serve as a precursor to what’s likely to be the most exciting six months in Heritage’s history: August’s Summer Platinum Night Sports Auction will offer numerous Hall of Fame treasures, chief among them the New York Yankees jersey Babe Ruth wore when he called his home-run shot during the 1932 World Series, and in September Heritage will announce a Very Special Auction sure to attract a global audience.

By the time the ruby slippers head down the Yellow Brick Road in December, it will become clear: There really is no place like Heritage.