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Dallas' Heritage Auctions offering 'very, very rare' piece of 'A Charlie Brown Christmas'

Used to be a time when I didn't let a holiday season pass without at least one lengthy exegesis on A Charlie Brown Christmas. Like, oh, this one, just in time for the 35th anniversary. Or this one during my very brief stint spent putting National Public Radio audiences to sleep. Or this one. Or this one concerning the confusion over who played on the immortal soundtrack, which -- biggest thrill ever -- was cited several times in the 2012 book Vince Guaraldi at the Piano.  So ... yeah. Might have gotten a little carried away there.

But on the occasion of its 50th anniversary,  it is worth nothing that a rather significant piece of the special sits in Dallas at this very moment -- a "multi-cel set-up" (with the complete background) that shows the moment just after Linus gives His Big Speech explaining What Christmas Is All About (a Top 10 moment in TV history, even if you've been bar mitzvahed). There's Charlie Brown walking off with his pitiful Christmas tree into the cold, clear, snow-covered night, with the rest of the Peanuts gang bringing up the rear.

Production cels from the special have been sold before; good luck finding one.

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But what Heritage Auctions is offering is "very, very rare, particular from this special," says Noah Fleisher, Heritage's public relations director. "It's tremendous -- a set-up of several cels put together from a key moment in the special. What a beautiful thing."

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It's not small either -- 33.5 inches by 8.75 inches. But its price tag is even larger: Heritage guesstimates it will go for upwards of $35,000 when bidding closes in 10 days. Right now it's sitting at $6,000.

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For free, here's a chat Chris Vognar and I had about A Charlie Brown Christmas earlier this week. He hadn't seen it in years; I hadn't watched it in hours. It's still The Best Thing Ever.

When we spoke in 2000, producer Lee Mendelson, who crafted the special with Charles "Sparky" Schulz and animator Bill Melendez, told me that "generations change, audiences change, but this show never will. I had never thought about it till this discussion that it is Sparky's Christmas Carol, and it will last just as long as those other epics, which is quite something. Of course, I'd never put it in that context."

Fret not. The rest of us will.

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