A piece of cover art by Herge for the 10th anniversary supplement of Le Petit Vingtieme will auction at Sotheby's Paris on March 7.

It's valued at $509,980-543,979.

The comic was a youth supplement to Belgian newspaper Le Vingtieme Siecle (The Twentieth Century) and was first published in 1928.

Georges Prosper Remi, aka Herge, worked as a clerk in the paper's offices.

An original cover for Herge's Le Petit Vingtieme is to auction at Sotheby's

He was soon promoted to editor in chief of Le Petit Vingtieme and began work on the comic series that would become Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. 

Today, original artwork by Herge can reach exceptional sums at auction. The record was set last year for a double page spread of illustrations, which sold for $2.9m at Artcurial in Paris.

Another piece by Herge, one of the final pages of King Ottokar's Sceptre, is also on offer with a valuation of $283,323-305,988.

The original cover to Hugo Pratt's The Celts, from his Corto Maltese series, is estimated at $249,324-271,990.

Sotheby's comments: "The sale, comprising 300 illustrations, paintings and original plates, blends historical and contemporary European and American authors, and is sure to appeal to international connoisseurs and collectors."

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