Muaddib5 pinged me to ask what happened to all the vintage TSR art, and I thought the answer might interest others, too, so I figured I’d post the reply.
Up until the mid 1980s, TSR kept all of the artwork that was produced by its staff illustrators. Then, at some point in the mid 90s, they destroyed almost all of it — just threw it in the trash. The major stock of things that survived were actually pulled from a dumpster by Diesel (DSL) and subsequently sold.
I know of only three major paintings that have survived — Gary Gygax has the Player’s Handbook cover, supposedly. A collector I know owns the original Monster Manual cover, and another owns the original Deities and Demigods cover. Several of Jim Roslof’s pieces survived as well — Jim was art director for a while, and took all of his stuff with him when he left.
Other than that, there are miscellaneous inks floating around out there, and the odd off cover (I had and sold an unused Bill Willingham cover for a variant of L2) but that’s it. I’ve never seen a published module cover appear from Otus, Willingham, Tramp, Sutherland, or Dee. I’ve never been able to get in touch with Sutherland or Willingham, but I know that Tramp owns nothing but his Wormy pages, and Erol has only a few inks.
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