What Is a David Maass Worth? The Originals and the Prints Are Two Different Markets

Two federal duck stamps, five-time Ducks Unlimited Artist of the Year, and a Long Lake studio. Maass originals sit among the stronger wildlife paintings in the American market. His prints — 215,000 of them and counting — are among the weakest. Knowing which you own changes everything.

SebastianCharles Auctions

David A. Maass died at Orono on 29 April 2026, at ninety-six. He had painted birds since the 1950s, most of that time from a studio at Long Lake, and by the end of it he had designed thirty-eight duck and conservation stamps and been named Ducks Unlimited Artist of the Year five separate times.

We are not going to write a eulogy. Other people have done that better. What we can do, because it is what we do, is answer the question that arrives with almost every Maass phone call: what is this worth?

The answer depends entirely on one thing, and it is not condition, subject, or size. It is whether you are holding a painting or a print.

First: the spelling

Maass. Two S's.

This matters more than it sounds like it should. Auction houses misspell it constantly — you will find live lots catalogued as "David Maas" and "DAVID MAAS," and there is a separate, unrelated artist named David Maas in the trade. If you are searching for comparable sales, run Maass, Maas and Mass, or you will see half the market. If you are listing something for sale and you spell it wrong, the collectors who are searching for "Maass" will never find your lot.

The man, briefly

Born in Rochester, Minnesota in 1929, raised around the Mississippi bottomlands, and essentially self-taught. He went to work at Jostens in Owatonna in 1947 in the tool-and-die department and was the company's art director by 1950 — designing class rings by day and painting waterfowl at night. He went full time in the early-to-mid 1960s (sources differ on the exact year), by which point he had already broken into the New York sporting-goods retailers and had painted his first Ducks Unlimited cover, in spring 1963.

He worked almost exclusively in oils, and — this is a useful authentication fact — almost exclusively on board. Masonite, hardboard, panel. Twelve consecutive results at one Western auction house are every one of them "oil on board." A Maass on stretched canvas deserves a second look.

Federal duck stamps: two. His designs appeared on the 1974–75 stamp (RW41, Wood Ducks) and the 1982–83 stamp (RW49, Canvasbacks). A note on how these are dated, because it trips people up: federal duck stamps are named for the fiscal year they were valid, and the contest is judged the year before. So the Fish and Wildlife Service's own records will describe his first win as coming "in 1973," and collectors will say 1974, and both are right. The unambiguous way to write it is the way the prints themselves are titled: the 1974–75 and 1982–83 federal stamps, RW41 and RW49.

Minnesota stamps: two. He designed the 1977 Minnesota first-of-state — the state's very first duck stamp, mallards rising over cattails — and the 1979 Minnesota pintails. He also did the 1984 Maine first-of-state.

Ducks Unlimited Artist of the Year: 1974, 1988, 2004, 2013 and 2016.

The originals: $13,500 to $21,000, and rising

Maass originals are genuinely good paintings in a genuinely deep market. Published results at Coeur d'Alene, the Reno house that has handled more of them than anyone, land in a remarkably tight band:

Title · Size · Realized

Pheasants — 24 × 36 — $20,700
Dusk on the Chesapeake — Canada Geese — 26 × 38 — $20,570
Sharing the Scenery — Wood Ducks — 26 × 38 — $20,160
Roaring Aloft — 24 × 32 — $17,600
Looking It Over — 24 × 32 — $16,500
Mallards — 20 × 28 — $15,680
Canvasbacks — 24 × 36 — $14,300
Saturated Skies — 24 × 32 — $14,300

All oil on board. All inside a $14,300–$20,700 corridor. Sell-through across tracked lots runs around 86 percent, which is very high — this material clears.

Since his death the top of the market has moved. A 24 × 36 titled Greenheads carried a $10,000–$15,000 estimate and made $45,375 — about three times the high estimate. Two other 2026 results ran well above mid-estimate. There is a reported auction record of $54,000 that we have not been able to corroborate in the trade press, so treat that figure carefully; the $45,375 is solid.

Whether the current strength holds is anybody's guess. It is not unusual for an artist's market to run hot for a year or two after a death and then settle.

The prints: the honest number is $5 to $40

Here is the part that disappoints people, and we would rather say it plainly than have you find out in a saleroom.

Maass prints were published by Wild Wings, then of Lake City, Minnesota, starting in 1973. Wild Wings reproduced more than 300 of his images in limited editions. By a count published in the 1990s — so the lifetime figure is higher — that was already over 150 editions totalling roughly 215,000 prints.

Two hundred and fifteen thousand.

He was also among the earliest to use, from 1974, the "time-limited" edition: rather than capping an edition in advance, the edition was however many sold during an open ordering window. That is why the numbers on these prints are so strange and so large. The 1982 federal print is an edition of 22,250. The 1979 Minnesota pintails is an edition of 3,800.

What that means today:

A Minnesota online auction sold a lot of thirteen wildlife prints, one of them a Maass, for $7.00 total. About fifty cents a print.
A professional cataloguer in 2026 estimated a lot of four limited-edition duck stamp prints at $10.
Another 2026 lot — a Maass limited edition — took one bid at $10.
Dealer asking prices, which are the retail ceiling and not what a seller receives, run $35 to $125 for federal prints and $25 to $125 for state prints.

A framed Maass print that cost $150 to $300 at a mall frame shop in 1985 is worth less today in plain dollars than it cost then, before you adjust for inflation at all.

The arithmetic explains itself. Enormous editions, sold nationwide across two decades, and every one of those original buyers is now an estate. Supply is vast and permanent. The collector base that wanted them is aging out. There is no scarcity coming to the rescue.

A pencil signature in the margin is not a sign of rarity. Essentially every one of those prints is pencil-signed. This is the single most common misunderstanding we encounter.

The three exceptions that genuinely matter

Do not let anyone bulk-lot these without checking:

The 1974–75 RW41 Wood Ducks federal print. Dealer asks on this one run five to ten times the 1982 print. It should be catalogued on its own.
Remarqued, Executive, Medallion and Artist's Proof editions. A remarque is an original drawing or small painting added by the artist in the bottom margin — unique, by hand, on that sheet. It converts a mass-produced print into a partly original work and it is the biggest single value multiplier in this category. Medallion editions add a plated medal in a plastic capsule and come from a much smaller edition. Executive editions have both the medallion and a remarque. Artist's proofs are marked "A.P." and were issued in very small numbers.
First-of-state prints — particularly the 1977 Minnesota, the state's inaugural stamp, designed by a Minnesotan. First-of-state carries a real premium among duck stamp collectors, and this one has obvious hometown appeal in a Twin Cities sale.

Also: check whether the stamp is still there. Duck stamp prints were sold as a package with a matching mint stamp, usually mounted in the mat window below the image or supplied loose in the folio. A missing stamp meaningfully reduces value. A stamp that has been glued down is worth a fraction of a clean mint one. Some higher editions came with an artist-signed stamp — worth looking for.

Original or print? A ten-second test

Take a 10× loupe to the surface.

An offset lithograph — which is what essentially every Maass print is — resolves into a regular rosette pattern of coloured halftone dots. An original oil never does. A giclée shows a fine random inkjet spray instead of rosettes; also not paint.

Then rake light across it at a low angle. Real oil has physical relief where the brush loaded paint. A print is flat.

Canvas transfers are the tricky ones. The printed sheet is lifted from paper, laminated onto canvas, and given a clear gel "brushstroke" texture. The giveaway is that the texture has nothing to do with the image — the same repeating stroke pattern runs across sky, feathers and water alike. Under the loupe the halftone dots are still sitting there underneath the gel. Check the edges wrapping the stretcher, too.

Finally, sanity-check the price. Given the recorded range, an "original Maass oil" that someone valued at $200 is a print until proven otherwise.

Condition, honestly

Every one of these was framed in volume, cheaply, at a mall frame shop in the 1970s and 80s, and then hung in a Minnesota basement, cabin or three-season porch. So:

Mat burn — a sharp brown line exactly at the mat window opening, from acidic mats. On these prints the wide margins carry the signature and edition number, so the burn line often runs right beside the pencil signature. It is permanent.
Acidic backing — chipboard or corrugated cardboard behind the sheet transfers acid across the whole thing. A print that looks fine from the front can be uniformly toned. Look at the back before you promise anyone a condition grade.
Foxing — rust-brown spots from humidity swings. Endemic here.
Fading — compare the covered margin under the mat to the exposed image. If the margin is noticeably brighter, the image has faded, and that is not reversible.
Dry mounting — permanently glued to a board. Common in this material, and effectively unsalvageable.

For a $15 print, conservation costs more than the object. Describe it honestly and move on. Save the real condition work for the originals, the remarques, the RW41 and the first-of-states — those are the only places where condition moves money.

What we would tell you on the phone

If you have inherited Maass material, the first question is not "what is it worth" but "what is it." Sort the paintings from the prints, then sort the special editions out of the prints. Three piles, and they belong in three different places.

If there is an original oil, that is a serious object for our paintings department and it deserves to be catalogued properly, photographed properly, and put in front of the sporting-art audience that pays for it. If there are prints, we will tell you what they will realistically bring before the catalogue goes live rather than after — which is a conversation nobody enjoys but everybody would rather have early.

We work with Wild Wings editions and Minnesota sporting material out of local estates as a matter of routine — it is the same problem we run into with John Fery, where the catalogue entry decides who shows up to bid — and we would rather set expectations honestly and keep a family's trust than talk anyone into a number that the saleroom is not going to produce.

If you have a Maass — painting or print, and especially if you are not sure which — send us photographs. Include the front, the back, and a close-up of the lower margin. A first opinion costs nothing.