An auction of Snoopy statues has fetched $823,000 to help fund memorials to ``Peanuts'' creator Charles Schulz.

``Peanuts'' fans from across the country paid $200 each just for the right to bid on the 40 statues sold by Sotheby's at the Mall of America on Sunday.
The statues were among the 101 Snoops created and designed by local artists that graced St. Paul this summer as a tribute to the late cartoonist and native son.
At the direction of the Schulz family, the proceeds will be used for a permanent bronze sculpture in St. Paul featuring the ``Peanuts'' gang, an endowed chair of illustration at the College of Visual Arts in St. Paul, and scholarships to the Art Instruction Schools, a Minneapolis correspondence school where Schulz studied and taught.
``To see such a welcome from people, to see the joy on the children's faces running up to Snoopy, there is nobody, and I'm certain of this, who would have had a bigger smile on their face ... (than) our father,'' said Jill Schulz Transki, one four Schulz children who attended the auction.
Schulz died of colon cancer on Feb. 12, the eve of publication of the last Sunday ``Peanuts'' comic strip. Bureau Report