Today many of the financial-types of news sites are reporting on a “Entertainment Collectibles Store” on the popular online retailer website Amazon.com, purported to offer “more than 350,000 unique and rare collectibles”. Much of this material has been listed for sale in Amazon’s Marketplace for some time, so it seems more like an effort to brand and better coordinate these third party memorabilia offerings. [Read more…]
ScreenUsed will be holding their third live auction on March 9th. The auction catalog is now available online via a PDF download via their official website and collectors can bid on iCollector. In chatting with Desi DosSantos about the sale, he said: “This auction has several items that have not been uncovered for a long time, in particular, Quint’s Machete and Hooper’s Dive Mask, both from Jaws. We look forward to an exciting auction.” [Read more…]
About 350 lots of the promised “over 1,000 movie props and costumes” that will comprise the online catalog for the Premiere Props “Hollywood Auction Extravaganza IX” is now listed with online bidding partners iCollector and LiveAuctioneers. The two-day auction is scheduled for March 2nd and 3rd. As with past auctions, the sale includes general memorabilia, though there is more interesting material with this event than they’ve had in some time, although much of it does not include any substantive information about history and provenance in the lot descriptions (though to their credit, some do). [Read more…]
Anovos Productions LLC, best known as a high quality replica prop and costume company, has in recent days launched an official set of eBay auctions offering original props and costumes from the new SyFy pilot, Battlestar Galactica Blood & Chrome. Anovos has announced that they will be offering 12 items per week for five consecutive weeks of auctions on eBay. [Read more…]
The Hollywood Reporter is breaking news this week (currently the print edition only), about the prospects of an individual or other entity acquiring one of the two surviving Cowardly Lion costumes from The Wizard of Oz, proceeds of which would go toward the funding of James Comisar’s “Museum of Television” project in Phoenix, Arizona. [Read more…]
Legendary make-up artist Stuart Freeborn, best known for his work bringing iconic Star Wars characters like Yoda and Chewbacca to life, has passed away at age 98. Having worked in feature films for over 60 years, he also worked with Stanley Kubrick on Dr. Strangelove, as the creator behind the many roles played on screen by Peter Sellers, as well as the ape-like humans in 2001: A Space Odyssey. [Read more…]
This week The New York Times published an interesting article (“As Art Values Rise, So Do Concerns About Market’s Oversight”) about customs in the high end art market auction world that are not favorable to consumers. Though the article is specific to the art market and New York (and their own laws, rules, and regulations), some of the issues are very much the same ones we face in the original film and television artifacts market, and is “must” reading for anyone involved in buying and selling original TV and movie props, costumes and other production material sold in the marketplace. [Read more…]
One of the most significant scandals to hit Hollywood memorabilia collecting in the past decade was a series of discoveries in the poster community relating to purported fraudulent movie posters and one sheets. A new update was published yesterday on the MoPo Mailing List at FilmFan.com by Dianne Jeffrey, President and CEO of Studio Conservation Inc. Ms. Jeffrey was the professional who did some of the restoration work (in good faith) on the Dracula poster consigned to a Profiles in History auction in which it was featured on the cover of their “Hollywood Auction 37” sale event in 2009. Ms. Jeffrey has stated on MoPo that she received notice of a default judgment against her from Thomas Rega “in the amount of $263,312.50, plus attorney fees of $18,134.80”; she is a resident of California and the lawsuit was filed against her in New Jersey and she did not represent herself and/or her business in court. Interestingly, Profiles in History was previously awarded a default judgment against Thomas Rega in their own lawsuit filed against him in California. [Read more…]