Interesting article in today's New York Times on how studios who used to discard props from series when they wrapped have now contracted with auction services and discovered a surprisingly lucrative demand for them.
An auction in California this past weekend sold a room of props and memorabilia from the now-finished ABC "cult" series Lost. Most of the items, including "Oceanic Airlines" water bottles and wreckage shown on various episodes, exceeded estimates by several orders of magnitude. A copy of a script signed by two of the show's creators was estimated at $300 and sold for $18,000.
I'm most bemused by this significant paragraph:
Admission to the auction room alone, not including the registration fee to enter bids, was $42, a photo caption notes.Profiles in History [the auction firm holding the event], which has recently suffered a black eye from selling movie posters that turned out to be fake, came under scrutiny before the sale from collector sites like thePropBlog.com for misrepresenting items. Some props described as appearing on screen had not, for instance; Profiles in History eventually issued multiple corrections and clarifications on the catalog, which the auction house sold for $55.
Mmmm ... I think I'll stick to cels and sketches, which really are part of the matrix of what we enjoy, not just a random bit of background. There are times when I think I'm precertifiably demented for what I do in this hobby, but reading articles like this reaffirms my feeling that I'm, relatively speaking, pretty normal. (I do own a brick from the Blair Witch house, however.)
Besides, watching cel/sketch auctions on eBay, Mandarake or Yahoo Japan was still free the last time I checked. (Bidding on something and losing is also still free of charge
)
