Article Summary: This opinion piece explores a phenomenon within the hobby of collectors coming from a perspective of wanting to believe a piece is authentic, rather than being discerning and skeptical to properly vet a piece to ensure its marketing matching up with material facts.
Trend: “I Want To Believe”
I identified a trend some time ago which I’ve dubbed “I Want To Believe” (originally posted on the Movie Prop Forum HERE).
This article is a revisit and significant update and expansion of that original topic.
Background
I honestly haven’t been in this hobby for long, but I’ve seen and been privy to a lot of information and experiences (first and third hand), some of which I haven’t shared for various reasons. But there is an overwhelming amount of naiveté and misplaced faith, trust, and hope in the hobby, and it certainly has an impact on the hobby at large, because undiscerning collectors affect the state of the game.
Laziness, enthusiastic exuberance, inexperience, misplaced trust, and a variety of other factors lead to an “I want to believe” mindset. It is the easy path, the path of least resistance, and the path that is encouraged and expected, generally speaking.
En masse, this significantly contributes to a weakening of standards of provenance and authenticity; it lowers the bar for what is an acceptable amount of research required to assign a status of “authentic” or “genuine”.
There are opportunists passing fakes on eBay and via other venues and alternative selling platforms every day. Because determining authenticity is such a subjective exercise (and given the nature of the hobby, it truly is case-by-case), this is a huge problem.
Even setting aside the issue of frauds and con men actively seeking and pursuing opportunities to explicitly take advantage of and defraud collectors, the other issue that is left mostly unaddressed is the problem of previously burned collectors passing their questionable piece(s) onto the next less discerning (and unsuspecting) collector.
Things get passed about, person to person, collector to collector, collector to dealer, and back again, and it just gets muddier and muddier.
Again, it is a problem that grows, and affects everyone.
“Trust No One”
Authenticity should not be based on the trust of one person. The other catchphrase from the X-Files (opposite of “I Want To Believe) is more appropriate in maneuvering through this hobby: “Trust No One.”
Trust facts, trust information.
Seek out documentation.
Don’t accept just one component of authenticity – it likely isn’t good enough.
Corroborate more than one of the key components of authenticity – a screen-match and a studio COA, or a letter from a principal of the production and a dealer COA.
And whatever you do, don’t buy some piece with a story and nothing more…
Research. Verify.
Too many members put too much faith in reputations of sellers and generic COAs that don’t tell you anything of substance about the piece.
Just because people are accustomed to COAs being the ‘be all, end all’ in other hobbies does not mean that it translates over to the Original Prop Hobby – it simply does not. Sure, it might make you feel good, but you still don’t know what you have, unless you have asked direct, specific questions and received direct, specific, verifiable answers in return. COAs are an excuse to be undiscerning about what you just spent your money on.
If you want to participate in and contribute to the cultivation of a legitimate pursuit in finding, enjoying, and preserving this art of film and television – these artifacts of significance and importance – we all must play a role in elevating the standards by which we recognize a piece as “original” and “authentic”.
If you want to take pride of ownership in possessing a proven collection that you have no doubts about, you’ve got to do your own research.
Knowing Your Limits, Asking Questions, Networking With Experts
Know what you know, and go to experts for that which you don’t. No one knows everything. Experts are out there, and happy to help, you just need to know where to look and who to ask.
If someone openly asks for opinions about the authenticity of a piece, and you don’t have a clue, my advice is to not offer any uninformed “opinions” per se, as it can be counter productive. I’ve seen too many times, on the forums, people chime in with advice just to participate, even though they do not know any details about that which they speak. It can give a false sense of authority when there is not history or experience to back it up.
Who does that serve? And if you do offer advice that lacks substance (such as simply noting “looks good to me”, etc.) with no actual experience with the piece or property itself), not only are you not helping anyone, you are doing damage by adding noise to the signal, sometimes drowning out informed insights.
However, and more importantly, there is always the old adage about there not being a stupid question. Asking questions is great, because it leads to answers, or no answer (which can also be revealing and productive, in some circumstances). You can not know much about a prop, but still contribute to the analysis and discussion by way of asking insightful questions. This adds to the discussion and investigation.
I’m all about participation, probably more than most, but it’s important to consider in what ways your participation can be helpful. The impulse to help is wonderful – so it’s best to make it count and have it actually be beneficial, and I’ve found asking questions – direct, specific, thoughtful, respectful questions – has no real downside.
Personally, I have never felt more of a need to be highly discriminating in this hobby than I do right now.
I “like” a lot of people in this hobby – that does not mean I place wholesale trust their judgment and assessment of any piece carte blanche. Every piece and every circumstance is unique and different. Everyone makes mistakes.
Make no assumptions.
Trust in facts and that which can be verified.
Be creative in thinking about a piece, researching a piece.
There is too much “I Want To Believe” and too much straight up fraud going on today with lots of dollars at stake and in play. If you aren’t looking out for number one (YOU), I can guarantee that no one else is. But to contribute to the foundational challenges of the growing, emerging hobby we all love by going about wanting to believe is irresponsible and an affront to those of us that strive to keep the hobby clean and the players on the up and up (or outs, as the case may be).
Provenance & Authenticity: At Odds With Business Objectives, At Odds With “Fun”
There are two forces at play in all transactions – those selling and those buying.
The sellers are looking to make a profit – it is business. Business is about making the most amount of money with the least amount of effort. Researching provenance is typically extremely challenging and time consuming, so it is inherently at odds with the business mechanics of the hobby. A paradox.
The prop source is looking to sell the piece either direct to the actual customer or through an intermediary (a dealer, an auction house, etc), so the source is often going to view provenance as a given or trump it up to maximize a return/profit on the piece.
If an intermediary is involved, that adds another complication to the proposition. They hope to buy low, and sell high. The margin is expanded further, so there is profit for both the source and the intermediary. Also, there is more competition than there used to be – if an intermediary asks too many questions in authenticating the piece, the piece or the source itself could be lost to another, less discriminating intermediary.
So, in many ways, intermediaries are forced, through competition in the marketplace, to find some balance between certainty in authenticity and acquiring the piece and closing the deal.
Ultimately, the piece is offered to the marketplace, to the buyers, to the collectors. This is where the buck stops. And this is where it can become further complicated.
Many collectors view this first and foremost as a hobby, as an escape, as fun. But it doesn’t change the fact that the suppliers are coming from a business perspective first and foremost.
I think this is the biggest challenge collectors face:
- To enjoy the process of transacting, to feel that high of finding and securing and being excited about that new prospective piece, or
- to come from the more sobering position of assuming it is not legitimate and letting the piece “speak for itself” via facts that can be verified.
I think many will never be able to get adopt the latter, because it just squeezes the “hobby” out of it for them.
And that is why this is such an important issue.
Because even if you are in the minority, and you are a cautious, contemplative collector that prioritizes provenance and authenticity over acquiring the piece and closing the deal, it is an uphill battle, because the majority of the players in the hobby do not have the same priorities.
Many pieces are, quite literally, “one of a kind”, and having an opportunity to take the time to think about an acquisition is rare – time is of the essence, and there is usually a pool of potential buyers on an important piece. Just as is the case with an intermediary securing the piece from a source, a more discerning buyer can drop down further down the list of people pieces are offered to because he’s become “the guy who asks too many questions”.
Sources want to move the piece, regardless of good or bad intent, as quickly as possible and for as much return as possible.
Intermediaries want to have long-term relationships with long-term sources, and at some point, it is likely to shift more and more to a “trust-based” relationship. An intermediary might be more discerning at the outset, and through logic and human nature, begins to take pieces “on faith”, because prior pieces were the real deal. But, again, with this hobby, you can never lose sight of the fact that every single piece is different, and provenance and authenticity is a case-by-case exercise.
The buyers also become comfortable with direct sources or intermediaries, and also frequently fall into trust-based relationships.
Every piece is unique.
Every piece has its own history, its own chain of ownership, often extending beyond the intermediary, beyond the source, and somewhere into the production (and sometimes never into the production – which is the point of doing the research).
Another wrinkle is that once a piece passes to an intermediary (dealer, auction house, etc.), any prior paperwork, COA from a competing dealer, chain of ownership, history, etc, is often broken away from the piece, unless it is an ultra-compelling component of provenance that literally adds monetary value to the piece (such as a letter from a principal of the production or studio COA). Again, it is a business, and this is how business decisions are made. Dollars trump provenance, unless provenance adds dollars. It becomes more about branding the piece by way of COA and protecting sources than it is about retaining the history of the piece with the piece.
Conclusion
In any event, my goal with this blog and these articles and insights is to change a few of those “I Want To Believe” collectors into “Trust No One” collectors.
I also hope that shining a light on these issues will influence some dealers to further recognize the importance of provenance to many seasoned collectors. My view is that the dealer that emerges as “The Provenance Dealer” will have the most long-term success in the hobby by virtue of cultivating a stellar reputation in regards to this issue at the heart of the hobby. A grand opportunity.
This hobby is in its infancy. Not in terms of actual years, but overall maturity, infrastructure, identity, rules (written and unwritten), expectations, standards…
Every collector can make a difference. Every collector can have some impact.
It’s important to ask yourself, periodically, what you want out of the hobby, and to consider what you have to offer in return.
How can you have an impact?
Jason De Bord