Joseph Maddalena is the owner of Profiles in History, the one auction house dedicated to hosting extensive original prop auctions in Los Angeles several times a year.
As noted in my Featured Interview Preview, my initial first hand impressions of Mr. Maddalena were formed from the action and excitement of the Han Solo blaster auction from the Stembridge Armory event. He certainly knows auctions, whether they are his own or a bidder.
I was kindly invited to come to the new Profiles in History offices in Calabasas Hills to meet with and interview Mr. Maddalena as well has have a sneak preview of the items coming to auction for Hollywood Auction 28, to be held at the new facilities on August 2nd and 3rd.
So, having spent part of the afternoon with Mr. Maddalena, what other impressions were made on me? Quite a few. I found Mr. Maddalena’s candidness and free expression of opinion refreshing, in a hobby in which frank talk is rare. Certainly his absolute love of films and television, and respect of its place in our culture, was very clearly evident.
Most compelling, to me, is understanding that this is a man interested in not only building, but growing this hobby. He is obviously driven personally and professionally to achieve such goals, and for that, he has my respect and gratitude.
Interview with Joe Maddalena
Q. How did you get interested in movie memorabilia?
When I was his age [pointing to son], when I was 12 or 13, and I lived on the east coast, I used to write celebrities for autographs. There was a movie star publication called the Big Reel, it was out of Florida, it was published by a guy named Tom Perry – I used to write articles for his fanzine. It was basically something he self-published, but it was pretty nice for the time.
Back then you could literally call Bend, Oregon and Ginger Rogers was in the phone book. These guys were in the phone book. I mean, Jimmy Stewart was in the phone book. You could literally call them up – even Gene Kelly.
So I used to call them all up. And I had relatives [in Los Angeles] and I’d come out and visit. I used to go out to the motion picture retirement home and I’d see Moe and Larry and I met all these people. Jack Haley, Ray Bolger, Margaret Hamilton. I became friends with them before any of “this” ever happened.
And then, in the 70s, when I came out here, I used to go to Collectors Book Store, and all the great book shops on Hollywood Blvd., and you could buy things for ten or fifty dollars that are now worth thousands of dollars now, and that’s how I started collecting.
Is there any era, or type of film or television show, or genre, that is a particular favorite of yours?
I like so many different things. I’d have to say, by far, my favorite film is the Wizard of Oz.
Then I’d probably skip into the 60s, and when I grew up, and I’d want Willy Wonka, you know, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, because I grew up with that stuff. Escape to Witch Mountain, Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, because that’s what I grew up with – that’s nostalgic for me.
Q. And how did it transition from a hobby to a business?
I’m a historical document dealer. [Original prop auctions are] “a” business of my company. This isn’t our only business. So what I do for a living is I sell letters of Mozart, Beethoven, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson – that’s what I do. And I’ve always loved literature. So I always thought, if you’re into Raymond Chandler, Daschel Hammet, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner – all these great authors – well, gee, it’s their novels – Steinbeck – that become the greatest screenplays ever made.
So, for me, there was a natural progression. For instance, I have a Dashel Hammet letter about The Thin Man, so how about something from the film – how about a script, how about a photograph? And that’s how I started to do it.
I’d say to my regular clients, “Gee, have you ever thought about getting a poster?” and slowly introduce that world to this world, and that’s how it started.
Q. Which of your businesses started first then, the historical documents business?
Yeah, the historical documents business, 25 years ago.
And your first prop auction – how did that come about?
I think the first was in ’95, ’96. I had a collection worth millions of dollars, my own personal collection. It became readily apparent that it was incredibly illiquid – I couldn’t sell them.
At the time, there was just Chrisities and Sothebys and Camden House, and that was it. You’d buy something for $10,000 and put it back on the market and get $2,000.
There was no market. There were no dealers. There was nobody. There was no eBay.
So it became readily apparent to me that if I didn’t find out a way to have some liquidity to my collection, I was going to end up with nothing.
It wasn’t a good feeling to have such a large asset and no exit strategy.
So I started the auctions. [I thought] I’m in California, if I can’t create a market here, nobody can.
And, for the first four or five years, they were failures. I mean, they did good, but I lost money on every auction. At the end of the day, when we crunched the numbers, the sales did well, but to print the catalogs, to do all the work, it’s a very expensive business. It took a long time to get that part of the business to be profitable. But I stuck it out, and now it’s very profitable. But, it’s like anything else – you’ve got to put in the work, year after year after year after year. So now it’s 11-12 years later.
Q. You recently changed locations – how did the first auction go at the new facilities?
It went great, this is so much better. Beverly Hills is great for the name, but there’s 400 parking spaces here, and 50 are ours. It’s just a much easier place to deal with. We’re much happier.
Q. And when you publish a new catalog, generally how many do you ship out?
8,000.
Q. What would you say is the breakdown between how many are in the states vs. overseas?
I’d say maybe about 20% go overseas.
Q. As far as your actual customers go, would you say the same percentages hold true?
No, more.
Number-wise, I’d say there are more collectors in America.
Buyers are a whole different thing. I would say at least half the buyers are overseas, that I have.
Q. Would you say primarily in Europe?
No, all over the world.
Q. It seems to be a pretty International hobby…
Film is an international hobby. It’s something were you go anywhere in the world, and you know people watch movies. It’s universal.
Q. With your consignment process, what is that process like – if someone is a collector, and looking to consign a piece from their collection – how does that work?
What we try to tell people is, the one thing I think I’m responsible for is, I’ve created a market. I’ve created liquidity. I’ve created thousands and thousands of collectors.
So the difference now is people can actually, they don’t have to do what I did, when I started – you can buy something and sell it. There’s a market. There’s commerce. It’s not just a one-side economy.
So what I tell collectors is: upgrade, buy things you like. You can play around. You can buy some things, you can sell some things.
You know, if you’re smart, and you do research… And you say, gee, I found this thing on eBay, and this is what it was…
Collectors generally know more than anyone else because they’re microcosmic. They collect one thing, so they tend to know so much about one thing. And those are the guys that can benefit the best because they might find some treasure, for nothing, that we all miss. And that’s the great thing about collectors.
So we tell people, in general, we like to get things that are valued at, at least, $500. Upper limit doesn’t matter.
I think it’s fun, because you can do both. You can buy, you can sell, you can upgrade. It’s a market. That’s why I think, any consignor – people that want to sell or buy – there’s commerce. I think that’s the most viable thing about anything you collect.
Q. What steps do you take – in broad strokes – to authenticate a piece? Do you do a lot of the research, or do you rely on the consignor to provide the information?
Again, because we’re here – my company is totally unique because of where we are based.
We have so many people who work in the entertainment industry that we consult with, so we have a team of guys who come in to consult on every auction.
You always, always make mistakes. There’s always some kind of pull. You find out this is whatever… You know, that stupid Proton Pack from Ghostbusters – somebody misrepresented it. You can’t catch everything, it’s impossible.
But the good thing about it is that we have so many people that just come through. They might not necessarily have worked on that film, but they know enough, to look at a prop, and say “this is a casting, here’s how you can tell, you can tell by the seam”. So we use those resources. I know almost every prop maker in Hollywood – they’ve consigned at one time or another – so we use them as resources. If we’re not sure, we call them up.
“How was this made? It was vacuformed… This process wasn’t around in the 60s”.
And by being around all those people, you learn all this stuff. You learn, instantly, what to look for.
Garments, I don’t need any help with – I can tell you in two seconds. Vintage garments – I know how they’re made, how they’re constructed; because the costume houses they made them – Western, Eastern – they were right around the corner. These people are still alive. So once you know how all that works, it’s pretty simple, you can tell the fakes in two seconds.
Q. How much of your business do you think is focused on the authentication of pieces, as opposed to general business operations?
You know, not a lot, because people with the fake stuff don’t come here. I’ll get 1,000 items in an auction – maybe 3 or 4 or 5 mistakes in the whole catalog. I don’t get those people. Those people go to eBay and everywhere else. They don’t come here because they know better. And if they give us something that’s not real, we’re going to pull it, and they’re going to pay a 30% penalty for me pulling it. So we punish them. If you consign something to me, and you try to scam us, the penalty in our catalog – you pay 30% for the luxury of scamming us. So people, when they read that clause, right off the bat, you weed out that kind of people.
Q. Do you think the process of shining a spotlight on these pieces, by virtue of putting it in your catalog, also opens it up to a lot of scrutiny?
Absolutely, because you have the world looking at you. You have every know it all, every instant expert.
I’ll give you a perfect story. Years ago, David Schneider, who was the Art Director for Blade Runner, calls me up and says, “hey, I was referred to you by Warner Bros., I’ve got all the Blade Runner stuff – I’ve got the artwork, I’ve got Deckard’s desk, I’ve got all this cool Blade Runner stuff – I took it home. Warner Bros. didn’t want it – they said to take it to you”. So I put it in the catalog, and I get these e-mails, “You’re going to go to prison – Warner Bros. is going to arrest you – you can’t sell Blade Runner stuff”…
These people are idiots. I don’t know how you can possibly, with any kind of dignity in your life, send somebody an e-mail like that. We don’t respond to them. But they’re nuts. A lot of nutty people tend to gravitate toward the fringes of this field. Not the people that spend money, but you get a lot of those armchair experts that don’t know what they’re talking about.
It’s like, dude, I’m not going to explain to you where this stuff comes from, or how we can sell this stuff. Go jump in a lake.
Believe me, if I wasn’t allowed to sell this stuff, they wouldn’t let me sell this stuff. But you get these people that will drive you crazy.
But, there again, Joanna Cassidy is coming in a few minutes with her costume from Blade Runner. It comes from her. She’s the consignor. We get that every single day. Marina Sirtis, Deanna Troi on Star Trek: The Next Generation, she came in three weeks ago with all her costumes and all her scripts – direct from her. Every script from every episode of Star Trek she was ever on, and all her costumes that she wore, that she took home. All from her.
We get that constantly. You can’t get a better source of provenance.
A couple weeks ago I get a call from Mary Ann Jefferies, Matt Jefferies widow, and she says, “you’re not going to believe this, the Smithsonian just called up and I didn’t realize, Matt, years ago, had loaned them an Original Series Klingon disruptor – they had it, on display there, for all these years, and they took the display down, and they’re mailing it back – do you want it?”
So we have an original – with a letter from the Smithsonian – we have an original Klingon disruptor from the original series. She didn’t even know Matt owned it. It’s mint. Perfect. And it will be in this auction.
But that’s where the stuff comes from. Most of it comes from people like that.
Stanley Kramer’s daughter came in and gave us his complete shooting script with corrections from It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World.
Jeff Morrow’s daughter came in, we have his complete shooting script from The Island Earth, totally annotated by him.
So when you have that source of provenance, that’s what you’re looking for.
Q. In your catalog, and I know you do this to some extent, but do you think you might put more of a focus on the provenance and authenticity, where you explain more where it comes from, or, do a lot of times, the consignors not want it known?
No, we try to tell people – we tell all the consignors – it helps get better money for their pieces. We urge them; we say look, it’s better for us if we say it came from you – sign the COA.
Carrie Henn, the girl that was in Aliens, we put some of her stuff in a few auctions ago, and it did phenomenal, because it came with a letter from her. It makes a huge difference, when you’re literally getting it from the source – people like that – it came from them.
Q. Is there a sort of “profile” of the typical customer, or does it just run the gamut?
You know what it is? Go any Friday, Saturday night to a movie in a major city and look at the audience. Those are your clients. You’re going to have rich people, poor people, blue collar, white collar… They’re all there. They all watch movies. They all collect stuff. There’s no color barrier, income bracket – whoever is a fan of a film or television show.
Q. What kind of pointers and advice would you offer to a collector who’s never participated in a live auction? Someone who’s only bought things from dealers, or on eBay?
Well, I think the thing about a live auction, the great thing about it is you can participate – if you like eBay, you can bid over eBay Live Auctions, you can phone in your bid, and you can also set a limit.
You also have a real sense of what something is worth. We try to have really realistic estimates. Like the guy who consigned the X-Men claws, you know [laughter] – if you put something in at a realistic amount of money, and you don’t go crazy, the stuff will do really, really well.
If you put it in for some outrageous number, it’s just not going to sell.
I think that’s what collectors are starting to learn, that, you know, you buy something at public auction, you have a public record, you’re pretty certain it’s real, it’s just a safer place to play, I think.
A lot of the stuff you buy from dealers, it’s like, “hey, come look in my trunk, look what I just got”. It’s just “walked off the lot”. Who wants to deal with that?
And there really aren’t – other than Stephen Lane – there are no dealers. No dealers that actually have a business.
You do have a bunch of people who collect props that sell things. But there are no dealers.
To me, a dealer has to have a presence, a website, a retail store – he does this full time, he’s not a doctor and does this as a hobby.
To me, a dealer needs to make his living doing this.
I don’t think there are any others, apart from Stephen, that I know of.
So there again, you’ve got to be careful about what you buy on eBay. There’s a lot of junk. There’s a lot of fake stuff on eBay. People make stories up. You’ve gotta be really, really careful.
Q. What do you think about the different studio sanctioned resellers where they’re selling lots of product from new movies, basically to promote the movies upon release? How do you think that impacts the hobby, in terms of the amount of new product coming onto the marketplace, and just the fact that it runs the gamut, just in terms of “unloading the prop truck”?
Well, it’s mostly junk.
Look, Spider-man with Sony, they cut the costume up…
You know, the guy who’s spending $40,000 on a ripped up cowl? Good luck.
If you walked in here with that, I would never take it on, even at $20,000. You’re done. You buy that at $40,000, there’s no other consumer but you that’s ever going to buy that.
The other thing you’ve got to be careful of is that they don’t know the difference between “hero” and “stunt”. They don’t. They could sell you something that they say is “hero” that’s “stunt”, or “stunt” that’s “hero”. It’s the same thing. You’ve really got to look at what you’re buying.
If they have twenty guns in a box, and they say, “oh, this is Jessica Alba’s blah blah blah..”, how do you know that? How do you really know?
Some of the places, like New Line, are really good. But some of the other things you see, you have to be really look at the stuff.
Q. I thought New Line Auctions was great as well, but, unfortunately, they’ve shut down their operations…
Yeah, but they were good. They had great stuff. It just doesn’t make them any money, and it’s probably more of a hassle than it’s worth.
But if you look at the stuff online – Universal Backlot – it’s all junk, $25, $50 for a newspaper – movies you wouldn’t want anything from…
You’re not seeing Lord of the Rings, you’re not seeing X-Men…
Q. Do you think, just because of the sheer quantity of product, that a lot of that just isn’t going to serious, dedicated original prop hobbyists? Do you think it’s more people buying things just on a whim?
Two things.
You’ve got the arbitrage guy looking to buy something and put it in my auction: “I just got a hero ‘whatever’ costume for $600, I know Joe can get $3,000” Well, that’s great. If it’s real, I’m happy to take it – we can’t watch everything.
On the other hand, yeah, I think people see something, think it’s fun. They want something, they’re buying from a studio, they know it’s real. They buy some casino chips from whatever, a James Bond film. That’s fun. At least you know it’s real. It’s “from the production”. I think that’s important.
Q. What do you think distinguishes Profiles in History from the other auction houses that don’t necessarily specialize in movie props, like Chrisities, and Bonhams?
I think the bottom line is the level of expertise of the people who are working there. I think we know more. I think we treat the material much more reverently than they do. Our catalogs are full of video grabs, full of write ups and reference.
When we look at a costume, we pull up video grabs and spend, sometimes, hours trying to figure out if this thing is real or not.
Even with the greatest provenance in the world, we want to really make sure we can see that costume in that scene, before we say so.
Look, you can always buy stuff at these places, but again, you’ve got to do the research. You can’t just assume, because it’s at Christies or Sothebys or wherever it’s going to be, that it’s right.
That sale in England – the Bonhams Angels sale – they had so much junk, it was ridiculous. Whoever did that, didn’t do it properly – good and bad. I bought some stuff that was a bargain, because it wasn’t identified properly, and I have friends who bought stuff that wasn’t real. It’s like, “oh my God, what is this?”
They went through racks, “oh, that looks like Braveheart, let’s pull it off the shelf”. It wasn’t.
That’s not doing any justice to the buyer at all.
Again, it’s all we do. We do the historical documents. We do the movie memorabilia.
I’m not selling baseball cards, and comic books, and stamps, and coins…
Even a place like Heritage, they’ve got so much… It’s like a Wal-Mart. They’re just flushing as much stuff through the catalogs as possible.
We turn down thousands of pieces. We get lists every day from people, “here’s 27 items”, I’ll pick out three. “Here’s 40 items”, I’ll pick out two.
We just don’t take everything.
I try to take things that I think are interesting.
When we put a catalog together, a lot of energy is going into picking out what goes into the catalog. I’ll never have too much of one thing. I try to have a lot of everything. I don’t think anybody [else] put s that kind of care into it because we genuinely like it. We’re all collectors, all the geeks that like this stuff.
I think that’s the difference.
Q. You’ve been recognized as the place to go to get high dollars for props, for many of the reasons you’ve said. Do you think there’s any other particular reason you’ve been so successful? Is there a certain magic ingredient to what you do?
It’s because we didn’t give up in the beginning.
Up until recently, all these companies had stopped doing this.
Only recently, because of my success, have they started to sell this stuff again.
They all left. Sotheby’s is gone completely. Christies wasn’t having sales. Bonhams stopped having sales – they fired the whole department, they fired Michael Schwartz. They stopped.
Suddenly, it’s like, “he’s getting all this publicity”, internally, you hear all these stories, “you can get P.R. with this stuff, let’s open these departments again”.
I really think that we’ve made it a viable collectible.
When we do a P.R. campaign, it’s not uncommon for us to get a million hits to our website. A million hits is a lot. We have a full-time publicist, and we promote this to death.
I don’t see Chrisites or Sotheby’s or Bonhams at Comic Con.
We’re there. We’re spending $20,000 or $30,000 to be there for six days. I don’t bring a thing, not one thing for sale. It’s your consignments, people like you, I’ve got your stuff there and I’m out there, talking it up. “Hey, look at the Wolverine claws, let me tell you a great story about where they came from – these are really cool, you’re never going to get them another like these, here’s why…”.
You’re constantly trying to get new people; it’s just an alternative way of collecting, it’s not for everyone. “Here’s what we do, here’s what we do, here’s what we do…”
That grows and grows and grows and grows and grows. You get referral after referral.
Brian said to me the other day, “Joanna Cassidy is bringing in her Blade Runner stuff”. I say, “where did that come from?” [Brian says,] “Oh, the Blade Runner guy”.
Marina Sirtis, that was a referral from the people that run the Star Trek convention.
All these people that have done all this, they talk to their friends and say, “hey, I had a good experience; they do this, they do that…”.
There’s a grassroots effort.
Again, I think it’s because we do care and we’ve elevated this [market].
My biggest thing is about elevating the palpable awareness of this field.
It’s not about making money. This stuff should be saved and taken care of – it’s really important, if you’re into this. There’s no museum. There’s no place to put it. So it’s up to use collectors to save it.
You’re saving part of Hollywood history. It’s really important, because it’s one of the things that’s truly American that’s influenced the world.
Film and television influence how we cut our hair, what we wear, how we speak, who we think is beautiful. In America – celebrities – they’re our royalty. We don’t have the King and Queen – we have Angelina and Brad, right? But that’s what it is – that’s what drives our society.
To me, that’s really important. It’s that we care. People come in and say, “wow, you guys are really enthusiastic about [the hobby]”. We tell [our consignors], “hey, we’re going to give it our best possible shot”.
I can’t make any promises – like $42,000 for your claws – but I’m going to give it my best possible shot. There won’t be a collector on this planet that doesn’t know about these auctions. And, because we do so much, I think we have 30,000 people on our e-mail list. We’re constantly barraging the world: “hey, look at what we’ve got for sale, this is a cool thing to collect, this is a cool thing to collect”.
This is a cool thing to collect. I do 400-500 interviews a year on radio and television. It’s the same thing: “this is a cool thing to collect”.
It’s pop culture. $77 million dollars for an Andy Warhol painting. $42,000 for Wolverine’s claws.
They’re both pop culture. You can’t argue with me that one’s better than the other. They’re different.
But, it’s like, Andy Warhol, okay, he was an icon of the 60s. To me, it’s the same. There’s no difference, to me, between the two buyers, and their desire to own them. The same desire, when you buy a Van Gough, or you buy your Wolverine claws. It’s the same desire – you want to own them – for whatever reason it is, something makes you go pitter patter: “I want this”.
[Art collectors] are just plunking down a lot more money. But I think with the pop culture stuff, when you see the Jasper Johns, the Warhols, all that stuff, I think that’s going to have a dovetail effect into our field. Not only for the very best. I mean, if you’re going to collect in this field for that reason, you’ve got to only collect the very most iconic, the very, very best. And really, it’s very, very difficult to explain to people.
For instance, someone will come in and say, “I’ve got all this stuff from Die Hard”. Nobody cares. In the 80s, it was huge. Bruce Willis? Nobody wants Bruce Willis. Nobody knows who Bruce Willis was.
“Oh, I’ve got all this Arnold stuff from Eraser, blah, blah, blah”… Nobody cares.
That’s the weirdest thing. Of the contemporary stuff, they are really faddy. You’ve got to make sure, if you’re going to buy something, it had better be The Lord of the Rings. It had better be something that really had long-lasting staying power, because this stuff comes and goes so quickly.
Television shows. “Oh, Buffy.” Well, great, Buffy’s gone.
They want Lost in Space. They want Star Trek. Hogan’s Heroes. Get Smart. McHale’s Navy.
These are iconic shows that have stood the test of time. Bonanza. Gun Smoke.
Q. How much time do you think needs to pass before something can be considered timeless?
To me, 20 or 30 years. Even stuff now, from the 70s, like the Brady Bunch… Okay, the Brady Bunch is now on my list. Partridge Family. Okay, they’ve stood the test of time. But will X-Files? Will anybody care? Who collects X-Files? Nobody anymore. That was a huge craze.
Will the Sopranos be the coolest thing ever? You just don’t know, if not enough time has gone by.
But you can look at epic films and say… Well, look at recent years, what do you have? King Kong, Aliens… It’s not hard to look at these things, these sci-fi films… Aliens, My God, that was one of the greatest sci-fi films of all time. Blade Runner. What was the last movie like Blade Runner to come out? There really hasn’t been one. Those are the iconic things that are going to hold up.
Q. Back in the 70s and 80s, science fiction films and action films tended to be more eventful, because they just didn’t make as many as they do now. Because of that, I think the really good ones stood out. Now, it’s like, every summer, it’s the competition of all the different sequels, and so many films of this genre, that it seems like it takes that much more now for something to stand out, as compared with the 70s and 80s. Do you agree?
Yeah, there’s a lot of junk now. It’s all sequels, like you say. The problem is getting something that’s original. And now, instead of coming up with original things, they’re going out and robbing the comic book franchise. They’re great movies, but they’re not new ideas.
When you deal with something like the X-Men, the X-Men are probably the most historic comic – bigger than Superman, bigger than Batman – [the most historic] franchise in all of comics. They’re it. King of the hill. That’s never going to go away, but that’s not because of these movies. That’s because of John Byrne, Jack Kirby, Dave Cockrum, and millions and millions and millions of fans, over the years, reading these comic books, building this legion of X-Men fanatics out there, that watch these movies. That’s what people have to understand, you’ve got this built-in audience that’s never going to leave. It’s like Star Wars, it’s so ingrained into our consciousness.
But you get these other movies – V for Vendetta – it’s cool, it’s fun, it’s gone.
300 was a great movie, but it’s gone.
It’s not going to have the staying power of the X-Men. Because the X-Men has so much amped up behind it already, it’s kind of like, “oh, and we’ve done an X-Men movie…” It’s like, “oh, we’re giving you an extra great thing, X-Men fans…” They’re just merchandising back into a giant franchise. With or without those movies, it’s still healthy and thriving.
Just like Superman – you’ve already got a legion of fans. They want to see the movie, but their interest in Superman is never going to change. That’s the difference.
And they’re not even making those kind of movies now. Name, in the last 10 years, a great science fiction movie that you think is really phenomenal and it’s hard. This was interesting, or that was interesting, but they’re just not great stories, you don’t have the compelling acting. It’s like pretty faces running around in tight suits…
Q. …and great effects?
It’s all effects. I mean, the Matrix movies, the first one was phenomenal. I think Matrix will last. He’s such a good actor. It’s such a great character. I think Matrix, in 20 years, [Neo] will be a remembered character. That’s probably the only one I can think of. Keanu Reeves, a hero Matrix costume: $50,000, if you had a complete costume. That will only continue to grow. It’s not going to be worth $5,000 in 10 years.
Other films? Good luck.
Q. Is there a favorite piece, that you’ve put through your auctions, that really stands out?
The best thing I ever had – I didn’t sell it at auction – my favorite piece – I had the hourglass from the Wizard of Oz. I had the hero, hand carved, 60 pound hourglass. When they did the scene, [gesturing] Margaret Hamilton is only about this big, when they did the close-ups of her, in the castle, when she’s turning it over, it’s a wooden hourglass. When they go outside, and she’s carrying it, it’s a wooden hourglass. When she raises it over her head, to throw it at Dorothy, it’s a paper mache hourglass. It was way too heavy for this little lady, and she had to throw it, over and over again, so they made paper mache ones and throw those. Four of them survived, but the wooden one survived. I bought that years ago. Then Blockbuster bought it for a fortune from me. That’s probably the only piece I regret selling. I think it was the greatest thing I’ve ever owned, personally. It was just an iconic part of that movie. To me, I’d rather have that than the ruby slippers. But, everybody likes something different.
Q. Do you tend to like props, or wardrobe, or set pieces…
I like everything. I like production art. I like scripts. I just look at every piece for what it is. Even a great piece of photography. To me, it’s all great.
We have thousands of clients. The guy who comes in who’s all enthusiastic about photography… I’m enthusiastic about photography too.
Look this is the best image of Carol Lombard. People are like, “oh my God”. It was the best image of Carol Lombard ever sold. I didn’t make it worth $9,000 – I put it in a $400-$600, the reserve was $200. They decided what it was, the collecting world. And it takes more than two people to drive the price to $9,000. But people are starting to recognize that, “wow, it was really that good”.
So I can’t ever say, just because it’s the prop, it’s not as good as the photo. They’re all the same to me. They’re all cool. I love everything. I have less interest in some stuff, like we get Madonna things, I don’t have any interest personally, not to say Madonna’s not a great personality. But would I ever want to own it? No, it’s cool, it’s fine, I can understand why somebody else would want to collect it, but it’s not something I would want to collect. But that would never change our enthusiasm to sell it, because someone else out there really collects that. You have to be enthusiastic and selective about everything you take, because there’s somebody out there that wants it as much as you want what you want.
Q. One thing I’ve noticed about your auctions and issues eBay policies, in selling a non-firearms that looks like a firearm… Have you ever considered affixing an orange plug to the end in the photos so that the pieces can be bid on over the Internet, via eBay Live Auctions?
eBay… They don’t care.
I had Oscar Schindler’s glasses from Schindler’s List, and we said “plastic glasses, replica tortoise shell”.
We get an e-mail from them, “Tortoises are an endangered species”. They took it off.
It’s plastic! Yeah, but it’s plastic tortoise, that’s endangered…
There’s no such thing as plastic tortoise – it’s imitating tortoise…
They don’t care. It’s off.
You can buy a knife 18 feet long and kill somebody, but you can’t buy a rubber rifle. Plug, no plug, you can’t sell it. They have their keywords, and they just pop the stuff off.
Q. Have you thought about putting a note in your catalog on those items: “phone, fax, in person bidding only”, or something to that effect, so that buyers don’t think the item has been pulled from the catalog when it doesn’t show up on eBay?
We probably could. Because we have the website, and if it’s in the catalog, they probably know, but people are pretty good about finding out. Anybody who’s really serious – they get the catalog. They go to the website. They look at eBay. They interact. It’s not like you get these people that fall out of outer space and spend a million dollars. They pretty much know. They ask the questions.
eBay is great, because you do get new people – you get new people all the time. But then, the opposite problem, putting it in the catalog doesn’t help the guy who’s on eBay. How do you fix the problem, of the guy who doesn’t get the catalog, who doesn’t know it’s there to begin with? All you can do is make an “About Me” page, and drive them to your website. So I think it only affects the guy who doesn’t get the catalog. And that’s just eBay – they have their weirdness. You just have to work around it. Some of the things they kick off – it just amazes me.
Q. Do you have a sense of how many of your bidders are on the Internet, versus in person, proxy, or phone?
We’ll get 1,000 people who participate on eBay. So of them, that’s maybe 25% of the auction. We get a lot of bids through the Internet. Internet, eBay, I’ve got to qualify that, it’s eBay Live Auctions. So how many are eBay people who just stumble across us, and how many of those are existing clients who just like to bid online? So they’re almost impossible questions to answer, because a lot of people like to bid online now.
Q. I know eBay doesn’t have this capability, but have you ever thought about doing some kind of live feed, here, so bidders online can see the action in real time?
We’re going to do that down the road, we’re going to offer streaming video on our website. Now that we’ve moved here, we can do it, because there’s much more sophistication in technology – we have T1s and stuff here – with fiber optics, we can do that with streaming video. You’ll have to go to our website to watch it, but you can watch it online.
Q. And you seem to be having about three auction events per years – does that seem to be the right balance?
Yeah, three to four per year. We’ll probably have four this year. Three to four, that’s about as much as we can handle. It’s a lot of stuff, we’re always behind. To keep that pace up, it’s pretty tough.
Q. And I’ve noticed your catalog keeps getting a little bit bigger each time… Do you think you are settling in on the quantity of items that you do per auction?
The problem is that we have so many consignments, and so many consignors – it’s hard to know where to stop. Like this catalog, it’s going to have 1,200 lots, it’s going to be a two-day sale. It was going to be a small sale, but it just grew and grew and grew.
What happens with me is, if I start getting a theme in the catalog, like I have a lot of photographs this time, then I tend to take more. Then you have a lot of “this”, and might want more of “that”.
My son’s dream is, 10 lots, each $100,000. Then we go home in fifteen minutes! I’d love to have that auction – 20 lots, $100,000 each, let’s go home [son smiling and nodding in the background, “that would be fun!”].
These auctions are a lot of work, but I hope I have one of those someday.
But I don’t want people to say, “only rich people can buy from here, everything’s $50,000”.
That’s not the case. I want to have $200, $500, $800,000… I want to get everybody.
I want everybody to be able to collect. Everybody to be able to enjoy what they buy. Everybody.
In this sale, I have 200 scripts. But I have great scripts. New people will buy the scripts.
My goal is to get more people to collect this stuff. With more people, we all benefit, because it makes the hobby just that much more enjoyable.
That’s my sole goal, and if I have to have 2,000 lot auctions to do that, you know, I will.
But, because we’re here [in Calabasas Hills], the catalogs will probably be bigger and we’ll have more auctions, because we’re more efficient here, we can do much more work here.
Q. I’ve also noticed, with the last few auctions, increasingly more posters offered. Do you find that there are dedicated poster collectors, and dedicated prop collectors, or is there a good amount of crossover interest and collecting?
People collect everything. If you’re interested in a movie, and your favorite movie is, say, Blade Runner, which is one of my favorite movies… I bought a Blade Runner poster. I’m not a poster collector, but I think it’s cool to have a Blade Runner poster, which I’ve hung right up on my wall. $300 bucks. I think people tend to do that. “Oh, I loved that movie, I’ll buy it.” “Oh, a photograph, that’s my favorite film, it’s only $400…”
I think that’s what collecting is. Showing people, here, here are all these things you can collect. You might not be the poster person, but for me, I want to have a representative sampling of everything that goes into making a television show or a motion picture, whether it’s behind the camera or in front of the camera, I think I should have everything in that “world” for sale. I’m not going to sell really commercial, I’m not going to sell toys and stuff, but anything that’s really close to the field, like the posters, the advertising, that kind of stuff. I think it’s cool, because it’s really visual.
Somebody might say, “Oh, The Day the Earth Stood Still poster, that’s cool”. The guy who bought that for $12,000 or $13,000 is a prop collector, it’s his favorite movie. He said, “oh, I’ve always wanted one of these”.
So we’ll do more and more of that. And to get good, quality props is not easy. So I sell whatever I can get. If I only have 400 props, I’ve got to have 400 of something else.
You never want to have too much of everything. Once I did a sale of just costumes, and it just doesn’t work. You’ve got to have costumes, props, set pieces – you’ve got to really vary it. You’ve got to have some of everything. You’ve got to say, I’m just going to put out the best of what I can get, and hope that somebody wants it.
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Thanks again to Mr. Maddalena for the invitation and hospitality, as well as Brian Chanes for the tour of the facilities and discussion of items in the upcoming event in August.
Jason De Bord