I published a story about the “Music from the Films of Tim Burton” concert event at Nokia Theatre at L.A. Live on Halloween on my other website, the Rock Subculture Journal, yesterday. I’ve since received a number of messages about it from friends in the original prop collecting community, so I thought I would share a link to the article here for readers who might be interested in the feature. [Read more…]
Revisiting Ellis Props & Graphics – Certificates of Authenticity (COAs) Assigned to TV and Movie Props, Set Pieces, & Costumes Circulating in the Marketplace
For reasons unknown to me, I continue to receive communications from recent buyers of memorabilia attributed to film and television productions, who believe I have something to do with various eBay sellers and/or Ellis Props (see article from one month ago today, “NOTICE: Original Prop Blog Does Not/Will Not Supply Props to Dealers “jnsmcmahan”, “jsnent”, John Tarter, Billie Null, Mark Sullivan, L.A. Prop & Wardrobe, Hollywood Prop Supply, Studio West Prop, Ellis Props, et al“). In any event, with one of these more recent contacts, I asked the buyer of one of these pieces to send me a photo of the Certificate of Authenticity (COA) supplied with the item purchased (in this case the COA provided was one that originally appears to be from Ellis Props). A long time trusted collector in the field was kind enough to forward to me some images of confirmed legitimate examples of Ellis Props COAs obtained during the sales/liquidation circa ’99/’00, and that COA is very different from the one just obtained by a buyer from a piece purchased on eBay. [Read more…]
Alteration of Historic Lincoln Document in National Archives Highlights Issues Related to Manipulation of Genuine Assets and Authentication
Earlier this year, a story broke about the discovery that a genuine document produced by Abraham Lincoln had been altered in order to make it more historically significant. While the identification and preservation of historic documents is outside the scope of the same in the entertainment/popular culture memorabilia field, the story is instructive none the less, and highlights the ease with which genuine material can be altered to make it more important and valuable. [Read more…]