023 - The Collector's Corner: Prop Store

[00:00:00] Music

[00:00:28] We start to be with one bar of Goldpress Land.

[00:00:35] Hello and welcome to the Collector's Corner,

[00:00:37] a supplementary edition of the Divine Treasury.

[00:00:41] My name is Mike Bovia, and on the Collector's Corner we get to know the people behind the things we like to collect

[00:00:47] or those who assist us in that collecting.

[00:00:51] We've talked to licensees, manufacturers, authors,

[00:00:56] where we're working on getting authenticators and greeting experts,

[00:01:00] all things that are necessary for today's Collector.

[00:01:04] And today we're going to look at the auction world,

[00:01:07] but before that I do need help for all the heavy lifting

[00:01:11] that's involved in doing this show.

[00:01:13] Now despite what he might gain monetarily,

[00:01:17] if his collection went up for auction,

[00:01:19] he would definitely be in a corner crying.

[00:01:22] So let's welcome my co-host, the Overly Emotional, Jamie Rogers.

[00:01:27] Jamie, how goes it today?

[00:01:29] Well that was quite the introduction there.

[00:01:32] Although I don't know if I keep going,

[00:01:34] I may have to try to get rid of sacrifice.

[00:01:38] Yeah some of these items through auction here,

[00:01:41] but doing okay.

[00:01:44] Well it works been a little hectic this week,

[00:01:47] but I'm excited to have this conversation.

[00:01:51] So as mentioned before we're diving into the auction world today.

[00:01:55] And you heard us talk about the auction that the folks at PropStore

[00:01:59] were doing last month with items from Star Trek Discovery

[00:02:03] and here to discuss that and other elements of the business,

[00:02:07] including an upcoming auction that features some Star Trek items.

[00:02:13] We welcome VP of business development and operations.

[00:02:17] Chuck Costas from PropStore,

[00:02:19] and Chuck we're so happy that we were able to have you come on

[00:02:22] and discuss everything that you guys are doing over at PropStore today.

[00:02:27] Well thanks I appreciate it.

[00:02:29] It's a fun business to be in in the auction business.

[00:02:33] And ultimately the best part about it is actually just connecting

[00:02:36] with fans of whatever properties it is,

[00:02:39] whether it be Star Trek Star Wars,

[00:02:41] Marvel stuff, but being able to help bring some of the authentic

[00:02:45] things that we're using making people's favorite series

[00:02:48] and movies to their collections.

[00:02:51] So I'm sure we'll delve into that today, but glad to be here.

[00:02:54] Absolutely.

[00:02:55] So maybe we can start off if you have like a quick reader's digest version

[00:03:01] of the PropStore history and how the business got started.

[00:03:05] Sure I'll make it more of a fairytale.

[00:03:09] Now it started over 20 years ago, Stephen Lane who was the CEO

[00:03:13] and is based out of London.

[00:03:15] He started the company and I think it started more as you can look at it as treasure hunters.

[00:03:19] I think Stephen is one of those folks that is sort of realized early on.

[00:03:23] He's sort of asked the question, hey where does this stuff end up

[00:03:26] when they're making a movie or television show?

[00:03:28] Where does it end up after they're done with the productions?

[00:03:30] And so he was one of the early people that tracked down these things

[00:03:34] and found people from the productions.

[00:03:36] He was very much into Star Wars as well and sort of tracking down those stuff,

[00:03:41] that stuff very early on.

[00:03:43] But you know started going out finding collections of this stuff

[00:03:46] and then offering it to the public and back in the day it was a website only

[00:03:50] where we put a lot of stuff up at as fixed price items and offer them to the public.

[00:03:55] But over time I think it's hard to keep track of time but sometimes around eight years ago,

[00:04:00] PropStore started getting into auctions.

[00:04:02] And I think there were sort of two components of that.

[00:04:05] PropStore does sort of the treasure hunter if you want to look at it that way

[00:04:08] to find the vintage content and we do two auctions per year,

[00:04:11] one out of the London office now and one out of Los Angeles

[00:04:14] and the Los Angeles office was started I think 13 years ago or so by Brandon Allinger who's the CEO.

[00:04:19] But the so there's two of those auctions that the vintage content and a lot of that content

[00:04:24] comes from collectors that have had it for a number of years

[00:04:28] or sometimes it might still even come from original sources of people that worked on the films

[00:04:32] for television shows and they just happen to have it in their collections.

[00:04:36] And so we bring it to market that way we do a lot of research on that type of stuff

[00:04:39] because it's coming from various sources we have to make sure that it is authentic

[00:04:43] before we're going to offer it to the public.

[00:04:45] But then we also work with directly with the studios and I think the Los Angeles office specifically,

[00:04:51] we do a lot of work.

[00:04:53] In this case you know as we talk about the Star Trek Discovery auction

[00:04:56] that was partnered with CBS consumer products.

[00:04:59] So CBS who obviously brings all the new Star Trek television shows to you.

[00:05:04] But we've also worked with Paramount which has done the features.

[00:05:08] And so we've done Star Trek auctions for the 2009 and Star Trek into Darkness movie

[00:05:14] that fans got to enjoy.

[00:05:17] But then we work with a whole host of other partners, Lionsgate, Legendary, Warner Brothers, Marvel.

[00:05:24] We brought a whole host of auctions and we tried to produce maybe somewhere between eight to 12 studio auctions per year

[00:05:31] and bring those.

[00:05:32] And those are really things that are coming directly from the sets to the fans.

[00:05:37] And so from a Providence perspective, we don't have to do quite as much research in that we know it all came off the set

[00:05:42] and it came from the production and then now we're putting in the hands of fans.

[00:05:48] Well, so you kind of touched on an additional question that I had.

[00:05:53] But I think I'll mention it anyway.

[00:05:55] I'm assuming that back in the day when things first started,

[00:05:59] the company was reaching out to the studios to see what you could get to put up.

[00:06:05] And I'm going to also assume that now that relationship's a little bit different

[00:06:10] where they're coming to you with stuff that seemed like a...

[00:06:14] Yeah.

[00:06:15] My job is head of business development is really sort of building that relationship with the studios.

[00:06:20] So I look at it as, at this point in time, I think we have relationships with almost all of the major studios

[00:06:28] and we try to keep a line of dialogue up around upcoming projects and what makes sense to auction and what they're comfortable with.

[00:06:34] Sometimes very frankly production comes first when you're making these things.

[00:06:39] If there's going to be a sequel for a movie or if they're going to be an ongoing television series,

[00:06:44] they may want to keep things.

[00:06:45] And I think it's frankly it's cheaper to produce or cheaper to keep things than it is to sort of make an extra in most cases.

[00:06:53] But after they're done with a lot of these productions, we will end up with it.

[00:06:56] But I think in the case of Star Trek Discovery, as we'll talk about here, this was a little bit of a unique case

[00:07:01] and this is a sort of a newer trend where CBS was willing to work with us while the production is still going on.

[00:07:06] And so we literally went up to Canada and actually selected things off the set, which is a little bit rare.

[00:07:12] Usually on the television side they will wait until the production has wrapped and then they'll deal with the assets after the production's wrapped.

[00:07:18] But in this case, I think especially unique to the Star Trek crowd, we really wanted to keep these Star Trek fans engaged

[00:07:25] and it's a really great way to hold hosting these auctions to not only give them a piece of sort of what's going on in the current world.

[00:07:32] But it just becomes more relevant, gets them more excited about hopefully the upcoming seasons and things that are happening there.

[00:07:39] So I think we wanted to create sort of a special relationship with this discovery auction of actually getting things that were sort of still in production and still being used and offering those to fans

[00:07:51] while the series is still going on.

[00:07:53] And hopefully continues to go on for a while longer.

[00:07:56] Yeah, yeah. I mean, we're heading towards season four, I guess in a few weeks.

[00:08:03] So yeah, there's still quite a bit that could be had at this point.

[00:08:08] So you mentioned that you have the LA auction and you have a UK auction.

[00:08:16] Now, you just recently did the auction for discovery props. So was that kind of like a supplement?

[00:08:25] Yeah, that was a, we do as I mentioned, we do these sort of two tent pole auctions about every six months, one out of LA and one out of London.

[00:08:35] But those are everything so you'll find anything from Austin Powers to X-Men.

[00:08:40] You know, it kind of goes across the gamut of different properties. There's hundreds of different titles that will have in there.

[00:08:47] It could be something as small as like top secret, you know, a title that you very rarely see anything from.

[00:08:52] Or it could be something as large as Star Trek or Star Wars, which obviously are bigger properties.

[00:08:57] And when we may have hundreds of items that are there for sale in those catalogs.

[00:09:02] So I think the current catalog has over 1100 items, I believe in it with the UK auction.

[00:09:06] It's coming up here and that's going to be between November 9th and 11th is the end date for that.

[00:09:12] That'll be a live auction. And those are done live.

[00:09:14] But we also do studio auctions. And so the Star Trek Discovery auction was just dedicated on items from Star Trek Discovery and in this case, also short tracks that were sort of part of that discovery world.

[00:09:26] And we focused primarily on seasons one and two, although there was a few items in there that were reused in season three as well.

[00:09:32] So we tried to attribute those two season three. Obviously when we got this stuff and when we prepared the auction really didn't have much inside and do what was going on with season four.

[00:09:41] And obviously if we took the things at that point in time, which was we actually collected the stuff from the set right after they had finished season three or when they were in the process of finishing up season three.

[00:09:54] So we had some good insight as to what had been used on seasons one, two and three at that point time.

[00:10:01] So I'm going to be a little ignorant here for a second.

[00:10:07] So you mentioned the UK auction is a live auction. I worked at an auction house before so to me live auction means you've got an auction here up there shouting out numbers.

[00:10:19] But in this case, it's mostly online. So does that mean you know there's a specific amount of time that each item is up and you go in order of it and people have that time to bid and increase and however, however that goes through.

[00:10:34] Yeah, I think with the live auctions and I apologize the discovery was an online auction.

[00:10:40] So it was really anybody in the world can bid. It was online there wasn't a live auction here with our live auctions.

[00:10:46] There is a live auction here that is calling this and so with the online auctions, they're times and so we basically won every minute will end and then if somebody places a bid in the last minute, it'll extend the clock on that particular item.

[00:10:58] So there is no stipying as you would find an eBay on that so it's a little different format. Yeah, everybody kind of I mean it's always.

[00:11:05] I hate that feel cheated when somebody can't comes in and snipe she on something.

[00:11:09] But with a live auction, there is a live auction here. So it comes up lot by lot and so if you're on lot 151, it'll go through all the bidding for that.

[00:11:18] That usually takes about a minute per item. Give or take just depends on how intense the bidding is for that and people can bid on the phone.

[00:11:26] And so it's what we'll do is some people will prefer to just be on the phone and we'll have somebody call from the auction house.

[00:11:32] And be on the phone with that better and actually live as if they were in the room and in today's world, we've had to adapt the business a bit where we used to have big live settings for doing these things obviously with COVID for the last couple of years.

[00:11:44] We've adapted where it is still quote unquote live but it's really more people are participating online the live component is the fact that there's a live auction here and there are people actually bidding for the market.

[00:11:55] Actually bidding for phone bitters in the room sort of as if they were you know better in the room at that point time.

[00:12:02] But but that's for the bigger we do that for the big auctions we do occasionally do some of the studio auction is live auction as well, but for start track discovery here this was we did this is an online auction and again I think it's just

[00:12:14] not necessarily one is better than the other but we felt like that was the appropriate thing to just allow people to have a chance to make sure that they were bidding on the catalog of things and seem to work out well so we were we were happy with the way that it all played out.

[00:12:29] I appreciate that explanation because it makes me not feel as ignorant as I thought I was going to be.

[00:12:36] Well especially with COVID it's changed the definition of what is live what isn't right and all that but yeah and I think even when we've done as far as our business goes we've had to adapt with COVID where we typically would also do live previews and in this case we did we actually were able to do a live preview at start track day.

[00:12:56] So CBS had invited us to start track day which was taking place at the Skurball here in Los Angeles and we were able to set up as if it was a convention but we actually got to be outside.

[00:13:06] So we had a nice little patio area where we displayed some of the costumes and got to talk to fans about it and that would be what we would typically do either at a convention or we'd set up another display to do that so it was great to do that.

[00:13:18] But in some cases with some of our other auctions we will preview and allow people to get on a zoom call with us and talk through the items if they've got questions about you know either the item itself and we could show them the labels that are in there or what something is constructed of it gives us a chance to really interact with fans one on one and that's something I think it's a good thing that comes out of COVID is just are the innovation.

[00:13:39] And in the fact that you know a lot of people are all over the world they're not only here in Los Angeles so not that you know we don't want to limit who can actually come and see the items and so I think that's another great way of just connecting with fans all over the world.

[00:13:51] Going back to something you said before you mentioned that at this point you pretty much know that the items are coming directly from set so does that mean that all right let me let me go back to the first one.

[00:14:09] Let me ask the question differently does prop store then provide a certificate of authenticity to the buyer or is it just something everyone at this point knows that everything is coming from from the set essentially.

[00:14:23] No that's good question and yes we do we a prop store whether you buy in our sort of tent pole auctions for the year that what we call our entertainment memory be alive auctions or you buy something on our website whatever you buy from prop store will come with a certificate of authenticity but specifically for discovery.

[00:14:41] And this was a very cool thing sometimes will create custom c o a and in this case Alex Kurtzman himself actually wanted to be part of the process and actually co signed each of the c o a's you know guarantee that this was stuff that came off of off of the set was part of the Star Trek universe so they're actually co signed by myself and Alex Kurtzman and they we put you know exactly what those are I think you know what we can.

[00:15:04] You know what we can say is this was something that was used in the production we don't you know I think a lot of times we will try to go so far as to try to screen match because I think in the world of collecting it you know movie props and costumes trying to screen match it know that this is the one that appeared on this scene.

[00:15:20] You have to keep in mind that in many cases there are multiple costumes you see right especially when somebody gets injured you know you see that you know that there's a hole in the costume that gets formed because they got stabbed you know here and maybe they've got a little bit of blood on them or something like that.

[00:15:33] That might grow over time they typically have different stages of what they call the stressing in this business and so you might have five laryl costumes depending on sort of the different stages they also have a stunt version of that for the stunt actor.

[00:15:46] And then they will have the main character and there might be multiple changes for that so keep in mind that there isn't in the world of collecting movie props and costumes whether it's a proper or costume there isn't just one of anything.

[00:15:59] But what we don't necessarily do for the studio auctions is go through and try to tell you this one was used in exactly this scene because there might you know the scene might actually have used four or five different costumes at different points during that that scene itself although it looks like the exact same costume to the naked eye so to speak.

[00:16:18] But we can guarantee that this stuff is coming from the set and I think we allow the people that are buying these to do a little bit more research and hopefully they will be able to find whether whether this particular costume that they're buying matches to a very particular scene.

[00:16:32] That makes a lot of sense so when you and I were talking before Chuck you had mentioned that prop store has been you try to take into account what your buyers might be looking for.

[00:16:47] And the range of items that they might be able to purchase so it could expand on that.

[00:16:54] Yeah I mean I think as I think a lot of people think about auctions and you hear about the items is so for hundreds of thousands of dollars and I think that's that's sort of what the press latches onto obviously big numbers get big attention.

[00:17:06] But when prop stores structures and auction we really look at trying to provide a wide variety because I think there are different collectors yes there are people that want to spend a hundred thousand dollars.

[00:17:16] But the average collector can't you know spend that kind of money they're looking for a variety of different things anything from autographs that might be sort of less expensive.

[00:17:24] You know to background costumes to the key character costumes and so when we structure an auction.

[00:17:29] We try to make something available at every price point and especially when we're working with studios one thing I find is that the studio auctions very frankly the stuff that's being produced today doesn't go for as much as maybe the vintage stuff that everybody else is looking for it hasn't necessarily found a price point yet.

[00:17:45] And a lot of times we'll release hundreds of items all at once and so there is a sort of a wide variety of different things you can choose from which also keeps the prices reasonable.

[00:17:54] So with the discovery auction specifically we started everything in a hundred dollars or our thought process on that was you know we want to it obviously get bit up to whatever it is but we want to make it accessible to everybody and we don't want to put any kind of price reserves on any of these things so everything started at a hundred dollars and just got bit up from there.

[00:18:12] And obviously something stayed closer to that a hundred dollar range I don't think anything actually so for exactly a hundred dollars but you know obviously some was we'll get into prices here some things when it is tens of thousands of dollars and so.

[00:18:23] But when we structure the auction we knew that we would have different content that would appeal at different price points to different people and as you say too we also want to make sure that we have variety.

[00:18:34] You know from Klingons to you know to Starfleet uniforms to background things some people collect you want to put something to put on their wall so we wanted to make sure that we had some set deck pieces we had some very cool Vulcan mass that I thought were just you amazing especially if you put like a light behind them they would just display so well in your wall.

[00:18:52] You know to obviously costumes that people might want to wear at a cosplay event you know when they go to a Star Trek convention or something like that so.

[00:19:00] You know finding the right variety of things actually took a while and it took a lot of conversations between us and CBS to make sure that we could have the right variety of material available for the auction when it ultimately got launched.

[00:19:13] Which one surprised you the most the where people had a lot of demand for or maybe when for a price that you didn't even think was even you know possible.

[00:19:24] I think I wouldn't say it's a price is the most I think the badges we weren't quite sure how those were going to do you know in the past you know discovery was very special as it related to the badges and just to give people a little bit of background on that.

[00:19:42] Typically if you looked at past Star Trek productions a lot of the badges were plastic they were sort of stick on they went on the costumes but they you know they were all interchangeable with discovery as most Star Trek fans know they actually created.

[00:19:57] A special badge where the pips were actually on the badge which actually created a different dynamic right I can't remember exactly was 26 or 28 or 24 exactly how many but there was there was a number of different variations.

[00:20:09] You know in every badge for every character you sort of needed a specific badge although some characters shared I guess the same rank and so they could be interchangeable between a few.

[00:20:21] So the the one of the badges we actually had a captain pike badge which we knew pike was going to be popular we just didn't know exactly how popular he was going to be but we had one that was attributed to him that we knew that he used.

[00:20:35] That closed with the 14 thousand dollar hammer the one that was a little bit more surprising is we had another hero captain rank badge that went for even more went for 17 thousand and it wasn't attributed to pike so it was kind of surprising in some ways that.

[00:20:48] A sort of one that couldn't be attributed to a specific character went for a little bit more but I think that was part of a mentality of you know somebody really wanting the pike badge.

[00:20:57] And then may thinking assuming that the one that sold later that wasn't identified for a particular character would go for last but because it was the last one that we had it actually ended up going for more.

[00:21:07] You know as far as the bidding goes badges I mean if they were going for that much I mean what did you see with the uniforms what what kind of interested the uniforms garner obviously yeah I mean.

[00:21:18] Again pike was the standout character here and I think you know I think it shows a lot of enthusiasm for strange new worlds it's coming up and I think that's a great sign.

[00:21:29] Thank everybody has sort of attached themselves to that character already but I think it was also sort of a scarcity thing so we had obviously a number of different blue.

[00:21:38] You know Starfleet uniforms and obviously there was three sort of main variations which was obviously the silver bronze and the gold and then there were the mere universe versus costumes so we had a number of different ones and frankly they all looked very similar to each other I think what was a little surprising was that there were you know because they all look very similar and on a mannequin they would look similar.

[00:22:01] There was definitely from fans a very specific character that they wanted so Lorca was one of the characters that really stood out so I think his main captain costume went for $18,000 hammer where you know a background costume you know we probably average somewhere around 1000 and we look probably very similar to that.

[00:22:22] But obviously the pike did very well that was the high seller with a $29,000 hammer price on it but that was the only sort of yellow pike costume that we had for sale in this and it was really his you sort of look at it in the history of Star Trek it'll be his what I quote first appearance costume that he had so there weren't even if they do make more pike costumes down the road there aren't going to be that many more.

[00:22:45] Of that particular costume ever available so I can understand why there would be a strong desire from a fan perspective to own that particular costume yeah and obviously wasn't in discovery for very long either because he was mostly in the blue so.

[00:22:59] Now Chuck can you talk me through the whole bidding process like how did that work did was it all done online was it did you have people phoning in things as well.

[00:23:10] Yeah sure it was all online for this particular one no phone bitters on this everybody had an equal playing field to to bid against each other and the way that it would work is you would see we said a specific time that each lot with end I think we scheduled it a minute apart and then if somebody been the last minute it would just reset the clock so that's the people can continue to bid they didn't necessarily have to.

[00:23:34] Sniper or you know sneak in at the very last second and try to win it so try to level the playing field from that perspective and we thought that that that worked very well because is you looked at the auction things were spread out so you can sort of you could bid in advance and that was the other thing too is that we did open the auction on September second and it ran through September 16 so.

[00:23:55] You can go on September second and place all your bids if you want and it would only advance you could you could put in a higher bid but it would only advance it up to you know the if somebody else bid underneath you then it would advance or you're bit up there so that you know it's a it's a very easy way of bidding there and but we did find most people came in the day the last day of the auction and placed those last minute bids against each other you know sort of how people are conditioned to bid these days.

[00:24:22] Yeah I like that there was no sniping because Jamie and I often will be messaging each other back and forth saying that we were the leading bidder up until a second before close and get sniped so.

[00:24:36] Now we're either the snipie or the snipe one of the two yeah.

[00:24:42] I guess you probably want to be the snipie rather than the sniped but yeah.

[00:24:47] Oh in fact i'm getting ready to be the snipie pretty soon with some of these the new autograph cards that just came out in in typical Jimmy fashion he's bidding during a show no no i'm not doing it right now okay i'm trying to balance work right now but then the show but.

[00:25:11] Yeah that'll that'll be later on Michael.

[00:25:16] So Chuck one of the things that I got to say actually surprised me when I look through the discovery catalog and in the results was the Alice's adventures in Wonderland book.

[00:25:29] Was that a surprise to you how how high that ended up going.

[00:25:34] Yes and no i sort of had my eye on that one to wonder if it was going to go it probably went a little higher than I expected but.

[00:25:42] I guess I equate it to the rest of conflude right we in prop store actually sold in our entertainment member be alive auction in Los Angeles a few months ago we sold the rest of conflude again and I think with you know hammer price and buyers premium one for 237 500.

[00:25:58] Which is a pretty hefty some and it sold years ago for I think around 48,000 my memory serves me correctly but I look at it as a similar piece where if you love that character and obviously burn them is the main character in star track discovery.

[00:26:14] It's an object that really sort of summarizes the characters sort of spirit in in one object and I think that's what people recognize in that particular book so it stood out from the rest as far as you know whether it's a phase or other things you might use it really embodied the character and I think that's what people sometimes look for when they're looking at these props.

[00:26:37] I was going to say to I think it really connected her character to spot as well and I mean you know things that have anything to do with the spot character in the star trick universe generally.

[00:26:49] You know do very very well from an auction standpoint so I would think that that connection to spot as well and you know spots heritage definitely help the cause yeah but yes a lot for a book yes.

[00:27:02] For a prop book yeah. So all right so we've talked about the discovery auction and you know that is now in the rear view mirror so let's fast forward to as we discuss briefly earlier on the show the UK entertainment auction that's coming up and there are 13 items if I counted correctly that feature star track however I've got to believe that knowing our odds.

[00:27:31] Knowing our audience a lot of the stuff in that auction would be of interest to them you know the things I was the things I was showing my daughter as I was going through where the hoverboard from back to the future to which I saw is the cover of your catalog.

[00:27:49] A number of star wars items so I think the question that I have to lead off about talking about the UK auction is is it UK only or if you know how to convert pounds to dollars are you able to bid in that auction.

[00:28:09] Okay yes good first question just because it's being held out of the UK doesn't mean that all currency isn't accepted in fact I believe this is the first auction that we are going to be accepting cryptocurrency as well.

[00:28:20] So if you have that as well you can actually bid in the auction but no it doesn't require it ultimately when you pay it will be converted into pounds and so when you bid in pounds keep that in mind that you're not bidding in dollars but.

[00:28:34] We'll make it easy credit cards these days make it very easy to pay for things and a different currency so anybody all over the world can bid in this auction and the majority of the items are being kept in the UK so they would be shipped out of the UK.

[00:28:49] But you know we always consider these whether they're out of Los Angeles or the UK worldwide auctions and a lot of our buyers are you know frankly scattered all over the world whether it be Australia or China or other places.

[00:29:01] Now I know might kind of talked about the hoverboard but what are some of the big the big ticket items you know that you want our listening audience to know was part of this auction.

[00:29:11] Yeah and i'm sure we'll get more into the star trek ones i think some some cool things is we've got a screen matched Wilson so we talked a little bit about you know we don't necessarily always screen match things especially when we're coming from a studio auction.

[00:29:25] But when we get the more vintage content we do try to do that as much as possible and there's always like very specific flaws on things that you can look at to try to match it and this is a screen match Wilson from you know that Tom Hanks spent a good portion of his time on stranded on an island so that's that's a very cool piece that hadn't seen before.

[00:29:46] For Blade Runner fans there is a screen matched Harrison Ford or photo matches excuse me.

[00:29:52] Harrison Ford shirt from Blade Runner so the Rick Deckard character we have that as well which I think is also a rarity you you rarely find anything from Blade Runner and especially to find something that's screen match is very cool.

[00:30:05] Also given that it's sort of Christmas season one of the one of the specific movies that I wanted to try to find things for it's always tough when you're doing these auction is because it's like I would really like something from this for fans.

[00:30:16] But you can't always find it but we were able to find a bunch of items from elf and so there's a great selection just in time for the Christmas season of elf so there's a wolf arrow hero elf costume we also have the rocket if you remember that falls off of the sleigh.

[00:30:32] We have one of those there was actually two of those one that burnt up and then one that was the I guess the hero clean version we have the clean version of that.

[00:30:40] For Jurassic Park fans we've got you know for we've got a crushed Jurassic Park vehicle which looks very cool.

[00:30:48] For horror fans we've got a Freddy Krueger sweater from West Craven's new nightmare so those are just kind of cool we also have a Jason hockey mask we sold a screen match version of that.

[00:31:01] For over 200,000 in the last auction this one is not the same screen match one but looks very similar to that sense so very cool.

[00:31:09] James Bond we've got a screen matched Sean Connery suit from you only live twice which is always very cool to find James Bond items very hard to find out the marketplace so you know I've gone through a number of different titles there and we've got a whole bunch more there there are hundreds more whether Terry Potter others you'll hopefully find something in the auction.

[00:31:29] You like including Star Trek and I guess in the space front from a series that I also watched sort of alongside Star Trek which was space 1999 we've got one of the Eagle transporters one of the actual models it was used for.

[00:31:44] You know filming the space scenes on those so that that also brought back a lot of memories from childhood for me I was hoping to name that.

[00:31:52] I was going to say too I notice you got a lot from from aliens as well pretty decent size catalog did you get all those from the same from the same source there as well no I mean especially when we put these auctions together always coming from different sources.

[00:32:07] So I was you know even the alphight on this didn't all necessarily come from one particular place even though it looks like a collection so now they didn't come from the same place but yeah we do have a great we have a pulse rifle that's in there we had a we had one in our previous auction that again did very well.

[00:32:24] This is a stunt version of the pulse rifle that we have for sale but yeah always always get you know aliens there are certain titles that we always try to find things from and I think aliens predator star wars Star Trek those are sort of staples of every one of our auctions things like Elf though you know smaller movies not as much stuff it's necessarily floating around you know not necessarily any sequels out there.

[00:32:47] So not as easy to to find things from very niche movies but we try to find things for you know frankly we know that there's fans almost a whole bunch of movies out there and we try to find as much of a variety as we can put those in our catalogs.

[00:32:59] So we mentioned there is Star Trek items in this in this auction coming up one of the more unique things I've got to say that I saw within the Star Trek catalog was a portion of data's arm from the next generation and Jamie's head just parked up because of his next generation collection so

[00:33:26] we talked about how with discovery everything came directly from CBS so I'm assuming some of this stuff because of dates that would be associated with some of this product that's in here came from a number of different sources as opposed to just from paramount am I correct.

[00:33:45] That's correct yeah yeah I think as I as I talk about with this auction a lot of what we do is either coming directly from collectors that have had collections of the sometimes you'll find you know I would say it's always sort of obvious but sometimes you'll see what we have three or four different costumes they may have come from the same collector and same collection where they were trying to assemble things.

[00:34:04] And frankly they've just decided at this point they can part with things but we do find it is coming from multiple sources and a lot of our sources are people that worked on the films.

[00:34:14] And may have gotten it they may you know may have come from special effects companies that were making things for this and got the items back.

[00:34:22] It may be people that worked on the sets and the items were gifted to them in very frankly also a lot of times especially in the 80s and 90s they would have parking lot sales and so after production was over rather than doing an auction like we would today officially through someone like prop store they would just allow sort of cascloot crew employees people that worked on the set to go buy items.

[00:34:43] You know for relatively reasonable prices and so some people sucks for stockpiled those put them in there.

[00:34:51] And their in the garage is but they could also sometimes stuff was thrown out and a lot of times and that's that's the shame of it with a lot of these productions especially the large set deck pieces they end up in trash cans which you know part of our messages we want to you know we want to be able to offer these things to fans but it's also a way of being sort of environmentally green and if you're going to destroy or do you know what I'm saying.

[00:35:12] And then you know if you destroy or do that it's a shame when you have to put things into a landfill and so we try as much as we can to work with the studios to keep things out of landfill to put them in people's collections that will sort of love and care for them for future generations.

[00:35:26] But yeah in these cases most of the material although it could come from the studios a lot of the material could you know a lot of it does come from collectors or people that were in the industry that have this stuff.

[00:35:39] And I think it's a kind of it kind of made me think to it like and how Star Trek is kind of unique because a lot of times they would take certain set pieces and move them from one production to another and then it went to the warehouse obviously but you think of like a movie like like a blade runner let's say that doesn't do well and you know commercially didn't do well.

[00:35:59] Where's it going to go from there they're not thinking of any sequels till it becomes a cult classic so all that stuff is just going to go in the garbage or get or get sold to we're given away to people I mean I think I even remember the TNG bridge that acceleration bridge being just basically trashed and thrown out to the you know to the back curve so that's it's it's definitely interesting here and you talk about that process.

[00:36:26] Yeah and that's why it's great you know that we're you know we typically do work with the studios these days to help them make decisions around frankly what's you know.

[00:36:35] What we didn't talk about is the archives right a lot of companies including paramount which obviously makes a lot of the Star Trek films they have an archive where they keep what they consider is important whether it be for marketing display 50 years from now or just things that they want to reference for future productions.

[00:36:52] We'll keep an archive of sort of the key important stuff but as we also talked about there could be five versions of a costume and in the archive might keep two of them.

[00:37:00] But they may not necessarily need all of them especially this maybe the stunt versions of those and that's where we try to come in and you know make those available to fans but in some cases you know especially in years past those same costumes would have either.

[00:37:14] You know they would have gone on the sidewalk sales or they you know unfortunately could have even been thrown in the trash which is which would be a shame but you know there were there be a back in the days as well there were people that were sort of keeping their eyes out for a lot of this stuff.

[00:37:27] But a lot of if you think about like a lot of your television productions today a lot of that stuff ends up at secondhand stores because it's just normal clothing and so they end up recycling it and it might be a may have been worn by your favorite actor but they're just selling the pair of pants because you know it's a pair of pants somebody else can wear.

[00:37:43] And reuse at this point in time so that's what ends up happening with a lot of Hollywood stuff or you even see this stuff can put into trading cards to I mean that's the that's a whole different.

[00:37:53] You know thing that didn't exist 20 30 years ago but now it's very prevalent today and it's it's a you know a very big market so you know you're not going to see as much of these things sometimes because of.

[00:38:06] You know being put in training cards that's true I always hope that they're taking the ones that are sort of like ripped and you know that wouldn't be as as desirable you know but who knows what you know exactly where they're sourcing all these things from but actually i'm sure that some of the costumes we've actually sold have ended up as trading cards which.

[00:38:26] It's kind of a weird thing to think about but I would again we're sort of into the president we sort of hope that a lot of these things are going to be preserved by collectors out there and for future generations and you know it's funny I end up but you know my personal collection and I have a lot of Marvel stuff that I've had whether it be comic book original art or other things and I've tried to lend it back to museums as they need it you know for this for exhibits and I hope Star Trek fans also you know will keep their things and if they're needed in the future you know will be.

[00:38:55] You know will be generous enough to lend them to to people out there yeah i've actually been to a few different.

[00:39:03] Museum type shows of Star Trek CBS Paramount and a lot of times you do see the credit down bottom lent by you know X whoever doing the same thing so yeah that's a it's a real nice thing that you do and that other people are doing so.

[00:39:20] Kudos to all that do that thing for our enjoyment yeah I think that I think the Star Trek community especially is very generous and it's a great community and very loving community and it's great to see this sort of those acts of generosity.

[00:39:35] Yeah Michael one thing we didn't touch on that you know i'd like to touch on which was as part of the Star Trek Discovery auction it was great and I don't know if you guys watch these videos but Susan Nemoy actually put two items from Leonard Nemoy's collection into the auction.

[00:39:49] Yep that was one of the things I wanted to ask about so yeah so let's talk about that you know first I have to say Susan and frankly the entire Nemoy family have been amazing to sort of get to meet Susan talked to her and really just understand just how much they want to give back.

[00:40:07] In this case the two items that we sold and we sold Leonard Nemoy's pinball machine and a set of years from Star Trek into darkness which was Leonard's last portrayal of the spot character and the.

[00:40:19] Sort of very significant from that perspective she wanted to donate that and every year they actually the Nemoy family actually donates money for.

[00:40:27] COPD research at UCLA under Dr john bell pario and you know to see her.

[00:40:35] Excitement you know the fact that we were able to raise some money for for this and give back she really wanted to do everything she could to sort of connect with the fans and so she recorded.

[00:40:45] Videos with us talking about Leonard talking about his life talking what Star Trek meant to Leonard as well as a particular objects I thought it was just very generous of her to do that because she doesn't make very many.

[00:40:55] Public appearances these days and for her you know for this being a cause that she really believed in and and the fact is she also wanted to reach out to Star Trek fans and connect with them again.

[00:41:03] I thought was a very special occasion and I'm glad that this auction can help provide that as it as a way of her sort of being able to connect again with the community.

[00:41:14] Yeah that was really cool and very you know the spot gears on the surface not all that unique but as you said it's the last it's the whole it's a set of years from the last time he portrayed spot and then that pinball machine man that's a real unique piece especially.

[00:41:33] Because of who home did.

[00:41:35] Yeah and I have to say it's been sitting outside my office here and I've played it on occasion it's a pretty amazing pinball machine and yeah I mean just to you know for people that didn't fall along the spot gears hammered for 9000 dollars they were nicely framed Susan had when they got them I think I think J.J.

[00:41:52] Had actually given them gifted them to Leonard at the end and they actually have them framed up very nicely so couldn't have any better provenance on those.

[00:42:01] And then the pinball machine itself I believe that that ended with a hammer price of a mistake in 7500 dollars which you know frankly for that pinball machine is it's pretty good deal I mean I think they typically sell maybe a little less than that but pinball machines in general have been very collectible and just the enjoyment of that knowing that you're playing Leonard you know one that not only Leonard played on but the entire need more.

[00:42:22] My family sort of played on is just something great to think about every time you're playing that pinball machine right absolutely so my last question and I you've alluded to this a couple times in our discussion here is what is the time frame that it takes for prop store to put together just one of these options.

[00:42:46] Well i'll take the questions separately so we do do like I said we do one out of Los Angeles and we do one out of one in each year and I think it's really sort of a year long process for each of our auction or for each of our offices to try to collect different stuff for that.

[00:43:01] Typically I guess there's a six month cycle and we do the Los Angeles office making tribute things to the London auction advice first but it's usually a year long thing and we're really sort of thinking about the end product almost like a curated museum exhibit.

[00:43:15] For a studio auction this is an interesting story in that we originally plan on having this discovery auction.

[00:43:22] Last year actually in 2020 and everybody knows what happened in 2020 I had made my set visit up there I went up there to the set as I said when they were finishing season three which was in March of 2020 and because they filmed in Canada when it ended up happening as they ended up closing the borders between Canada and the US shortly after that and so.

[00:43:44] Even though we had made the selections of things that we thought fans would want for the auction we couldn't actually get them down from Canada to the US for almost a year because the borders were closed and because we couldn't get you know frankly the sets were closed and the people that normally worked on Star Trek couldn't necessarily get access to the sets to help us finalize and get things off of there so.

[00:44:04] It took a little longer you know took over a year in this case for us to be able to bring that that auction to fans but I do think that that was extenuating circumstances but we do you know I think in general with studio auctions we try to work a year in advance and sort of plan it out understand when we can get access to things it does take.

[00:44:21] You know in this case we had approximately 200 and I think it was 200 you would typically do be between 200 and 300 items for a studio auction.

[00:44:31] It just to it has to go through numerous processes including what we call our intake which is going through everything putting it in lots.

[00:44:39] You know taking sort of inventory photographs of it getting it ready for our photography team and copies team to write up different descriptions around you know and to fill out sort of what we would normally publish on our online auctions or in our print catalogs as well.

[00:44:54] So it takes you know by the time we get things it typically takes us maybe three to four months to process things at a minimum depending on how many projects we have going on at the same time and then we've got to start the whole marketing campaign.

[00:45:07] You know coordinating with in this case CBS and their PR departments and marketing departments to make sure that we're.

[00:45:14] You know coordinating with different things in this case we were working around Star Trek day so I think we wanted to make sure that we fit in.

[00:45:20] That you know the messaging around it was very clear with everything else that was going on with Star Trek day and as I mentioned we got to be part of Star Trek day at least the live events that we're going on for Star Trek day which was a great honor.

[00:45:33] So Chuck I'm going to add from my last question i'm going to kind of do something interesting so on our show normally when we have a guest and we're talking about their collection.

[00:45:42] We ask them three questions in regards to basically their favorite items and things like that so i'm going to do the same for you in regards to the auctions okay so what what item is the most so we call it the grand nagas award.

[00:46:01] So maybe the most expensive item you guys have ever sold that you can remember i've only been a pro store myself for about four years within that four years the most expensive item we've sold at least publicly has been raiders of lost arc Indiana Jones hats and so that went for it was actually sold out of one but the equivalent was over a half million dollars for that.

[00:46:22] But that was in these hat that was more and it was actually screen matched to a good portion of the movie which is very cool and I would love to own that one piece myself if I could if I could have something in my collection but yeah not everybody's got that kind of.

[00:46:37] So now the key vis-fasual award so this is the it's kind of like the white whale so if there's any item that you could get into your auction to sell if you had a wish of that one item that's alluding you which one would it be.

[00:46:55] Is it we're going to limit ourselves to start trekker are we going to put ourselves no you can whatever item in the in the world i would say in the prop world would.

[00:47:06] Probably be like a lightsaber for star wars like a Luke or a Darth Vader lightsaber i think that would be in one that's proven i hate to say there's been a lot of ones that are more alleged than anything else in.

[00:47:20] In the world of props but if we could find a true short screen matched version of one of those i think that would be very significant.

[00:47:27] And then the last one we call it the rest of conflude award.

[00:47:31] Talking back to you talking about the rest of conflude so the one that holds the most sentimental value to you so what item that has traveled into through prop store and gone out to you kind of have a connection with.

[00:47:45] i'll talk about one that i guess it did indirectly come through prop store i am a big fan of marvels the punisher and so something that meant something very important to me not the most expensive item but.

[00:48:00] I had Tom jane's costume for.

[00:48:05] The original that 2002 punisher movie was 2002 might be wrong on the year but i did not have the jacket that went with with the sort of the main part of that and so the.

[00:48:16] The jacket somebody actually called and said look I have the jacket but i'm looking for the person has the rest of the costume so I can reunite it.

[00:48:26] And it was one of these odd things where i happen to be that guy and it was just like you know he was he was he was very nice person he was just like look i really just want to put the costume back together and so for me.

[00:48:37] You know it was it was nice that that person really wanted to do that and for me you know I was the other person that was very happy to reunite those and I love that movie so I think.

[00:48:46] You know wasn't the most expensive purchase in the world but to me meant a lot to just because i i bid on that and whatever it was when the auction originally happened in the early 2000s and I didn't have enough money for it.

[00:48:58] And so it was nice to be able to reunite those two pieces of the costume so that was a great thing that's such a great story.

[00:49:06] And I like that that you dovetailed a normal episode into that Jamie that's actually a really cool piece that we were able to to thread in there.

[00:49:16] Sorry it wasn't Star Trek though in this case but no no no that's fine that's why I had to have a Star Trek piece I would I would love to have a you know a original phaser from the original series but.

[00:49:27] I wouldn't wait for it as well yes yeah.

[00:49:30] Yeah I would like to have one just to be able to sell it to continue my I purchasing.

[00:49:37] I would probably keep it but yeah I'd find other things to sell that's a very cool piece yeah well from November 9th through November 11th you can bid on various entertainment items in the UK location auction from prop store the entertainment auction which is.

[00:49:56] 13 Star Trek items go to prop store oh go for it I think it's actually more there's actually is actions yeah online you may not notice it but if you go in the catalog on day one there's a number of Star Trek items that might be the 13 you're talking about but then afterwards on day three I believe there are a number of other things like storyboards and artwork and there's a whole bunch of items that you can.

[00:50:21] I definitely didn't I definitely didn't see those so yes check it out there's there's even more and I would also say if you go to prop store.com we actually have items available right now that you can buy that are Star Trek related so we've got original comic art we've got storyboards costume designs mass and appliances from Star Trek into darkness autograph items through items costumes take it take a look at that you can buy something even today from Star Trek and you know I hopefully in the future will will continue to do other options that will include Star Trek content for fans.

[00:50:50] But we just love the Star Trek community and the blood that we can play our part in contributing back.

[00:50:57] Well his name is Chuck Costas and he is the vice president of business development and what was the other part and operations.

[00:51:09] That's going to be an interesting piece together than I do there and I think I need a short my title a little bit so thank you very much for joining us Chuck.

[00:51:18] We definitely appreciate you coming on and talking about this auction there's a whole auction world that's out there for us to spend our money on.

[00:51:28] My pleasure guys live long and prosper everybody is their product or collecting service you'd like to hear featured on the collector's corner messages at divine underscore treasury on Twitter until next time you've been listening to the collector's corner part of the story.

[00:51:47] The next corner part of the divine treasury on the Trekkieks podcast network the divine treasury connecting through collecting.

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[00:52:08] Here more of their music at five year mission dot net the divine treasury is a production of coconut media works executive producers Bill Smith and Dan Davidson.

[00:52:17] For more great Star Trek discussion discover the other shows of the Trekkieks podcast network at trekgeeks.com or find us an Apple podcast Spotify or your favorite podcast app.