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Sci-Fi Memorabilia To Ogle And / Or Buy
bluegreenone writes "While I was nerding it up and looking for some original Battlestar Galactica
insiqnias on Google I came across an
enormous auction of
classic sci-fi props and costumes
being held July 31. I'm a little surprised
they are getting rid of some of this stuff. Highlights include a
piece of the original Deathstar,
Scotty's original uniform, and the
Terminator's first jacket.
How would you like to own Twiki
from Buck Rogers, or even
better one of Erin Gray's
hot
spandex
pantsuits from the show?
You can have your own Cylon,
Commander Adama's uniform,
or a Colonial Warrior helmet from the never-filmed second season of BG.
There's
E.T.'s head,
Cyclop's visor from X-men,
and even the alien hand switch from Total Recall.
And who wouldn't want their own cute cuddly face-hugger from Aliens?
There are a ton of items but be prepared, most prices start around $500 and go up to
$40,000."
Now why does this post sound like a carefully crafted sales pitch? Your auction or just shilling on the side?
You got trolled by the submitter and marked as flamebait by a millionerd.
Well, it's expensive, indeed, especially for something that may not be useful anymore once its owner gets engaged : I indeed think a decent household would not accept such oddities in her home.
So, now, instead of modding people you don't agree with to oblivion (typical US way to solve the Afghan conflict), what about having some unanonymous hero telling us about why he think he *must* spend that much for a "fake".
(the real part of a fictitious object *is* a fake)
Trolling using another account since 2005.
It's not even from the movie, it's from the Universal Studios attraction. How rare is that? Starting bid $4,000?!
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
I noticed that some (all?) of the auctions had an 18% "Buyer's Premium" that goes to the seller, paid in addition to the winning bid amount. Is this normal for auctions? It seems like it is just another way to suck even more money out of the buyer. I wonder why we don't start seeing Best Buy, Amazon, etc start charging a 18% "Buyer's Fee" when we buy stuff online for the convenience.
If he's reading this thread, he may be thinking the same thing about paying $$$$$ for what is, in the end, theatrical tat.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Thoreau defined wealth as being that which you could affored to live without.
He had a point.
KFG
Whoever is selling this shit should've done it about 5 years ago. In the dot-com hey day, I bought some pretty insane stuff at prices higher than most of these things. Luckily, the things that I did buy really *ARE* collector's items, and are insured. Ah, to have money again....
For people who aren't aware, H.R. Giger came up with the ideas for the alien monster. The reference to the face hugger modeled after a vagina is probably very true.
I picked up a book of some of his work in the bargin bin. It's kind of odd to see Alien type artwork mixed with nudity (or even pornography).
Something important to keep in mind is that, rare as these are, most of these items are not the absolute only instances of their kind. When a film or tv show goes into production, they usually make several copies of things like outfits and any props that the actors may actually touch.
In my opinion, buying one outfit or prop isn't enough, you need to get a representative sampling of several. That's where you start to get the feelings you had when watching the show, and that's where you can start to see things like how the costumers and set designers did their real magic.
Also, please consider making an overall budget when you visit an auction like this, not only so that you don't go overboard, but so that you think more about how much further your money goes if you buy multiple smaller items you like, and not blow it all on the big ones.
Decide whether something being "screenworn" matters to you, before you start bidding. If you're all excited about getting Buck Rogers tights, for example, but you want a really nice pair, you may want to get a backup pair that weren't actually needed. On the other hand, don't be surprised if you decide you have to get a nifty blaster used on set, and it arrives with bits missing or glued back on, because it's not a toy, it's a handmade prop meant to be used briefly. Prop and costume designers are very hard workers, and very creative, but they rarely have the budget or the time to make things with the intent of them lasting beyond the length of the scenes in which they're used. That's why everyone sells these items with the disclaimers they do.
If you buy these, buy them because you want them and plan to have them until you die, not because they'll impress other people (good for about 5 minutes cumulative maybe) or because you think you can flip them later. Few props will actually increase in value over time, and even if the appraised value increases, getting someone to pay that much later, especially if you don't have a variety of items together, could be extremely difficult.
Above all, even if you have money to burn left over from a dot-com you sold years ago, don't get caught up in the bidding, and suddenly realise that you could have bought a car, taken an around-the-world vacation, or built a school in a third world country for the price of those Cylon and Twiki suits I know you're eyeing. You could also invest the money and approach the current buyer in about 3 years, when he's in debt, if you still want it. I think in those 3 years you'll be glad you didn't waste the money, however.
Get off my launchpad!
If you have a first edition of a book, you know that you have one of a printing that was probably at least a thousand. The author may not have ever even touched it, and if he did, and he signed it directly to you, it most likely wasn't his very own personal copy.
Unless it's extremely old, a printed edition shouldn't be something you get all excited about, and even if it is, you generally have to interact with it to get the most use from it (it's meant to be read, not looked at, like a movie prop), and interacting with a book causes wear. So it's not really a pristine edition any more, and worth less.
On the other hand, if you are really in love with an author's work, or think it changed your life, you might try looking for the original manuscripts. Many authors who write longhand have them typed before submission, and their original handwritten copies destroyed, so one step down from that is the author's own markup galleys or correction proofs, sent back from the publisher. Below that is the murky realm of review copies, which often turn up in bookstores as sought after items, even though they rarely have artwork, often have poor typesetting and are just photocopied sheets poorly bound, etc. Remember, these are the copies they send for free to newspaper columnists, etc., and they don't spend any money on them because they know they'll probably be tossed after being skimmed (who has time to read a whole book? And some review copies aren't even whole books, just excerpts).
Get off my launchpad!
Considering the Pentagon had a bidding/betting on world catastrophe site, until whiney democrats (myself among them) got them to pull the plug. It's probably, also in the works and we just haven't heard about it yet.
Yes, that was a brilliant idea you fellows had, stopping that. Do you have any *idea* what they were trying to do? Any *at all*?
Seriously, people like you make me so damn mad, I actually see red.
Here's an idea. Feel free to read Blind Man's Bluff. Yes, it's a book about spying. We had spys! We're such terrible people, I know.
Anyway, in this book, they describe the search for a missing nuclear weapon - I believe it had fallen out of a plane during mid-air refuling, though I don't have the book on hand. Three of them had fallen, two of them had been found and recovered right away. The other one sank, and was lost.
Now, losing a nuclear weapon at the bottom of the ocean is a bad thing (tm). Weeks of searching failed to turn up anything. Some guy (like I said, don't have the book handy) did exactly what the idea futures market was suggesting - had people 'bet' on the location of the bomb. So, it had two parachutes, did they both open, one, or neither? When it sank, did it move this way, or that? And on, and on. He sat around with academics, and a bunch of cases of scotch, took the scenario that the most people bet the most scotch on, figured out where that put the missile, and found the damn thing.
In less than a week.
Idea futures trading is an amazingly accurate way to get a bunch of people to work together as a brain trust, and glean information from them that they don't even know they know. You can read more about it here. Naturally, the author takes credit for the idea, saying he generated it in 1988, but oh well.
(Posting anonymously on what I think is an excellent post just because I'm so fucking pissed off right now.)