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Giant Paramount Auction of Star Trek Items
Alien54 writes "The first official studio auction of memorabilia from all five 'Star Trek' television series and 10 movie spinoffs, to be held from October 5 to 7 in conjunction with the 40th anniversary of the original 'Star Trek' series, was announced by Christie's on Thursday. CBS Paramount Television Studios is cleaning out its vaults for the sale, comprising more than 1,000 lots totaling some 4,000 items. Items to hit the block include props, weapons, prosthetics and set dressings unearthed from five Paramount warehouses, as well as many special and spectacular items highlighted in the various shows." Update: 05/21/2006 14:57 GMT by SM Several users have provided us with the direct link to the auction site for easy viewing.
7 of 9's cat suit. :-)
There must be something about joining an **AA, lowers IQ or something. This is a pretty valuable collection. Sell it once,you get one pay day. Open a museum, add the props, have movie showings, interactive kiosks, etc, host conferences, what-ever, and have 365 paydays a year, for a *long* time.
Hopefully, this is a sale of all of the useless bits of junk accumulated over the years - no real good stuff. The equivalent of a garage sale, where you're selling odd bits you no longer want, but keeping the useful/valuable stuff in the house.
I say this because Star Trek seems to have become an important heritage nowadays, and they seem to keep doing exhibitions etc. about it. Exhibitions would be rather difficult, and not very good, if all the interesting stuff was in the hands of a few thousand fans.
Of course, if it is decent stuff, I guess a single person / group could try to buy as much as possible, and open up a mini Star Trek museum, or something. That could be interesting.
I have a feeling that the Ressikan flute, estimated to sell for $300, will sell for much, much more. That particular episode struck a very large emotional chord from a lot of people, and that flute was the symbol representing the episode. If only I could go. :-(
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Good point! Also, a high percentage of child molesters are Trekkies.
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http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/justice/article
Anyone who's watched all the documentaries, Trekkies 1 & 2, behind the scenes, etc., knows that Paramount's huge collection of props gets reused over and over again from movie to movie to show to movie ad infinitum.
Are they offloading their entire collection, or only part of it? Does this signify any particular decision with regards to future movies or shows?
Paramount is making a big mistake even considering selling this items individually at auction. The collection should be kept whole and rented out to people and groups who want to make low-budget Star Trek movies.
Since Star Trek fans are different from ordinary movie audiences in their willingness to pay for any filmed episode even remotely related to this genre, the studio should rent the Star Trek sets to low-budget productions. They own the copyright and would make money off any production that uses the Star Trek motif, logos, and fictional settings.
The reason that they are selling the sets is because they don't plan to make anymore of these films themselves. The individual actors are too expensive or are no longer available due to age (or passing). The promotional costs are too high and the specialized audience too small to justify continued expenditures of $50-$100 million on further 'offical' Star Trek productions.
So let someone else make a new set of films for the fanatic audience. Hire new actors, write new plots, and establish new distribution channels. The biggest cost for new independent Star Trek productions is the elaborate and detailed sets. And these sets are already built, documented, and vacant. The money that could be made by renting these sets for independent productions is greater than the money gained by selling off the props individually. Especially since the individual props can be sold off to the fans for the same price in the future after the market for low-budget ST productions has been fully exploited.
For any other film series, selling off the props makes sense. But Star Trek has never been just any other film series. And selling off the props at this time makes no sense.
Anyone buying one of these things remotely will be rather surprised, maybe sorely disappointed, when they receive them in the mail.
They're very shoddily built. Almost laughably unartistic. Nothing like the realism and solidity and quality they seem on the television.
An acquaintance of mine, who worked for a company building props for ST:TNG, explained the illusion this way:
Seeing something on TV is like catching it out of the corner of your eye going 60 mph in a rainstorm.
So, since time is their least resource, they don't bother with fine detail that would just disappear, and they don't care about alignment, overspray, or fit, which you can't measure or even apprehend, nor durability, since almost everything is used for a very short time in a zero-stress environment by someone whose standing orders are "don't break the props".
Much of the "metal" will be painted foam or extruded plastic. Controls won't operate. The costumes will appear cobbled together from the cheapest possible fabric and will have strange and coarse alterations, plus any damage that's accumulated since it became junk. Literally all the value left in these items is bragging rights, sentimentality, and ego boost.
Which is going to have to do.
Because I want a pair of Spock's ears. Bad.