Pete writes:
Well, with a new year comes the second iteration of the
Prop Store Toys, Comic Art & Collectibles Auction out of their Los Angeles
office. Like last year we were treated to a full color catalog featuring a plethora
of items from the Star Wars Saga, including vintage and modern, as well as cast
and crew pieces. In short, they ran the
gamut with the assortment that was brought to market for this event.
The layout of the catalog was augmented
slightly, but still offered a range of information not just on bidding and the
auctions, but the items themselves and where some of the more niche pieces fit
into the bigger picture of Star Wars and movie collectibles and toys.
The presence of more items from the Howard Kazanjian
collection was a nice addition to the already robust catalog. These cast and crew items mixed with the occasional
toy or lunch box are an extremely important part of the Star Wars movie ethos.
Howard being the producer of
Return
of the Jedi and working hand in hand on so many key details of the production
brought another level of validation for the auction and helped separate it
from many of the other large scale auctions taking place these days.
The online interface for the event was good overall. All
live auctions have some delay, but this was pretty good both performance-wise and functionally. The test lot is a great idea and shows that
no matter how mainstream online auctions are, auction houses still use a lot of
tactics to keep people engaged, as the ringing of the bell was fun to watch.
Brandon Alinger, the proprietor of the Los Angeles office, gave a good kick off
and overview and the hand off to the auctioneer was good. He brought great energy to a long day. In fact, some of
the last 100 lots were some of the most interesting of the day to watch.
Enough with that though. Let’s look through a sampling of
some of the cool vintage Star Wars pieces to show up in this auction.
JAWA COLLECTION
We’re going to kick off with all things Jawa. One of the if not the most special part of
this auction was the sale of the vintage Jawa collection. From the 6:1 and other
coin related items to the EP and first shot, there were some special pieces. In fact there was enough to start 2-3 strong focuses just in this auction alone.
Let’s look at the highlights. For ease
of pulling this together I am listing everything in hammer prices, thus these prices
do not include the 25% buyers premium that was added onto final hammer prices.
In the world of coins this was truly a cool experience. The
ability to find all of these pieces together will never be duplicated. All of the 6:1 pieces did well, and by that
I mean that even in a slightly down market, items like these were obtainable by
a large chunk of collectors -- although the supply is very limited. We won’t cover all parts of the coin set, but
it’s worth mentioning having a nice internal QC copy of the coin artwork with several
spots of live ink/stamps was a nice touch, not discounting the die sets
themselves which really rounded out the collection. In this situation we’re keeping it to the
big four.
Moving past the coins we have a great variety of 2D and 3D
preproduction items. The simple but
rarer Land of the Jawas box flat was one of those pieces that you didn’t need in
there, but just fit so well with the rest of the items.
Looking at figures, there were a good selection of MOCs from
around the world, but the piece that stands out the most is the Vinyl Cape Jawa
Engineering Pilot. This was by far one of the most surprising pieces of the day and saw an incredible final price.
In addition to just Jawas, we got a great selection of the
Jawa Limo itself: the Sandcrawler. Both the EP and artwork were incredible pieces to see, but the highlight
of the whole Jawa set has to be the first shot Sandcrawler. Whether it’s the details it was lacking or the
sweet blue door that it had, the first shot Sandcrawler was the king of the
Jawa auctions and brought an incredible price for a unique and
exceptional piece of vintage Star Wars history.
ROCKET FIRING BOBA FETT
Like other auction houses such as Hakes,
this round Prop Store found themselves with a Rocket Firing Boba Fett, and in
all honesty it was the first “mainstream” example to come to one of these large scale auctions
over the past few years. Thus, this
wasn’t as much about seeing Prop Store’s presentation on the item but more
about how much it was going for and how
aggressive people went after it.
Comparing this piece to the Hake’s
sale last November is like comparing an apple to a watermelon, but alas that’s
what seems to be the mindset among a lot of collectors. There may be some price adjusting going on in
the lower and middle ends, but this really bucks that trend. If anything impacted this piece negatively it
was the fact that it was being sold within a week of the DOW having record losses and a potential global pandemic with the COVID-19 virus, as that’s the stuff
that people that buy these pieces are looking at: the former more than the latter.
Nonetheless this was a great
auction for a great piece, and appropriately ended with a price point of $75,000
($93,750 w/BP). Not breaking the 6
figure number, but still a hell of a showing for a non-painted, non-AFA90
example of the L-Slot Rocket Fett.
There were several other noteworthy
auctions and here are a few of my personal favorites. Starting out was one of the most
fun to watch auctions of the day: the R2-D2 Playdoh Dynacast hardcopy. Measuring under 2 inches tall, he was one of
the smallest of the day, but with the buyers premium cracked the $1,000 mark.
Revenge of the Jedi proofs have been all over
the board the last 5 years, with Fetts pulling in $8,500 in the last 12
months. Thus it was disappointing to see an AFA90 example of Fett not
move. On the flip side we saw a great
example of Ben Kenobi sell for a healthy sum in this auction.
It should have its own section,
but given it didn’t sell it’s hard to give it too much of the limelight, but it goes
without saying that it was very cool to see the 12” Lando come up for auction. Falling short of its reserve like many
auctions of the day, this was a special piece and just didn’t have the right buyer
this day.
For the full review on prices realized visit
their
site.
With another successful auction in
the books, this hopefully cements this as an annual or even better bi-annual
event for the Los Angeles location.
--Pete
