So, Profiles will have 103 Star Trek lots in their upcoming auction. But 22 of these lots are mediocre original art from Lincoln Enterprises that really aren't relevant for a prop & costume collector. Thus we have 81 items, and there is a good selection of props, costumes, original art and even a full size Enterprise Shuttelpod.
The two iconic pieces in this auction are the Khan costume head piece and the Spock robe from the beginning of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The Khan piece has a $ 30-50,000 price, which I think is high.The Star Trek market has been flooded since 2006 and this piece sold originally in the Bob Justman auction in 2002. At that time it sold for just under $ 30,000. But at that time Star Trek costumes were much harder to get, and TNG and later costumes were selling for 2-3x what they now get. However, this is a very important piece, so I am going to be very interested to see what it gets. If it opens at $ 30,000 it might not sell. From talking to my collector friends, the general consensus seems to be that this is a $ 20-25,000 piece.
Profiles of course, has a lot of buyers who have the money to drop $ 30,000 though, so it will be interesting to see. It is a beautiful display by Star Trek collector Tom Spina.
The Spock TMP costume is totally overpriced. A $ 30-40,000 bid is just not realistic. Profiles started this last auction with the overpriced "Roberta Lincoln" and "Lenore Karridian" costumes in their last auction, both of which had absurd $ 20,000 opening bids and neither of which sold. This costume is cool, but a $ 15,000 costume max. And more like $ 10,000. So how do they get $ 30,000? It is far from iconic and I will say if you spend $ 30,000 on this you are nuts.
THE PALEY CENTER FOR MEDIA ORIGINAL STAR TREK COSTUMES FROM THE EX HIBITION STARTREK:THETRADITION CONTINUES
The Paley Center for Media is a permanent collection of over 45,000 television programs, 20,000 radio programs and 10,000 commercials, encompassing comedy, drama, news, game shows, children’s programs to political conventions. The shows include concerts, sporting events, science fiction, TV movies and miniseries. The following lots (Lots 1518-1531) and previous (Lots 1490-1504, 1513,1514) were part of the exhibition, “Star Trek:The Tradition Continues,” with life-size custom-made mannequins, most adorned with make-up appliances painted and dressed by Paramount, modeling the original uniforms from the Star Trek series and are being sold to benefit television and film preservation.
So the above costumes were loaned by Paramount to The Paley Center and for some reason, The Paley Center is now selling them. I got called by CBS about these. I had hoped they would go into a CBS Star Trek archive (which they don't have). None the less, CBS's loss is your gain! These are nice pieces and already on mannequins. And the mannequins are pretty cool. A lot of Voyager pieces though. Not my favorite.
There are also Janeway and Archer captain's costumes, both of which are distressed and have been floating around a lot lately. These should sell in the $ 3-4,000 range since good ones sell about $ 5,000. Don't go overboard on these and look for a bargain. Otherwise pass.
The Captain Archer jacket is nice. You don't see a lot of these, so I like this. It should be a $ 2,500-3,500 item.
I will review the props and then the artwork seperately this week, so stay tuned!
Alec