Mikhail's Mk 2 fragmentation hand grenade, from the Lost episode "Through the Looking Glass, Part 1", will be on the auction block.
The motto for Lost fans this weekend? Live together, buy alone.
Viewers of the hit television show said goodbye to Jack, Kate, Sawyer and the rest of Oceanic flight 815 in May. But those who watched the show obsessively over its six seasons will have a chance to take home a piece of it Saturday and Sunday thanks to an auction that will see thousands of items up for sale, from Charlie's acoustic guitar to DHARMA packaged food.
"Everything that is iconic or recognizable that any fan would want will be in the auction," says Joseph Maddalena, president of Profiles in History, the California-based auction house conducting the auction.
The auction will comprise somewhere in the neighbourhood of 5,000 items. Some of those items will likely sell for a few hundred dollars, while others will go for "multiple thousands of dollars," Maddalena adds. "The interest is huge all over the world."
While auctions of Hollywood memorabilia have been taking place for decades, themed auctions targeting specific fan groups, whether of movies or television shows, are a relatively new phenomenon. But such auctions are growing in popularity thanks in large part to the Internet, which has allowed studios to gauge fan interest and desire, and target potential collectors who are keen to own any part of an entertainment world they have immersed themselves in for years.
"It's a way for people to actually kind of fulfill an obsession," says Darren Julien, president of Julien's Auctions, an auction house in Hollywood that specializes in entertainment memorabilia.
Given the devotion of Lost viewers, there is no doubt items in the auction will attract eager buyers.
"The imagery of Lost has reached cult status," Andy Page, who runs the U.K.-based Lost fan blog DarkUFO, said in an e-mail. "The fans have grown up with these for six years and it's their way to grab a piece of their history."
Lost is certainly not the only show to auction off props at the series' end. There was an auction of props from The Sopranos when the show ended in 2007. Battlestar Galactica also auctioned off props when it ended last year. In an early instance of a themed auction, props from Seinfeld were auctioned off when the show ended in 1998.
"In the last five years a lot of studios are finally seeing there's a lot of value for selling their props," says Gus Lopez, founder of the Star Wars Collectors Archive, a website for fans of the sci-fi epic he launched in 1994.
Prior to the advent of the Internet, fans kept in touch through local clubs or magazines, Mr. Lopez says. But now, with blogs and chat forums dedicated to movies or television shows, studios can easily tell just how passionate, and how large a certain fan base is. And those Internet communities give studios a target market guaranteed to buy props that would otherwise languish in storage or be thrown out. It has also made collecting items much easier than it ever was, thus boosting demand.
"Now, with Internet access and so on, people have learned that access to things used in shows and films is a lot easier to find than people thought," Lopez says.
The history of Hollywood memorabilia auctions doesn't begin with catering to fans, however. It all starts with storage space. In 1970, MGM Studios hosted the first major auction of film memorabilia. The studio simply want to clear out soundstages that had become filled with movie props over the years. The 350,000 items auctioned off included a loin cloth worn by Johnny Weissmuller in Tarzan films of the 1940s and a pair of ruby red slippers worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz, which sold for $15,000.
The selling price caught many people completely off guard.
"At the time, it was a king's ransom for something that people didn't really give a lot of value to," says Laurie Woolley, founder of The Collector's Lab, a company specializing in appraisal services.
Studios will usually keep the most iconic items from a film or television show in their archives. With the rest, however, they must either pay to store it or sell it, so it's no wonder more themed auctions are emerging.
"Since this market's such a big thing, it makes sense that studios realize they can actually turn this cost for them on their books in to a huge profit," Woolley says.
And now, buying up props and other Hollywood memorabilia is coming to be viewed as just as viable a pursuit as collecting coins or stamps.
"It's really started to demand respect from other collecting categories," Woolley says.
Still, the vast majority of people who buy up props aren't doing it as investors hoping to re-sell items for a profit. They are fans who simply wish to have some token of their favourite shows.
"Most people who collect pop culture are very emotional collectors, and they're buying things because they love them," Woolley says.
Which is why auctions of props from television shows occur as close to the shows' finale as possible, since that is when fans' emotional connection is strongest.
Fans who have been feeling the void in their lives after Lost's finale now have the chance to own John Locke's Oceanic flight 815 boarding pass or Hurley's winning lottery ticket.
The island might be gone, but the stuff from it is up for grabs. And with an "epilogue" recently leaked online stoking fan interest in the show, fans will be eager to own any part of the show they can.
"The Lost auction is a perfect opportunity to strike while the iron is hot," Woolley says.
Dave McGinn