The Christie's Star Trek Auction - The Catalog and Preview

The Christie's Star Trek auction was October 5-7, 2006. When I first heard about the auction, it was at Comic Con International in San Diego in July. Christie's had set up a small booth with some of the pieces that would be sold, and it was quite a site. Denise and Mike Okuda made an appearance and were on TV talking of the auction. I immediately ordered the two volume auction catalog (a cool $ 90 - heck, the hardcover limited edition was $ 500!).

The catalog was over 500 pages of full color photos. If you are a Star Trek Collector, you should get these catalogs just for the reference value. They are truly amazing. Now Christie's is selling them for 30% off. That's only $ 60, and you can get them at Christie's site.

Of course the hard cover edition is still $ 500!

Here are a few photos of what the catalog is like inside:

They had tons of great uniforms:


Lots of Props:


And plenty of models, including every major ship model!


When I got my catalog I called every major Trek fan friend I had and told them about the auction. Seats were supposedly limited, and you might not even get tickets to all three days! Needless to say, I had two friends apply for tickets even though they weren't going. Of course, as wound up, everyone got in. The room where the auction was held was huge and I assume they didn't have the turnout they hoped.

I went through the catalog and marked every item I wanted. I had a limited budget and would have to bid carefully. With 1,000 lots there were so many great items. The Ships were amazing, as they had the primary filming miniatures for the Entreprise A, B, C, D and E, as well as Voyager, Defiant, Reliant, the Kligon Bird of Prey and the Romulan Warbird. They had costumes for every major character as well as background players and every type of prop you could think of. I think every friend of mine picked out the Ressikan Flute as something they would love to have (little did we know......). A Phaser Rifle was high on my list.

As the auction approached, the auction got lots of press in the mainstream media. There were two articles on Star Trek.com. One has a bunch of photos, the other is a Q&A.

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/news/article/16195.html

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/news/article/16219.html


And a great piece in the NY Times online.

And most importantly the CBS piece with Video.


The days leading up to the auction, Christie's previewed the items for sale. It was a great event I heard, but business kept me away from it. None the less, you could see and touch every item that was in the auction. My friends were there and took some great photos:





Next: The Auction!

Comments

Gary Emerald said…
I cannot beleive the price for the Ceti Alpha Eel mold. That is just crazy. For that price are they selling the rights and ownership for the creature as well? If you buy that at that price you should be able t profit participate in the Star Trek franchsise and receive royalty checks from Paramount.
Fashion "style" of Leadership said…
I don't know how widespread the reception was for the auction. I can't remember when or where I heard about it, but I watched some of it online as it was not on TV the entire auction, and I didn't want to miss what might be sold. That said, I saw some of the prices items went for, and having to remember, the country has been, not was entering, a depression-not recession as people have now agreed it's a recession. And people then and now, just didn't have the money to spend hundreds of $$$ on basically rubber toys as they were going for, or costumes that you might be embarrased to wear (unlike the naval "generations" wardrobe), or frightened to take proper care of and lose your investment. That's why some people are upset, it's the wealthy few who are amassing all these items in their basement and keeping them from the public.

I read earlier too, went through the whole website in about 1 day lol, that one collector got upper echelon treatment and aquired legally or not, tons of props/costumes and wanted to resell them? And of course we all know the actors/extras do take home/steal momentos of their stint.

And everyone knew the big ticket items like the ship models would hit the 100k mark, so those were the domain of the serious collector to begin with, everyone knew. At least I did, as stated in a previous comment on Rob Legato stating it cost the studio $100,000to build the Ent D model. And you bet they're not selling it for less.