Now’s your chance to buy Superman’s cape, an X-Wing, or a Hogwarts acceptance letter
Big Hollywood memorabilia auctions are always a lot of fun, because they let us normal people get tantalizingly close to owning a piece of movie history. An actual screen-used prop like a Stormtrooper blaster from Star Wars or an animatronic Facehugger egg from Aliens seems priceless, but could actually be possessed by anyone with a few thousand dollars sitting around. That may sound pricey, but just think about how cool it would be to put your cat or whatever in that egg and then have it open up when you have guests over. Not only would it be pretty funny, but those guests would probably never return because you’re a crazy person.
For anyone who has always dreamed of doing something similarly ridiculous with their money, Invaluable.com and Profiles In History have launched the thrillingly named Hollywood Auction 83, a multi-day auction featuring a huge range of iconic crap from tons of movies and TV shows. The auction began earlier this week, but there’s still a bunch of stuff available today and tomorrow. For example, today you could get a “collection of ephemera” from Lost’s Oceanic Flight 815 for only $600, an actual ‘60s Cyberman helmet from Doctor Who’s “Wheel In Space” for $15,000, and the Academy Award that producer Darryl F. Zanuck won for How Green Was My Valley in the ‘40s for only $150,000. Buying that would even make you an Oscar winner, because you’d have to win an auction to get it.
As neat as those are, the real cool things are coming tomorrow. Looking to dox some people you don’t like on Twitter? Pick up this $4,000 V For Vendetta costume. Interested in proving that you have both great power and great responsibility? Buy Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man 3 costume and the matching muscle suit he wore underneath it. Do you like superpowers but you’re also mildly evil? You could get the black Spidey suit instead. Into some weird sex stuff? You’d love the life-size “terror dog” suit from Ghostbusters.
There’s also a cape from Superman III, Marty’s hoverboard from Back To The Future Part II, one of Spock’s shirts from the original Star Trek series, one of Prince’s jackets from Purple Rain, and a big chunk of Kryptonite from Superman IV if you want to kill whoever wins the cape. Perhaps coolest of all, though, is Harry Potter’s Hogwarts acceptance letter from the first movie and a screen-used X-Wing miniature from Star Wars. The letter is only $6,000 (which is nothing if it means getting into Hogwarts for real) and the X-Wing matches the Academy Award at $150,000. No offense to Mr. Zanuck, but the X-Wing is better.