How to Start a Collection 1-2-3

First, analyze your reasons. Are you hoping to "buy low and sell high?" Creating a collection of anything solely for investment purposes is seldom a good idea. One should approach collecting from the standpoint of self-satisfaction. Do the objects appeal to you? Are you happy to have them in your presence? In essence - do they stir emotions within you - rather than existing as mere objects to be stored away while awaiting their value to increase?

Quick start to a collection - buy a set

Buy something because you like it and want to have it - that way you will never be disappointed if 20 or 30 years from now they have not increased in monetary value. For example, some folks make a point of grabbing up every Rookie baseball card that's printed hoping that one (or more) of these players will become the next Mickey Mantle or Babe Ruth. The fact is the odds are overwhelmingly against that, and in the end the collector will have spent thousands of dollars to amass a collection that sits in a box and has less value that originally spent.

The second tip is like the first - purchase an item because you really want it - not because someone else says you should have it. You'll find lots of folks with something to sell saying "You're collection won't be complete without ____!" Let me tell you, a collection is never truly complete. There is always at least one more thing that could be added and if your goal is to create the best, most complete collection of XYZ widgets, you will end up spending lots of money and probably never achieve that goal. Don't let others define your collecting goal. Buy what makes you happy.

Beginnings of a small stamp collection

This also holds true for retailers who offer memorabilia that is specifically created to be collectible. You've seen these - they are almost always marked "Limited Edition" (LE) or "Special Edition" (SE). Hummel plates and figurines spring to mind. The seller wants you to think that the item is more desirable and holds more value because of scarcity but this is very rarely the case in the long run. LEs are usually numbered in the thousands, and when they sell out the manufacturer simply creates a slightly different version for another "Limited Edition" run. Of course, if you like and want to have a special edition item then don't deny yourself the pleasure. Just realize that a marketing scam is involved and don't pay more than it is personally worth to you.

And the third tip is like the first two - buy what you want regardless of any "rules." For example, many people focus on collecting items by only a particular artist. In the process, they obtain things that don't really appeal to them aesthetically but feel they must have, and they pass up some things they like only because they are unrelated to their collection's theme. Face it - a collection of Picassos may be impressive but not everything he created was great. Maybe adding in a Rembrandt or Van Gogh that catches your eye will be more enjoyable than a Picasso work which just doesn't "feel right." Remember - the goal of any good collection is to satisfy yourself - why buy something you don't care for, or take a pass on something because it doesn't "fit?" In point of fact, an eclectic collection is often more interesting than one that is too narrowly focused.

A Leica camera collection

The whole point is that YOU are in charge - you set the rules, or you have no rules whatsoever. Just get started with one thing that appeals to you - that you'd like to possess - and let it develop and flow from there. As you acquire more items you may see a pattern developing, or not. It doesn't matter so long as you're surrounding yourself with items that make you happy.

So why delay? Start today, or this week, with just one or two things, and let the collection begin. In a future article I'll get more specific about building a movie memorabilia collection.

Have you started collecting? Please share your experiences - the good, the bad, the ugly...

Author: Lee Richards

Sure Fire Recipe for a Movie: Girls with Guns

Judith M. Brown in "Big Doll House"

Pictured : studio publicity 8 x 10 photo stills from 1971 exploitation flick Big Doll House (Judith M. Brown), Jeannie Berlin in 1970's The Baby Maker, and 1998 Hollywood / Hong Kong action fusion movie The Replacement Killers (Chow Yun Fat and Mira Sorvino).

French New Wave film directing legend Jean-Luc Godard (1960's Breathless starring Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo) once said that, "All you need to make a film is a girl and a gun."  A true genius, Godard probably didn't know how right he was; "girls with guns" may be among the longest lasting and most pervasive cinematic tropes in existence.

Easily mistaken for a kinky camp visual thrill that occasionally crosses the screen (think James Bond girls), or a character attribute (Linda Hamilton aka Sarah Connor in The Terminator films), women packing heat are all over films of every genre.  Don't believe it?  Treat yourself to Moviebadgirls.com's online compilation of every girls-with-guns image archived on IMDb (The Internet Movie Database).

Chow Yun Fat & Mira Sorvino in "The Replacement Killers"

The movie bad girls photo index has screen grabs we expect to see, like Star Wars sci-fi Princess Leia and her big handheld blaster in The Empire Strikes Back, or Pam Grier as Foxy Brown in all her Blaxploitation '70s gangsta gun-crazed glory.  But the bad girls photo index also reminds us that ladies with lethal weapons grace big screen epics like Dr. Zhivago as well.  Back in the day, Julie Christie as the peerlessly furry snow-bunny Lara, elicited an audible gasp from the audience when she pulled a pistol on her Russkie sugar-daddy lawyer boyfriend in the classic 1960s MGM epic.  How could somebody so Cinderella good be sooo bad?

Japanese print comics known as Manga, and their film cartoon counterparts Anime (Aeon Flux anyone? She was in both genres, as well as in live action Hollywood cinema played by Charlize Theron with a dark wig), would have you think that they originated the concept of babes with bazookas sometime in the 1970s. There is no denying Japanese graphic novel artists and animators score points for being pretty obssesive about keeping these dangerous girls going.  The Shaw Brothers Hong Kong Studio of the 1960s also deserves a shout out for getting the current version of the action flick chick rolling with Cheng Pei-pei in Come Drink with Me.

Mira Sorvino pictured here in the Replacement Killers publicity shot tells us that this is still an area of interest for Asian film makers and movie goers everywhere.  But Bombshells with Bullets have been on film since film existed -- a few clicks on the net will find silent cinema sweethearts like Lillian Gish and Mary Pickford assuming the position with a piece.  The Golden Age of American movies, running from the 1920s until the beginning of the TV era in the 1950s, would not have been the same without its gorgeous gaggle of gangster and crime noir molls.

Jeannie Berlin in "The Baby Maker"

Occasionally a trope outgrows its fictive boundaries and prolapses into the real world.  Such is the case for this genre.  Buff action honeys in the flesh busting out of their glamoflage cami muscle shirts can be found selling real guns to real armies on the net (check out TacGirl.com, they'll send you a pin-up calendar of these real-life Lara Croft wannabes).

In case that fantasy incursion of TacGirls with guns into real life isn't weird enough for you, then you will love the reports coming out of Afghanistan about "FETS."  FETS is military speak for "Female Engagement Teams."  Apparently our American heroes G.I. Joe -ing around the Afghani countryside is really making Islamic folks uncomfortable about our combat soldiers so much as looking at Afghan ladies, let alone trying to speak with them.  The Pentagon's answer to the problem is FETS, or regular army women in cami fatigues with guns on patrol working to win the hearts and minds of people in rural Afghanistan.

If all this real world guns and gals is too much for you, then you won't have to wait long to ogle some fresh female arm-candy with ordinances back on the big screen where they rightfully belong.  Zack Snyder's new girls with guns actioner, Sucker Punch, will be out in 2011.  Sucker Punch's one-line, high-concept description from the director is, "Alice in Wonderland with machine guns." 'Nuf said.

Total snaps to the excellent website "TVTropes.com" for sending this Blog in the right direction.

Spanish Mini Movie Posters are Special

We recently purchased a collection of over 500 mini movie posters (sometimes called heralds) dating from the 1940s and '50s. Boy have these been fun to peruse!

In a number of foreign countries the movie distributors figured out a really neat way to get people to theaters - give them miniature posters that could also be used as admission passes. So from Spain, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil and other Spanish-speaking lands we have some great artwork that truly classifies as ephemera. As neat as these little posters are, no one ever really intended for them to be saved. That makes it wonderful to have them "in hand" now some 50 to 70 years later!

And these truly are little works of art - often different images from the large poster creations put on display in the theaters. They average around 3-1/2" x 5" in size, and most all just seem to explode with eye-catching color!

We've got some great classic movie titles, and even more classic movie stars in our collection. So let's drop a few names: Bob Hope, Roy Rogers, Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire, Hedy Lamarr, Dorothy Lamour, Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Alan Ladd, Laurence Olivier, Marlene Dietrich, Lucille Ball, Gloria Swanson, Ray Milland, Gary Cooper, Charlie Chaplin, John Wayne, Bette Davis, Ingrid Bergman, Boris Karloff, Orson Welles, and more.

See why I'm excited! And some of the great titles we have include: Henry V, The Green Glove, Drums of Fu Manchu, Road to Bali, Sands of Iwo Jima, Pride of the Yankees, Black Magic, Johnny Angel, Algiers, Submarine Attack, Man In the Iron Mask, Kit Carson, Captain Kidd, Sign of the Cross, and more.

With 500+ posters it will take us awhile to make them all available but it will be a delicious time spent in nostalgic recollection of Saturday afternoon matinees.


Author:  Lee Richards

Cigarette Cards: Intimate portraits of early movie star screen idols

Cigarette cards were first introduced in the 1880s as stiffeners for individual cigarette packs. The U.S. was first to produce cigarette cards, but Britain followed suit shortly afterward. The first two decades of the Twentieth Century are considered the 'golden age' of the card production, with literally hundreds of suppliers producing them. The cards usually had a nautical or military theme reflecting the interests of soldiers and sailors as the main consumers of tobacco.

The demand for cards decreased during the great war because of print supply shortages, and then resumed popularity again in the inter-war period, but now with a broader variety of pictorial subjects. Advances in printing technology in the 1920s also allowed for this new proliferation of card subjects, including sports, motor cars, and boating.

At MovieFanCollectibles, we became intensely interested in cigarette cards produced in the inter-war and post WWII era as movie memorabilia, because of our passion for lobby cards, movie stills, and other vintage movie promotional materials. We like the aesthetic experience of viewing cigarette cards, which is quite unlike that of looking at other forms of movie memorabilia.

The card's small size that allows them to fit into a cigarette pack also gives them a jewel-like cameo or locket quality, which is meant for one viewer at a time. The experience is one of intimacy with the subject matter. Some of the cards have surprisingly high resolution with much visual data available given their cigarette-pack size. Other cigarette cards, which may have a lower resolution in their printing process gain their charm from special die-cut shapes such as the oval lozenge-shaped cards pictured here with Clark Gable and Laurel & Hardy in all their glory.

Material shortages put an end to the cigarette card craze, although some printers and tobacco companies were considering bringing them back in the 1960s. But it was never to be.

Pictured: Clark Gable, Robert Young & Claudette Colbert, Laurel & Hardy, Ilona Massey

Thanks to Franklin Cards for cigarette card info

Rory Calhoun: A Rags to Riches Movie Star Story (The Hired Gun)

We recently had the chance to review the rags-to-riches career of western star of the 40s, 50s and 60s, Rory Calhoun. Calhoun's own life would have made a good subject for a grindhouse film: after teen years in a California reformatory, this good-looking youth graduated to armed robbery (including a jewel heist), which ended in a bid at the federal pen in Springfield, Missouri and the infamous San Quentin prison.

After doing some hard time, Calhoun was discovered by A-list actor Alan Ladd, whose wife cast him in a number of walk-on roles with notable stars like Laurel and Hardy. Calhoun was then picked up by agent Henry Willson, who handled a stable of actors that, including Rock Hudson and Troy Donahue, all sort of looked like each other. Willson, who found his actors in various stressed backgrounds, schooled them in manners and diction, à la Henry Higgins in 'My Fair Lady.' With Willson's representation, Calhoun worked with stars like Rhonda Fleming, Edward G. Robinson, and Shirley Temple.

An odd episode during this time was Willson leaking the story of Calhoun's tarnished past to the tabloid gossip press in order to distract them from early rumors of homosexuality floating around Hollywood about his other client, Rock Hudson. The jail stories only served to enhance Calhoun's tough-guy reputation in the biz. Willson seemed to have the knack for picking actors with “slumdog” backgrounds which gave them an almost mythically loaded backstory. He guaranteed that the gossips would have a story arc for Willson's clients when the hacks finally took notice of them. That's some PR genius.

Calhoun went on to form his own production company, Rorvic, which made a number of western shoot 'em ups like the one pictured here, 'The Hired Gun.' The Hired Gun is the story of Calhoun, a bounty hunter of sorts, being paid to bring Marilyn Monroe lookalike, Anne Francis (60s TV's gal private eye 'Honey West'), back to justice at the end of a rope in Texas. Francis is accused of killing her husband, but (gee wiz) Calhoun falls in love with her on the trip!

Fun factoid about Calhoun: he's in the 80s horror classic 'Motel Hell.'

(A shout out to Wiki's 'Rory Calhoun' entry for detail's of Calhoun's life)