GateWorld: They’re running out of room. They’re doing Universe.
Alex Peters: Yeah. And so we’re like “Oh God, are we going to have anything?” Then we got there and we were like, “Oh my God, there’s the furling from the 200th episode and there’s four ZPMs” and there’s, you know … “Oh good, we still have staff weapons.”
GW: Ark of Truth, Thor … It’s crazy.
AP: As much stuff had been sold, there was good stuff left so we were really excited about the ability to put it all on auctions.
GW: And you know, like you just said, other people are selling Stargate stuff right now. What makes Propworx stand out above the rest?
AP: There’s a lot of stuff now in the secondary market because of Legends. So a lot of people who bought stuff from Legends, want to sell it again.
GW: They’re now selling it.
AP:Again, Legends did a great job with what they did. They really kind of trail blazed, in a way, that whole production-specific eBay auction. A whole bunch of items had been sold to Propstore right before we got there. And I know there were some, maybe shall I say regrets because one of the things about Propworx is that we get top dollar for this stuff, for the studio. That doesn’t mean it’s all expensive.
There’s a lot of stuff we sell for less than 100 bucks. Because it’s smaller and we may have a lot of it. So the difference with Propworx is that we are all fans and we are all here because of the passion of it and we take enormous pride in every aspect of what we do. The certificates of authenticity we do are all tied to the specific prop with a numbered hologram. No one else in the industry does that. So that means when you buy the ZPM, it will have a tiny little sticker somewhere on it. You won’t be able to notice it unless you really look for it. It’s about yea big and it’ll have a serial number on it and that will tie to the certificate of authenticity. You can’t remove the sticker without destroying it. So, no one will be able to replicate that and say “Oh, this is a real one.” Well, prove it.
GW: So this is a guarantee that the person bought an authentic prop.
AP: Exactly, and we think that’s really, really important. So things like that. You can phone us anytime during regular business hours, we answer the phone, we return emails the same day. We’re very accessible. We have great shipping, I mean our shipping department is outstanding.
One person on the Battlestar Galactica forums had posted a picture of a box that had been delivered by UPS that had been crushed. It was kind of a long box and it had been … It looked like an accordion. And the item was still perfect inside. They posted these photos to say, “Hey, look at the great job.” We take a lot of pride. Even the certificate of authenticity is printed on cardstock, not paper. It’s got a color photo on it of your item, It’s got the hologram on it. And then when we ship it, we ship it between two pieces of cardboard because that’s …
GW: It’s a collector’s item in itself.
AP: It is. And people … it’s amazing the photos we’ve seen of people who will take their item and put it in a shadow box with the certificate of authenticity.
AP: So we take a lot of pride in that. So I think that people see the passion and the pride. We’re not a faceless company that’s just selling it. We’re not just interested in money. We are interested in a legacy as well, and that’s why our catalogues are so collectible.
I would argue that the Battlestar Galactica catalogues were the best auction catalogues ever. Period. They were just spectacular. The one we’re doing for Iron Man tops those easily. The ones we do for Stargate will be like that. They’ll be hardcover in the first place. They won’t cost anymore than our other catalogues cost because we’re now getting it printed in China so we can afford to make a hardcover catalogue with a beautiful dust jacket. Real spectacular work. And it will be a book of its own, like a coffee table art book.
GW: Yeah, I saw what you guys did for the two Battlestar catalogs, and as someone who has always been disappointed that there hasn’t been a lot of … You see Star Wars coming out with these manuals of all their props and their gorgeous detail, and you get to see all this stuff. There was never anything like that for Star Trek until Christies kicked out those two catalogs.
AP: Right.
GW: And then Battlestar, you guys did the exact same thing. Those are really collector’s items in themselves with everything in it that was significant to that show. So if you can’t afford to buy the prop, at least you’ve got a nice, really gorgeous catalog that has everything in it, that you always want to examine the detail in it.
AP: Well yeah. We look at our catalogs as reference material for future generations as well. I think that is important. If you have the prop you can always look back at the catalog and see a beautiful photo of it. Our photography is really good. I think it’s better than what you see in the other auction house catalogs that are around right now. And, plus supplemented with our online materials. One of the things we do is we do a website for every production we work on. And that website has additional photos, it has blogs about all the items.
GW: It’s an archive.
AP: It’s an archive. It has an archive of any item we have sold. You can research any item that we have sold, it’s in this on-line archive. We are definitely doing a lot more legacy work than anyone else is. We think that is important.
Again, it is part of the passion. It’s part of what we do. We’ve got this great team, everyone here really loves what they do and is really, really good at it. And we want to make sure that comes through in the product. You are not just dealing with someone who is buying and selling props.
You are dealing with fans who understand you passion. Donna Sakaida, one of my Star Trek buddies, she is a huge prop/costume collector of Star Trek. She came in a couple of weeks ago, because she had gotten the assassin’s rifle from Star Trek VI. She had gotten the stunt rubber one.
Now about a month before that, I had bought the hero one. So she came in and we sat them down and we took photos and we compared them and everything and we all went out to have lunch. And that is like the fun thing about doing this business. That’s business I guess for me, but it is definitely pleasure for me. So it’s a lot of fun.