Buy the Original 47-Year-Old Star Trek Phaser

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Listen up Trekkers and Trekkies alike, now is your one shot at owning a real piece of Star Trek memorabilia. Up for auction at Los Angeles' Propworx is the hand phaser used personally by William Shatner in the 1968 season. It’s one of two still in existence, so the bidding will be high stakes.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see this trinket go for quite a bit more than the $60,000 expected price. Trek fans are serious business when it comes to prop auctions.
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Why wouldn't Shatner or Nimoy want to keep souvenirs for themselves? Makes no sense to me. Unless it really does look ridiculously stupid in person.
 
Ducman69 said:
Why wouldn't Shatner or Nimoy want to keep souvenirs for themselves? Makes no sense to me. Unless it really does look ridiculously stupid in person.
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Both of them are getting up there in years. They may want to buy hookers and blow with the cash.
 
Ducman69 said:
Why wouldn't Shatner or Nimoy want to keep souvenirs for themselves? Makes no sense to me. Unless it really does look ridiculously stupid in person.
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Article didn't say if they owned them or not...

Though back then the show wasn't that popular so maybe they didn't want to keep anything.

Sometimes prop departments rent out the props so the actors can't keep them etc. The original stormtrooper blasters were rented from a prop shop and returned. The prop shops store and repurpose them if they can.
 
dandirk said:
Article didn't say if they owned them or not...
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Sorry, I meant why didn't Nimoy and Shatner and what not keep one of the ones they were going to throw away. They said this was a private collector, but if it was one of the cast I'm sure they would have said who which would have increased its value that much more.
 
Ducman69 said:
Sorry, I meant why didn't Nimoy and Shatner and what not keep one of the ones they were going to throw away. They said this was a private collector, but if it was one of the cast I'm sure they would have said who which would have increased its value that much more.
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I think mostly because the way people feel about the show has changed so much since the late 60's. I doubt that Nimoy and Shatner were thinking they'd be Spock and Kirk for life when they put the wrap on S3.
 
brentsg said:
I think mostly because the way people feel about the show has changed so much since the late 60's. I doubt that Nimoy and Shatner were thinking they'd be Spock and Kirk for life when they put the wrap on S3.
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Star Trek had a loyal and rabid fan base in it's first run but pretty small. It really didn't take hold as a pop culture icon until it when into syndication in the early 70's. I'd never even heard of it until one day after school in the 1st grade I started coming on in afternoon on one of the local TV stations. That first episode had me hook, it was "Mudd's Women". I wanted to be Spock.
 
Star Trek was one of those rare shows that ended its run on TV prematurely and then never left TV in reruns. While the original was running in syndication (started the same year as the last season) it had company with the animated series, the start of the movie franchise, STTNG, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise, all while the movie franchise was taking off.

Shatner and Nimoy both had bigger fish to fry and moved on to other starring roles and probably never gave a 3 year run of a sci-fi show a second thought after the final episode. There was a different mindset back then about props and it was common to just trash everything, which is exactly what makes all of the old memorabilia from that ear more valuable.
 
MajorDomo said:
There was a different mindset back then about props and it was common to just trash everything, which is exactly what makes all of the old memorabilia from that ear more valuable.
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Exactly the point I was making. The greatness of Star Trek as we know it didn't happen until years after it's first run. In any case Shatter and Nimoy I believe are well beyond financially secure by conventional standards.
 
I was born in 1975 so was there really a "rabid fan base" in 69? They make Star Trek sound like Star Wars?
 
I remember going to a comic/memorabilia shop about 30 years ago where they had an original prop TOS communicator for sale with a COA. They wanted about $400 for it then if i remember right, and i kick myself for not buying or at least trying to.
Of course, back then that kind of money was hard to come by at my age. (Pre-20's)
Who knew? :p
 
M'ichal said:
yuck. I dunno what's uglier, that or the cars from that era.
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:eek:

There were some truly beautiful automobiles from back then:

1967 Camaro
1968 Mustang
1969 Charger

Why do you think they've tried so hard to capture that aggressive late-60s/early-70s look on their new models?
 
MrCaffeineX said:
Why do you think they've tried so hard to capture that aggressive late-60s/early-70s look on their new models?
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Because old guys like me who grew up wanting those cars now have lots of extra cash to buy them. Also, many were in film or TV with our boyhood heroes driving them. The fake Ferrari Spyder from Miami Vice is still desirable, even though everyone knows it's not a real Ferrari. Kits are still avaliable, but the corvettes that it was made from are going up in price too.
 
Ducman69 said:
Why wouldn't Shatner or Nimoy want to keep souvenirs for themselves? Makes no sense to me. Unless it really does look ridiculously stupid in person.
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For the same reason you wouldn't want to keep the company mouse, pen holder, or stapler if you worked in a cubicle. ;) It was just a job to them. :D

I've seen one of those props in person some years ago, i can tell you they were not designed to last and showed considerable signs of use. Every time Kirk got into a fisticuff the phaser he was holding would go flying off into the sunset and land on the deck.
 
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