I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about the auction (post-script: just kidding — apparently I have a lot to say!), because we left before the first day’s session ended. It took five hours just to get through season one. It took three hours to get through season two. They pushed through into season three even though 90% of the audience and participants had left Barker Hangar, and guess what: they’re still not finished with today’s session as I write this blog entry.
There were two things that totally sucked about today. Number one was the amount of clothing that was included in the auction. That really slowed the pace of the event, because they devoted individual lots to each of the characters in a season, and sometimes a character was represented by as many as a half-dozen items. Number two, the massive presence of online bidders made sitting on the auction floor tedious and frustrating. It would be impossible to count the number of times the auctioneer would yell “Time!” only to have the kid watching the Internet bidding announce another bid. Everyone in the hangar was at the mercy of online bidders. They could have seriously expedited the process if the lot was closed when the auctioneer yelled “Sold,” and cut off late Internet bids. Another idea for making the experience more palatable would have been to combine personal affects with clothing in the lot order instead of doing all the clothes at once and then moving onto personal affects. People would have paid more attention were it not for 90-100 consecutive items that were just costumes.
Oh, and people are fucking morons. I’m sorry, it needs to be said. Some of the prices that were paid for these props were beyond belief. To give you an idea of how ridiculous the bidding was, I’ll make two quick points. First, the same exact item was auctioned off twice during the first season auction. Towards the beginning of the event, one of the items was described as “Hurley’s Spanish Comic Book.” You know the one. It’s in Spanish. There’s a polar bear in it. It was very spooky when we saw the polar bear in the comic for the first time on the show. That comic book sold for $3,250.00. But then, about an hour later, the same exact comic book came up for auction again. This time it was described as “Walt’s Spanish Comic Book,” because — if you remember — Hurley gives his comic book to Walt. This time, the comic book sold for $1,400.00. So what’s the true value of the comic book? I don’t know, but the first person to win one paid double what the second person paid, thereby making them a moron. Likewise, “Kate’s Airplane” sold for about $4,000 — and then two lots later there was a “Kate’s Lunchbox Time Capsule” which contained — gasp! — Kate’s Airplane! That sold for about a grand.
Later in the auction, one of the items was 13 Oceanic Airlines bottles of water “in varying conditions.” That means some of them are without caps, some of them are crunched or crinkled, and some of them contain no water. Meanwhile, outside the auction area, you could buy a carton of 24 bottles of sealed Oceanic Airlines water for $36. The 13 bottle auction had a closing bid of $1,400.00. Absurd.
It wouldn’t surprise me, in the coming weeks, if we see many upset LOST auction buyers. A lot of the big items being sold were on display in the hangar today, and when you get the chance to see them all in person you can tell how chintzy many of them are. Shit that’s supposed to be metal or wood is made out of styrofoam or polyfoam. The “Quarantine” hatch door looked horribly fake in person, and yet someone paid thousands of dollars for it. The original, un-imploded hatch door — made of wood painted to resemble steel — sold for about $10,000.
I bid on about 10 items, and I didn’t win any of them. I bid on Walt’s t-shirt and flotation jacket from the raft. My bid was $400 and I think it sold for about $1,200. My highest bid was for Mr. Eko’s “Jesus Stick,” which I bid $1,500 for. It sold for $8,000. I was never the slightest big concerned that I’d actually win (and have to pay for) something, except for when Tom convinced me to bid on the 10-foot by 7-foot entrance sign to the Santa Rosa Medical Facility (the crazy house where Hurley is committed). We bid $475 and then $600, and it sold for $750. Where the hell would we have put our giant set piece? I have no idea.
Here are some photos from the day complete with witty captions. I’ll post all the crazy pictures of me and my friends playing in the hatch, sitting on Oceanic 815, touching “Jughead” and more tomorrow.
As I write this, “Sun’s Season 3 Costume” (simply a pair of blue jeans) just sold for $450. We’re in a recession!? What!?
Feel free to click on any image to enlarge.
Say hello to the DHARMA van. That's the skeleton of one Roger Linus propped up against the side door. And I think he's got the French guy's arm in his lap for some reason? The estimated value on this thing is $8,000 but it will go for much more than that. Just don't look inside the thing.
Here's hoping whoever wins the van doesn't expect to turn the key and hear the familiar strains of "Shambala" by Three Dog Night. Someone jacked the 8-track player, man!
No, those are not real currencies. No, that's not a real passport. Dean Moriarity. On The Road, right? Whatever, that'd be a pretty cool thing to have framed on your wall.
Yes, I bid on all the Virgin Mary statues full of heroin. No, none of my $500 bids were enough to win one. I'm pretty sure they went for about $2,000 but I could be wrong.
Mr. Eko's Nigerian passport, machete, Oceanic boarding pass, cross necklace, photo of his brother, and bible with the rest of the Orientation video hidden inside. I bid $750 for this lot and it sold for about $4,000 - so close!
Have you seen this milk carton? Just kidding, I saw it just this morning! I also bid nearly $500 for it but it sold for over $1,000. I just wanted to own something of Walt's. And this wasn't even his! Ugh!
Sure, the backgammon board sold for a cool $7,000 (or was it $9,000? I don't remember) but the knife hasn't been sold yet. Ironically, that's the best Locke knife to own! And the others have all sold for about $2,000 each. Even the one without a tip! By now you might have noticed Dogen's baseball up there in the top left corner of this picture Won't somebody please think about Dogen's baseball!? Minimum bid. If it goes for more than $200 I'll shoot myself in the face.
"Zee Goggles! Zay Do Nahhssing!" So spoketh Rainier Wolfcastle, who was NOT a character on LOST. These goggles were worn by Carl (or was it Karl?) when he was being brainwashed in the mysterious "Room 23". I'm going to bid on the chair from Room 23. I think I can win it for $500. Just kidding. It'll sell for $3,000.
This item is called "Rousseau's Distressed Music Box," which is a polite way of saying it doesn't work. Happy bidding, bidders! This item sold for a little under $2,000 I think. If it actually worked it might be worth double. Just kidding, it was obviously overvalued by the buyer. Like every other item in this auction save for maybe three exceptions.
See, owning all of Rousseau's maps would actually be cool, because there are a lot of them and they would look great framed. You could hang one in every room of your house. A really nice guy from Omaha that I met realized this and bid $7,500 on them. He lost, of course, to someone on the Internet who bid $9,000. I wonder if the online bidder realized that NONE OF THE PENCILS ARE EVEN SHARPENED!
Costume Break! Let's waste an hour or two auctioning this shit off. The creepiest part is when girl cast members' clothes were auctioned. You know some freak in his mom's basement was the one to pay over a grand for Sun's bikini. ::Shudder::
Here's the embarrassingly "prop-looking" hatch door that sold for several thousands of dollars. It's not the one that sold for $16,000 -- but it sold for a lot. The winning bidder was from the Internet. I hope he or she isn't totally crushed when they realize it's a piece of shit that looks super-fake.
This is the fake Rolex Jin was supposed to deliver to America. Don't let the word "Fake" fool you, this thing -- with some fancy Paik letter included -- sold for $1,900. Yikes.
Like I said earlier, Locke's knives were fetching big bucks all day. This one hasn't been sold yet, but you can guarantee it's going to approach $5,000. Having wasted so many hours watching these auctions, I can now predict (within a few hundred dollars) what everything will sell for. No, this will not stop me from bidding $500 on it. What can I say, I like the hurt that comes from losing out on buying something cool.
There's the $7,000 backgammon board. Or you can go down to your local Toys R Us and pick one up for ten or twenty dollars. It's up to you, I suppose. I just hope the winning bidder has a small child or dog that could eat one of the tiny pieces, destroying the value of the item. Then again, maybe I'm just bitter.
Locke's Compass has not been put up for bidding yet. It's actually one of the more desirable items in the auction because it was actually referenced and featured in an episode of LOST. This, of course, stands in contrast to shit like Shannon's hairbrush and word search, which were never really seen on the show and still sold for $750.
None of these DHARMA Initiative beer cans are sealed, but that won't stop someone from paying way too much money for them. Meanwhile, after the LOST auction I'll be selling snake oil in the Santa Monica Airport Long-Term parking lot if anyone is interested.
Hey look, it's "Walt's Spanish Comic Book!" Or, maybe that's "Hurley's Spanish Comic Book" but they put the wrong identifying label with it. Even though they are the exact same item, one of these sold for $3250 and the other sold for $1400. THEY'RE THE SAME EXACT THING!
Oh God, this is the best thing ever. Sawyer's Note. Sawyer's Letter. Whatever you want to call it. Right before the auction we watched a behind the scenes video of Evangeline Lilly telling the story about how she stole the original letter from the set. Then -- guess what? -- it burned down in a house fire! Meanwhile, this totally unoriginal Sawyer's Letter sold for close to $10,000. And that's not even the best part...
...It's not even hand-printed! That's computer print on the letter. It's not even a man-made prop, unless you consider putting a piece of notebook paper into a computer printer and having it spit out fake cursive writing "man made." Whoever purchased this totally overpaid. Oh, another thing from that behind the scenes video: everyone interviewed joked about how many copies of the letter there were. Nice investment!
Estimated value of John Locke's suicide note: $400-600. I don't think so. I think it's going for several thousand dollars. Of course, whoever buys it will have to deal with the fact that...
...Locke spelled Jack Shephard's name wrong on the envelope! D'oh! Hey, it's not his fault. They were only on an island in the middle of nowhere together. You can't expect people to learn each others names in such a finite amount of time. Especially when they're constantly bickering about whether or not they really want to get off the island, and oh wait there's all this mystical crazy shit happening around us and meanwhile we were traveling through time and now maybe I'm dead and maybe I'm not so I'm sorry I never learned to spell your name!
I predicted this would sell for $5,000 and it sold for $5,500. Not bad, right? I tried to open the bidding at $200 but someone online jumped immediately to over $1,000. That's another cool item which is actually relevant to the plot of the show. I don't know if it's worth that much, but it's definitely worth something.
Feast your eyes on Hurley's winning balls! That's how he won all that money! Also they're the numbers! Beneath the balls you can see a perfectly functional "Connect Four" game. You could go out and buy one for ten bucks. Or, you can bid on this one -- which someone actually did -- and have it for $700. Don't shop smart! Be impulsive! It's the American way!
My father's most-wanted item in the auction was a signed script by Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof for "The End," or the signed script by JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof for "The Pilot". The "Pilot" script was sold during the season one bidding. I was authorized to bid up to $450 for it. It sold for $15,000. I guess the winning bidder didn't mind the fact that it's just a shooting script (of which there are dozens), I'll just find one to download on the Internet. I wonder how much the finale script will sell for...stay tuned! I might just snag it for $450!
At the moment, we’re awaiting the start of Lot 450, Naomi’s canvas parachute rig with flashlight/beacon and ripped nylon parachute…
…It sold for $800. This is too much fun. Stay tuned for more amazing bidding action, to be reported on tomorrow!
