Antique movie prop seller expecting blind faith.

I saw an antique movie prop online that I'd love to have, but the person wants 4 figures for it and it has no COA.. It also has no studio markings or numbers on it.

How can you expect someone in today's world to take that chance?

 

All it takes is someone who would love to have it. If you have expectations and don't see those bells and whistles, you probably know more than most.

Even museums have fakes. They take the word of the donor and see no cause to investigate further.

 

Very true. I just can't take those kinds of chances

 

Champagne tastes and beer budgets.

 

Did you ask the seller about provenance?

Debora

 

Not everything has a COA... That's a secondary market middle-man thing. Studios/productions rarely label things or even track them. Even now, it has to be a big budget blockbuster for props to be inventoried and tagged (and that's for hero props mostly). You're more likely to see a tag in a costume, than on a prop.

Older props and set-related stuff was considered worthless by the studios in general. Disney had to re-buy a lot of the stuff that is now in their vaults. They gave away Mary Poppins bag in a contest. Studios sold stuff to rental houses, or disposed of it. Drew Struzan got told by a friend that his famous Adventures in Babysitting poster art was found face-to-face down in a puddle of water in a warehouse and they were going to throw it out. I had some friends who discovered the director chair backs for a very famous classic film used as stuffing filler in an unrelated prop.

The way that major prop auction houses go about things are to try and directly screen-match items and to look into provenance. Is the owner in the film industry, or aquired from a film house sale, etc. Is it made in a way that makes sense for a prop and the materials used at the time? Do we have records of that particular thing having been sold already?

 

All they are really doing is keeping it vague and saying "it was definitely used in Production during scene x". I'd love to believe all that you guys are saying re: no COA all of the time and other comments, but I'm not getting the reading from this person that they worked in the props dept. Either that, or they do/did, and don't want to lose their job. They are also located in GA, where I know "some" films are produced, but I don't think that this one was.

 

Well it sure would be helpful knowing what the item is?

 

I don't normally share out things until after I actually have them, but since I probably will not buy this, here it is:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1161131197...-a08b-1aa5f9b60051|iid:1|vlpname:vlp_homepage

I am a big fan of the movie.

 

Here's another that seems to be very similar (don't see what they're asking):
https://www.yourprops.com/Gladiator...movie-prop-weapon-Gladiator-2000-YP64519.html

It doesn't look like the kind of fantasy item that gets marketed after a movie has been released.

(When the Lord of the Rings was released, I thought about buying one of the hobbit swords that flooded the market afterwards... until I saw one in person. Very cheaply made. You could wear it down just looking at it.)

 

Yeah, the seller mentioned that similar ones are at propstore.com as well

 

I wonder what a real Roman sword would cost. You can bet the shape has been copied any number of times down through the centuries, as real weapons for various armies.

 

They got back to me this morning and indicated that they bought it from another collector. I think my quest will stop there

 

SOME! GA has filmed more movies than LA in certain years. It has more soundstages than NYC. It has tens of thousands of film crew in ATL alone.

Gladiator was filmed over seas, but the crew doesn't all live in Morocco...you fly people in. And they move. ATL has seen a major influx of film crew since idk 2016 or something. Plus flim crew like film props, so they buy and trade amongst themselves, or prop store. I've gotten things for shows I didn't work on, just because I knew people who did.

We work freelance. This guy isn't getting fired from a movie filmed in 2000. It's not a hero prop. These were probably gifted and sold loooong ago.

So, this looks legit to me at a baseline glance. This is not a hero prop, this is a foam sword used by the horde of background actors and stunties. They made hundreds, if not thousands of these. It's also slightly damaged, so possibly as old as the film and/or used.

You do have film fabricators that can make replicas that are the same as the screen used stuff. Afterall, they made the originals. They probably still have the molds. But since hundreds were made, and there's never any tracking or marking on this kind of prop, no one is going to know so long as it's crafted in the same way from same materials.

Best you can do is look at what prop store has, look at screen shots, and ask again how he specifically got this piece. Ask what kind of piece it is...screen used background prop? Replica from original molds? Etc.

And again, COAs are a gimmick to make buyers "feel better." Anybody can print a piece of paper. The only time they're useful is if they come from the original studio. Even auction appraisers could be fooled.

On prop background swords...I was once on a major tent pole blockbuster where the foam background swords were having to be repainted in-between set-up because the paint kept coming off the foam. Another set where we made idk 40 foam copies of one barely used hero prop. They are cheaply made, break easily, and are meant to be disposable. That's why they don't get any official tracking or authentication.

 

Frankly, anytime I see a COA, I'm immediately suspicious.
There's only one time that I invested in something that came with a (third-party) COA and that's because I had confidence in its authenticity even without the COA...and I actually threw away the COA when it arrived. (It was from some obscure long-defunct small outfit.)

 

Yeah they annoy me because it's never the actual studio, or maker, it's always someone that either makes a business off "authentication" or "preservation" for fees, or an auction house/reseller trying to make something look legit. And it may be! But the paper doesn't prove that. It's basically a receipt.

You'd have better provenance having a prop master's letter about the piece. But really, it's just not a thing. Most stuff I run into is sold on the strength that someone in the business had it and/or it matches a screenshot.