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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Real History

As founder and chief executive of Profiles in History, Joe Maddalena oversees an operation that is part museum and part coolest garage sale on the planet. The Calabasas auction house sells historic documents – such as letters, manuscripts and autographs – to private collectors. And twice a year, it sells photos, costumes, props and other Hollywood artifacts from the 1920s to the present day. The December auction raised nearly $4 million. Maddalena’s story is as colorful and interesting as the items he sells. He caught the collecting bug from his parents who bought and sold antiques in New England. At 12 years old, Maddalena staged the first-ever baseball card show in Rhode Island and claims to have amassed 1 million cards while still a teenager. He moved to California to attend Pepperdine University with an eye toward a broadcasting career. But the interest in collecting and selling items of historical and cultural value never waned, and Maddalena started his business in 1995. Since that time, the auction house has become the go-to place for selling Hollywood memorabilia acquired from private collectors and movie industry professionals. Maddalena even brought his expertise to the small screen with two seasons of the SyFy reality series “Hollywood Treasure.” We interviewed Maddalena in his office filled with items from his personal collection, including Twiki, the sidekick robot from the movie “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.” Question: What do you enjoy most about running your own company? Answer: Finding stuff. Every day you never know what the phone calls are going to bring. When I think I’ve seen it all, something new comes along. That’s the fun part of it. We are going to San Diego to pick up this opera collection. It is a little esoteric but it’s cool. We’ll have 13,000 signed photos and letters from the 18th century to the present of every great opera singer and composer. Those archives keep me interested. What is the appeal of the items? We’re a society of collectors and consumers. Why does Munch’s “The Scream” sell for $120 million? There is no reason other than there are people out there who have determined there’s a value equated with that item. It is no different than a piece of real estate. I think collecting is very sentimental and nostalgic. We want to own things that are part of our nostalgic society. We are a reflective society. That is why we collect things. Is that why you collect things? Sure, it is all about nostalgia. When I grew up I liked watching “Lost in Space” more than I did “Star Trek.” I’m a Will Robinson, Dr. Smith, the Robot fan. As an adult now I would want to own something from “Lost in Space” because it has that childhood connection. What do you own from “Lost in Space”? I have a few tunics worn by Professor Robinson and Billy Mumy (who played Will Robinson). It’s mostly costume pieces. What are some of your personal favorite items that you have collected over the years? I collect a lot of illustration and comic book art. I still have a great love of comic books and illustrators like Jack Kirby, Bernie Wrightson, (Frank) Frazetta. It’s my childhood. I love baseball so you’ll see Mickey Mantle on the wall. It’s really a collection of my life. Is there an artifact out there that is a must-get for you? There are a couple of things. There could be another pair of ruby slippers (from “The Wizard of Oz”) yet to be discovered. “Metropolis” is probably the most significant science fiction film ever made. It started the whole genre of science fiction. The robot is Maria in the movie. That robot could exist. In the movie she burns in a fire but there’s always more than one costume. It’s possible that robot would be worth a fortune. There could be another Maltese Falcon (statuette) a Rosebud sled (from “Citizen Kane”) – all these things could exist. You must hear some fascinating stories from the people selling their material. Every single day. Either they inherited it, or they made it or they worked on it. We worked with Joanna Cassidy, who was in “Blade Runner” on selling her collection. It is amazing to meet the people. They come in and tell the stories of why they saved things. Your parents were antique dealers back East. What did you learn from them about buying and selling? Their business model was Monday through Friday they would buy, and only sell on Sunday. It was hard as a kid to understand, because they always bought, bought, bought, bought. They would travel throughout New England and buy from other antique dealers, and on Sunday they would set up at antique shows and sell. It took a while for me to understand that business model. What were the first items you collected? Growing up in that world I didn’t have a lot of interest in furniture and rugs and porcelain and china. I started collecting things that were kid-centric – baseball cards and comic books. Being in that world I realized there was a hierarchy of value and I was fascinated by that. I was so curious. … Why is this comic book, that I think is worth $10, why does this guy have it for $200? I was on a quest for information and knowledge. How did you find out that information? Networking. Like anything else, immersing yourself in that world and meeting other dealers, meeting other collectors, going to shows, making it your life. Did you really have a million baseball cards as a child? Yes. It was unbelievable. Do you still have any of them? I don’t know how many I have left but I still have quite a few baseball cards and quite a few comic books. They occupy a lot of room in storage. How did you go about amassing that collection? This was the era when growing up on the East Coast my dad would buy close outs. He’d get a phone call and they’d say we are closing out this facility and there could be 50 cases or 100 cases of baseball cards. He’d buy everything and keep (the cards) for me and sell everything else. There was a lot of new-used store stock. After Christmas a company would want to get rid of all their stuff that didn’t sell so they would off it for cheap, especially the comic books. They would discount them to 2 or 3 cents. He started buying them for me and I accumulated a massive amount of stuff. What was your room like growing up? My room at my house was packed. We obviously had storage facilities and had basements on the East Coast packed with stuff. When you were 12 years old, you did your first baseball card show. How did that come about? I had gone to one in Pennsylvania with my dad and I came home and I’m like, how hard can this be? You can get 150 (dealers) at $10 apiece; you can charge $2 or $3 to get (collectors) in the door. So you could make $600 or $700. So I went to the American Legion Post in Providence…and asked how much to rent the hall. They had to call my parents and my parents came down and asked, ‘What are you doing?’ Once I went through the math with them and they were convinced I had some plan, they were like, “OK, try it.” Are your parents still active with buying and selling antiques? My mom is 91 and still buys and sells glassware and pottery items on Ebay. My dad has passed away. I understand your original career aspiration was to be a broadcaster. Why the interest in that? I had an interest in Hollywood. There is a fascination when growing up on the East Coast, loving movies and all those things. Why didn’t you follow a career in broadcasting? I came out to California, got out of college (Pepperdine University) and realized that being an intern at one of the networks and making $1,200 a month wasn’t going to work. Economically it didn’t make any sense. I wanted to stay so I had to figure something out quickly. I was like what can I do with my skill set that my college skill set didn’t train me for. So that led to getting back into the collecting world? At that time in Hollywood there was a lot of old bookstores. There was the Red Barn, Heritage, Cherokee Bookstore and Eclectic Bookstore. I realized I could go to these bookstores and buy letters, books and manuscripts that were only available on the West Coast that collectors in New York and New England were feverishly looking for. I started buying and selling letters so I could make enough money to stay here. Somebody said to me, “You’re good at this; you should do this as a job.” I was not sure there was a business model. I kept doing it. I had one client, 10 clients, 20 clients. Then I had 100 collectors or dealers looking for X, Y and Z. You could make 20 percent just by flipping the material. How did you get into doing auctions? As a young kid, I was fascinated that somebody like Dashiell Hammett who wrote the novel “The Maltese Falcon” didn’t write the screenplay. I became fascinated by what happened. So I started buying scripts and buying things related to literature made into film. By 1996, I had a significant collection. At that time, I was in Beverly Hills and people would come into the office to buy their (literary) manuscripts and documents and would see (my Hollywood items) and were fascinated by them. I realized there was another business here because there seems to be a connection between my clients in this (historical document) world likes stuff in (the entertainment) world. So I slowly started having these auctions. Back then if an auction did $200,000 that was hugely successful. So where do you get the items that you sell? There are two sources for material. For the historical documents, I’ve sold so much material that a lot of it comes back from people that I sold it to 20 years ago. It is how you make a living; things get resold. I’ve sold some things five or six times over the years. How do you know it’s authentic? With historical documents, most letters are published. If you buy a Thomas Jefferson letter, the University of Virginia has records of almost every letter Jefferson ever wrote or published. It is easy to go back to the archive and verify it. It is a straightforward process. And the Hollywood material? We are selling things coming straight from the studios, like the “Captain America: The First Avenger” auction (in April.) They come right out of Marvel’s archives. A lot of these pieces come from filmmakers who made them, or directors or writers or producers. Actors come in and say “I wore this jacket in this movie.’ You learn that most costumes were made by Western Costume Co. (in North Hollywood). You become familiar with their labeling process and their construction. Considering you have been doing sales since you were young, has your approach changed over the years? The Internet changed everything. When I started in business there was no fax machine; the Internet did not exist in its present state; FedEx just probably was coming on to the scene; overnight was not that prevalent yet. So you did things the old fashioned way. You had to take photographs and mail them. There were time delays. Who were the buyers back then? You could only reach a regional clientele. What’s changed dramatically is technology. You can market this internationally. That is the big difference in that our client base has changed from U.S. based to a worldwide clientele. In a couple of keystrokes you can market to China, to England, to the world. Are there areas outside the U.S. where you get more customers than others? If you start with the Hollywood stuff, there are fans of that material all over the world. I tell people if you take a movie like “The Terminator” everybody knows that character. These film characters are cultural icons. Marilyn Monroe is known on every inch of the globe. That product has a wide appeal everywhere. When it comes to historical documents, if it is American history it is collected here. We deal a lot with European history so the collectors are all over the world but not as wide as the Hollywood stuff. Often pieces at your auctions go for hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. How can a devotee of literature or Hollywood with a regular income collect anything decent? I tell people the six-figure and seven-figure things get the headlines but it is very affordable. Even the historical documents when compared to art are really cheap (as low as $5,000). Go to Melrose and hit some of these art galleries – $20,000, $30,000 or $50,000 for something that was painted six months ago.

Mark Madler
Mark Madler
Mark R. Madler covers aviation & aerospace, manufacturing, technology, automotive & transportation, media & entertainment and the Antelope Valley. He joined the company in February 2006. Madler previously worked as a reporter for the Burbank Leader. Before that, he was a reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago and several daily newspapers in the suburban Chicago area. He has a bachelor’s of science degree in journalism from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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