The Propstore Story
Surrounded by iconic costumes, Stephen Lane displays an Industrial Light & Magic X-wing filming miniature from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. Images courtesy of Propstore.
In conversation with Stephen Lane, Founder and CEO of Propstore
Founded in 1998, Propstore is a trusted vendor and leading authority of entertainment memorabilia. Archaeologists of their field, the Propstore team has located, researched and preserved a remarkable collection of production used props and costumes. In advance of the latest entertainment memorabilia live auction in London, Film Review chats with Stephen Lane about the journey that began Propstore.
Film Review (FR): One distinguishing element about Propstore is that you began as a collector yourself and have helped establish archival standards for movie memorabilia. How did it all begin and what was your first film treasure?
Stephen Lane (SL): The gateway for me to props was vintage and collectible toys. I started revisiting my youth by trying to track down all the old Star Wars toys that I’d thrown away or played too heavily with. I was only aged about 20 or 21 when I was going around flea markets and putting adverts in newspapers to go and hunt things down directly. That led to having too many toys and going to toy fairs to resell some of the doubles and triples that I had. That really, in turn, introduced me to film props. Back when I started collecting in the early ‘90s, there was obviously no internet. There was no one-stop-shop to be able to acquire any of these items. I started seeing a few props and costumes around at these conventions. That was cool, but I didn’t really understand what it was. I didn’t know where you’d get this stuff from. Then I picked up a Star Wars Rebel blaster. It was the first major purchase for me. In the early ‘90s, I paid the princely sum of about £500 for it, which was a lot of money back then, considering I was trading in toys that were worth £10 or £15. Once I acquired it, I tracked down the company who made them for film, which was Bapty. I went to see a lovely guy called Richard Hooper, who was one of the armourers on the Star Wars films and was at that time running Bapty. I took it in to have it authenticated, but I also wanted some restoration done, because the prior owner had used it for fancy dress and stuck all these diodes and electrodes all over it. I took it in wrapped up in a tea towel, held it out to him and said, ‘Do you think this is real?’ That sort of thing and he was like, ‘Yeah, no absolutely, this is one of ours.’ He talked me through how they made it and the reason why he thought that it was genuine. There were no problems at all restoring it. Then he asked me if I wanted to have a tour of the facility. That was really the lightbulb moment, because as we walked around their storage facility, he was showing me Aliens pulse rifles and swords from Flash Gordon and shields from Clash of the Titans, all these incredible things. Lots of other Star Wars things as well. I was thinking, ‘Why does it work like this? Why is this stuff here and not with the film company in America or wherever it should have ended up?’ He took the time to explain to me that a lot of these things during that era were made to hire. They would make these props and weapons for a film, hire them out and then get them back. They would repaint them, redress them, and hire them out on another production. If they sat on a shelf too long and nobody was hiring them, they’d throw them away. I was just astonished this was the case. That set me on a journey to start knocking on doors with other rental houses, costume houses, prop houses, and special effects guys. It was a really rich era of discovery, because nobody had gone before me to do this. Actually, most people I was speaking to in the industry thought I was absolutely potty. To them it was just a throwaway item, it was a by-product of the filmmaking process and had no intrinsic value. Of course, that’s all changed today. That was the genesis of it all. That’s where it all started.
(FR): As you began connecting with people in the industry and finding these materials, is that how you built the relationships for acquisitions and started Propstore?
(SL): Yeah, absolutely. The term in business is the ‘first mover’. Because I was the first mover within this industry, as well as an extension of the hobby, I was meeting all these guys who were fascinated by what I was doing. They’re very creative people and they loved the idea of these things being preserved, rather than thrown away. They liked the idea that they could make a bit more money as well. It was a commercial decision for them too. I have become lifelong friends with a huge number of crew members, a lot of them now very senior crew members. Like any business, it was born out of relationships. We’ve always been about client service, from a collector’s perspective, but also a supplier’s perspective. I’ve always made sure that there’s been that degree of transparency with people who consign to us, who sell through us, about exactly where this is going and what this is worth. That also has born fruit, because people trust me and trust the company and trust the brand. We’ve gleaned a huge amount of knowledge and experience from that as well, because we have been handling things for nearly 30 years. We’re very familiar with the materials that were used to construct these things. The paints, the finishes, the raw materials, the way that they’re constructed and put together. Propstore has also become the gold standard for authentication of these artefacts at the same time and that also builds confidence with collectors.
(FR): Speaking of authentication and preservation, does Propstore oversee or recommend restoration? For instance, if an an item isn’t stable?
(SL): We’re very, very careful when it comes to restoration. There’s always a very in-depth discussion around what steps should be taken at any given time with any of the materials that we’re handling. First of all, a lot of the content that comes to us these days is consigned by other people who own those items. When it comes into us, we’re acting as an advisory service, and we can say, ‘Look, this needs to be done to stabilise this or preserve this. It’s going to cost X to do it. Are you happy for us to have that work undertaken on your behalf? We think it’s likely to elevate its value for you when we auction it.’ So there’s definitely a discussion around that. A good case study for this particular auction is the 2001: A Space Odyssey Discovery Pod, the art department maquette. That miniature was an incredible thing to find some 50 years after production, and there it was sitting on the fridge freezer in the kitchen of the sound engineer who worked on the film. Imagine what the top of your fridge freezer looks like when you haven’t been up there and dusted it for a few years; it gets a little bit thick with dust. This had some layers of dust and grease and dust and grease. It had this sort of brown/orange hue to it. You couldn’t see much of the detail. So we had that very carefully cotton bud cleaned, literally wiping away all the layers of dirt and dust with a cotton bud. That brought it back to life and took it right back to how it looked soon after it had come off the film. It also allowed us to discover that there were a lot of pencil drawings and markings on this pod that had been hand drawn to show what the filming was going to be on the miniature and on the full-sized pod as well. That was a wonderful revelation for everybody. We also had a stand built for that, because the underside of that miniature is actually really important, as it shows the thruster jet. The miniature was hand carved out of wood—that’s the way it was done back then to produce a sample like this. The thruster is hand carved out of wood as well, so we built a stand for it that elevates it off the surface and has a mirror underneath. As you look down onto the pod, it reflects back up, so you get to see the underside at the same time. That’s a good example of where we’re going to advise somebody that this is something that should be done. There are other materials that we work with like foam latex, foam rubbers, that sometimes might require some attention. We have a specialist here in the UK that we use and also there’s another guy in New York that we use from time to time as well. We use a textile conservation/restoration specialist who worked for the V&A museum, they’ve undertaken some cleaning of garments and supporting of delicate fabrics, so we’ve done that historically. We have a whole fleet of different individuals who have these phenomenal skill sets.
Stephen with the Discovery Pod concept model from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
(FR): You’ve seen and interacted with so many memorable and iconic pieces of film history. I imagine you hear a lot of ‘wows’ when people see items from Propstore. Is there a prop or costume still out in the wild that would ‘wow’ you? Or one that you wish was still around?
(SL): Oh gosh, I think I get ‘wowed’ all the time, to be honest. I don’t mean that in a blasé manner—I’m still a hugely passionate collector and I love working with these materials. For me, the most exciting artefact is the one that I haven’t yet discovered. That I didn’t even know existed. Getting a lead, getting a whiff of information from somewhere, somebody mentioning that they might know where something is that people thought lost forever. This doesn’t happen in every auction, but we have a couple of good examples in the current auction, the 2001 pod is one, but the other one is the Roy Batty/Rutger Hauer trench coat from Blade Runner. That was gifted at the end of filming by production to a charity auction. A gentleman bought that at the charity auction some 40 years ago. He sadly passed away a number of years ago, but it’s remained with the family, hanging in a closet. All of that time, never on display, but they knew what it was and they knew that it was there. They saw me on TV when I was promoting last year’s auction and phoned in saying, ‘We’ve got Roy Batty’s trench coat from Blade Runner.’ Your initial response is, ‘Really? Have you?’, because nobody knew that still existed and thought it was long since lost. When we picked it up from them and started to look at it, it was absolutely apparent that this is almost certainly the only one made for filming. It screen-matches, it photo-matches, the construction in it is phenomenal. We teased a couple of images online as we launched the marketing campaign for the current auction. The fans went absolutely nuts about it. One of the things they were most interested in is the back of the costume, because the back of the costume is never seen on screen. Nobody had made a replica of this thing, because nobody had seen what it looked like. I think that element of it for me is just hugely exciting. As I said, it’s not like this happens all the time, but I’m just constantly in awe of what has survived and why it survived. The stories behind it are just as much fun as the artefact itself sometimes.
(FR): And to think about what else might still be out there, hanging in a closet somewhere that we don’t know about!
(SL): Exactly, that’s exactly right. I’m a major Star Wars fan myself and I love the hardware. A droid, something like IG-88, where is that today? Nobody knows, it’s not in the Lucasfilm archive. Was it dismantled and then just used as set dressing in other shots later in the films? Was it thrown away? Possibly, probably. Does somebody have it in their loft? Maybe. It could just be out there somewhere. The pinnacle for me in most instances would be uncovering an unknown or unfound Star Wars item. That’s super exciting for me.
(FR): Are you surprised how much the industry has grown in recent years? Are there items that have surprised you with their selling price?
(SL): The business continues to grow and evolve, and so does the hobby around that. For any commodity, if we classified it as that for a second, to appreciate in value, there needs to be a degree of activity within the market. I love the fact that there are a handful of other people out there doing this today. Previously, there was really nobody else doing this when I started Propstore. Especially as their sole business—there wasn’t anybody else in the world. I think that it’s got to the point now where there is an understanding on a much grander scale that these items are culturally and historically significant. That they should be preserved. That they are interesting. That they are akin to an art form. That’s brought in a lot of new collectors and a lot of new money to the hobby. We’re seeing not just hardcore film fans and passionate collectors buy these things now, they’re also being bought by archives, museums, exhibitions, and investors. Even directors and producers are buying back material that appeals to them, sometimes from their own films. There’s such depth and breadth now to the fan base. We’re dealing with such a limited commodity. A Rutgar Hauer coat. That’s almost certainly it. It’s not like, if you want another one of these, you can just wait a couple of years and you’ll get another one. I think there’s a realisation of that with people, of just how limited some of this rare material is. That’s why we’ve seen this huge appreciation of value over the last 10-15 years.
(FR): What are the days like leading up to a Propstore auction?
(SL): We have the same sort of organised chaos, to an extent, in every last few days before a big auction. We send out the message for people to register with plenty of time to go through the registration process, which is reasonably straightforward, but if you haven’t been with us before, you have to provide ID and things like that. No matter how often we send that message out, or promote that message through our social media channels, you still get a consolidated and concentrated rush of people that realise that they aren’t ready to bid. Also we have people who are ready to bid, but at the last minute they’re sending in lists of absentee bids, or they want to set up for phone bidding with one of the phone clerks. It’s a lot to navigate through, but it’s also one of the most exciting parts of it. Once you’re in that final straight, everything is there and locked in place. We’ve done everything we can to promote and make sure everybody is aware of what we’re doing. Some of it’s in the hands of the gods.
(FR): Is there still a lot of anticipation leading up to auction day?
(SL): Absolutely, I think there’s a huge amount of anticipation because even though we’re very firmly tracking all of the metrics and comparing those to prior auctions—how many people have bid, how many people have registered, the views and things like that—you still don’t know who’s actually going to show up on the day. You still don’t know what’s going to sell and what might just sit there. One of the things we’re quite proud of, is the fact that we have such a strong success rate. Our auctions time after time close out in the mid-to-high 80% sold for each auction. That’s a very, very strong number, especially when you’re talking about auctions that comprise of 1,000-1,500 lots. That’s a lot of material for the market to bear at any given time. I love it, it gets the hairs on the back of your neck tingling.
(FR): What advice would you give someone new to the hobby? Say they’ve just discovered you.
(SL): Buy with your heart. That’s the most important thing. A lot of people I know have made a lot of money over the last few years buying and reselling, but I think if you’re just coming into the hobby, you want to think about what it is that excites you and interests you. Maybe it’s a film title, or a genre, or a particular actor. It might be that you’re into horror and therefore you want to try to refine what it is that you want to find from the world of horror. Then set yourself a budget and be considerate of your limitations. Spend some time really looking to see what it is that you can afford, that really does interest you, and buy with your heart, because ultimately you want to love it. You want to enjoy it and cherish it. If it does appreciate in value over the time that you own it, then that’s a bonus. It is like buying a piece of art or an antiquity. It should be all about your connection to the particular piece. A lot of collectors do buy out of a nostalgic connection. A lot of people who are my age, I’m into my early 50s, are buying from films that they saw in their childhood because they want to revisit that connection and that experience. But have fun! That’s also a really big part of it. There are some great forums out there and Facebook pages that you can join to understand more deeply about the hobby. Propstore has a bunch of really informative blogs as well, which really help you understand more about collecting these items. And take your time. Don’t feel pressured to make a decision. There’s a lot of material out there now, even though your holy grail might only come around every 10 years. If you’re patient, you’ll find the thing that you really love.
(FR): I think one of my favourite things is poring over the catalogue for an upcoming Propstore auction. In addition to looking through all the fantastic lots, everyone can bid and watch the auction live online from 3-6 November on https://propstore.com/.
(SL): If you’re in London, please come along. It’s a live auction that’s taking place at BAFTA 195 Piccadilly. It’s going to be a really fun four days and the best of luck to anybody who decides to join us and bid!
STEPHEN LANE is the CEO and Founder of Propstore, having established the business in 1998. For nearly three decades Stephen has been a central figure in entertainment memorabilia and has been a key driver in the transformation of the space from a cottage industry to a mainstream collectibles field with global participation. He is today recognized as one of the world’s foremost entertainment memorabilia experts and has a vast personal network of global industry contacts. During his career Stephen has unearthed some of the greatest film and television treasures known to exist and has established relationships for Propstore with key partners and suppliers throughout the production and entertainment industry. He continues to have a direct role in sourcing top content for Propstore, and regularly acts as the face of the business speaking to mainstream outlets across all media and continues to champion the field and grow global awareness. Stephen oversees all of Propstore’s activities in the UK and US and is based in London.
Learn more about Propstore and register for the upcoming auction at: https://propstore.com
CHAD KENNERK
