primetimepawich
Verified Trader ,
Hi-ho, Joe Pawich here. Apologies if this is the wrong place for this, but Al's recent Swedish Chef-themed S+T thread had me inspired and I thought this could be an opportunity to learn more about my fellow members.
You know who I collect in hockey, and anyone who knew me growing up wouldn't be surprised that I collect cards. I'm a sentimental person who's all about the nostalgia. This is reflected in my favorite movies, TV shows and music, and paying tribute to hockey players I used to root for by collecting cardboard images of them was a natural progression.
I was the worst combination - a packrat who collected everything. Keychains, badges, GI Joes...you name it. While others around me grew out of these same hobbies, with the invention of Ebay, the card thing only became worse for me...to the point where I now boast an 800+ Larry Murphy card collection. I've left most of those other hobbies behind and at this late hour am finally trying to take control and rein in my card purchases, but as you've seen, I'm still making some of those within reason. And there is one other non-sport collection I have from the last couple of years that is meaningful to me.
Like many, the Muppets had a big impact on my formative years, and they still hold a place in my heart to this day. When Jason Segel’s movie “The Muppets” brought them back to prominence in 2011, I was thrilled. A part of me wondered if I could ever own a screen-used piece of that or any other Muppet production, but it seemed a dream beyond my grasp. Would that kind of stuff even make it to market and come available to the general public?
Ebay is my go-to place for hockey cards or seemingly any other random item I desire. On a whim, in 2013 I decided to run a search there for Muppet props. As luck would have it, I came across a number of listings from a California-based seller who was selling what they claimed were prop photos from the 2011 movie. No COAs, no provenance, just their word that they came from a friend who had purchased and flipped him some boxes from a California auction. I tried to photo-match them to framed photos seen in the movie, and at least some seemed to check out.
By the time I found the listings, many of them had ended, but I managed to grab a framed photo of Miss Piggy and Harry Belafonte that appeared to match one seen in Piggy’s dressing room in the movie. I had settled on that one due to Belafonte’s strong connection to the Muppets, and asked the seller if they had any others that they hadn’t listed. They assured me they did and would be listing them soon, but that never happened.
Not one to be deterred, I checked in with the seller periodically over the next 2 years to see if they’d taken inventory of what they had left, but each time I asked, they hadn’t. Finally, my persistence paid off when late last November, my inquiry was met with confirmation that they had a full box left that they would love to sell. I didn’t think I could afford everything they had, but was curious to see it and figured I could cherry-pick a few items at the very least. They spread everything they had out on their floor, took some pictures and sent them to me. And when they quoted me a price on the lot, even with expensive shipping to Canada and the weak Canadian dollar, I couldn’t resist and had to grab the whole lot as an early Christmas present to myself. And when I received the box, their pictures hadn’t done everything justice and I felt like a kid again going through it all.
I scanned everything I could, took pictures of what I couldn’t. and tried to organize them in a Flickr album. To coincide with the movie’s release, Disney had set recreations of both Kermit’s office and Piggy’s dressing room on display at the El Capitan Theater featuring screen-used props from the movie. Where possible, I tried to include photos from those displays and the movie itself in an effort to photo-match my items. One item in particular, a letter to Kermit, can 100% be matched to the El Capitan display (and possibly the movie by proxy). Another, a framed TV Guide interview with Piggy, looks to be a match in both the display and movie due to distinctive wear on the bottom right corner of the frame. Others seem to match up, others not so much, but one thing’s for sure – it all came from the Disney art department, and I can’t imagine this stuff makes it to market very often. The seller’s supplier had told him he’d had another box of this stuff at the time, but never produced it. If that’s true, I can only wonder what kinds of treasures might have been in there and where it ultimately ended up.
Feel free to do your own detective work and let me know how you think I did. Some of my frames are a little worse for wear – you can tell they weren’t exactly “handled with care” when first put into storage, as they should’ve been. But for the most part, they held up ok, and I was beyond thrilled to get them out of storage where they weren’t being appreciated and bring them into MY fold where I may not have room to display them currently either but can at least catalogue them and share them with the world.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/41468449@N04/sets/72157661788003052/with/22881119183/
I would love to add more pieces of the puzzle and always have my ear to the ground hoping more of these will pop up, but a photo purchased earlier this year has been my first and only addition since I bought that lot in 2015.
Thanks for the look, and comments are always welcome. So how about it? What hobbies and collections do you all have that we don't know about and might be surprised to learn about?
Joe
You know who I collect in hockey, and anyone who knew me growing up wouldn't be surprised that I collect cards. I'm a sentimental person who's all about the nostalgia. This is reflected in my favorite movies, TV shows and music, and paying tribute to hockey players I used to root for by collecting cardboard images of them was a natural progression.
I was the worst combination - a packrat who collected everything. Keychains, badges, GI Joes...you name it. While others around me grew out of these same hobbies, with the invention of Ebay, the card thing only became worse for me...to the point where I now boast an 800+ Larry Murphy card collection. I've left most of those other hobbies behind and at this late hour am finally trying to take control and rein in my card purchases, but as you've seen, I'm still making some of those within reason. And there is one other non-sport collection I have from the last couple of years that is meaningful to me.
Like many, the Muppets had a big impact on my formative years, and they still hold a place in my heart to this day. When Jason Segel’s movie “The Muppets” brought them back to prominence in 2011, I was thrilled. A part of me wondered if I could ever own a screen-used piece of that or any other Muppet production, but it seemed a dream beyond my grasp. Would that kind of stuff even make it to market and come available to the general public?
Ebay is my go-to place for hockey cards or seemingly any other random item I desire. On a whim, in 2013 I decided to run a search there for Muppet props. As luck would have it, I came across a number of listings from a California-based seller who was selling what they claimed were prop photos from the 2011 movie. No COAs, no provenance, just their word that they came from a friend who had purchased and flipped him some boxes from a California auction. I tried to photo-match them to framed photos seen in the movie, and at least some seemed to check out.
By the time I found the listings, many of them had ended, but I managed to grab a framed photo of Miss Piggy and Harry Belafonte that appeared to match one seen in Piggy’s dressing room in the movie. I had settled on that one due to Belafonte’s strong connection to the Muppets, and asked the seller if they had any others that they hadn’t listed. They assured me they did and would be listing them soon, but that never happened.
Not one to be deterred, I checked in with the seller periodically over the next 2 years to see if they’d taken inventory of what they had left, but each time I asked, they hadn’t. Finally, my persistence paid off when late last November, my inquiry was met with confirmation that they had a full box left that they would love to sell. I didn’t think I could afford everything they had, but was curious to see it and figured I could cherry-pick a few items at the very least. They spread everything they had out on their floor, took some pictures and sent them to me. And when they quoted me a price on the lot, even with expensive shipping to Canada and the weak Canadian dollar, I couldn’t resist and had to grab the whole lot as an early Christmas present to myself. And when I received the box, their pictures hadn’t done everything justice and I felt like a kid again going through it all.
I scanned everything I could, took pictures of what I couldn’t. and tried to organize them in a Flickr album. To coincide with the movie’s release, Disney had set recreations of both Kermit’s office and Piggy’s dressing room on display at the El Capitan Theater featuring screen-used props from the movie. Where possible, I tried to include photos from those displays and the movie itself in an effort to photo-match my items. One item in particular, a letter to Kermit, can 100% be matched to the El Capitan display (and possibly the movie by proxy). Another, a framed TV Guide interview with Piggy, looks to be a match in both the display and movie due to distinctive wear on the bottom right corner of the frame. Others seem to match up, others not so much, but one thing’s for sure – it all came from the Disney art department, and I can’t imagine this stuff makes it to market very often. The seller’s supplier had told him he’d had another box of this stuff at the time, but never produced it. If that’s true, I can only wonder what kinds of treasures might have been in there and where it ultimately ended up.
Feel free to do your own detective work and let me know how you think I did. Some of my frames are a little worse for wear – you can tell they weren’t exactly “handled with care” when first put into storage, as they should’ve been. But for the most part, they held up ok, and I was beyond thrilled to get them out of storage where they weren’t being appreciated and bring them into MY fold where I may not have room to display them currently either but can at least catalogue them and share them with the world.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/41468449@N04/sets/72157661788003052/with/22881119183/
I would love to add more pieces of the puzzle and always have my ear to the ground hoping more of these will pop up, but a photo purchased earlier this year has been my first and only addition since I bought that lot in 2015.
Thanks for the look, and comments are always welcome. So how about it? What hobbies and collections do you all have that we don't know about and might be surprised to learn about?
Joe
