Collectibles

Records galore fell at Heritage Auctions' Greg Jein Collection sale of science fiction memorabilia last weekend, with the auction grossing US$13.6 million to become the second-highest grossing Hollywood auction in history.

"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" is an adage and internet meme that was first published by The New Yorker on July 5, 1993, capturing the essence of internet anonymity … and now the original artwork is for sale.

Greg Jein worked on many of the great sci-fi movie/TV shows as well as assembling a massive collection of movie props from every iteration of "Star Wars" and "Star Trek", plus "2001: A Space Odyssey", "Battlestar Gallactica", "Lost in Space", and many more.

This poster was created to promote the Lumière brothers' first screenings at the Grand Café in Paris in 1896. It is one of a handful (perhaps less) that survive and it represents the beginning of one of the most important cultural, artistic and social phenomena in history.

We believe a book going to auction this week is a rare opportunity for collectors who appreciate significant scientific achievement. The hardcover copy of "Atomic Energy in the Coming Era" (1949) is signed by a "who's who" of 20th Century physics.

A rare and large Pteranodon skeleton sold at a Sotheby's auction in New York this evening for US$3,932,000, moving into the top five most valuable fossils of all-time: behind only Tyrannosaurus Rex, Velociraptor, Triceratops and Gorgosaurus.

It is less than 150 years since photography went mainstream. Prior to that, human illustration was all we had. This story is about a collection of the very finest and most important examples of printed human illustration.

One of Leica's 250 GG "Reporter" cameras fitted with a "Leica-Motor MOOEV,” the world’s first 35mm camera motor drive unit, has gone within a whisker of becoming the 14th camera to ever sell for more than US$1 million.

The fledgling Schuppan supercar company produced just a handful of lightning-quick, $1.5 million road cars before the company was forced to liquidate in 1994 when the Japanese asset price bubble burst. Now one of those six rare beasts is on the market.

The original and sole remaining Blastech DL-44 Blaster used by Han Solo (Harrison Ford) in the first 1977 Star Wars movie (Star Wars: A New Hope) has sold for a record US$1,057,500 at Rock Island Auctions.

At the "Buzz Aldrin: American Icon" auction yesterday, Sotheby’s sold the jacket worn to the moon by Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin yesterday for $2,772,500, smashing all sorts of auction records in the process.

On July 16, an extremely rare and historically important thermometer made by Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, inventor of the mercury thermometer and the temperature scale that bears his name, sold for just US$93,750.