Re: What Do You Freaks Look Like ??????
lcummins said:
Hey Anton... great looking family! Are those cut signatures of Chaney, Lugosi and Karloff I see framed on the wall in that third picture? And if they are... where on earth did you get the Chaney? His signature is very, very rare!
Yes indeedy those are indeed the signatures of the BIG 4 great ones on the wall behind the Sideshow Pieces. They are not cut at all however, they are the entire page from the autograph albums on 3/4 of them and the Chaney Sr. does have a special story attached to it. The stories behind these is as follows:
1.) & 2.) Karloff and Lugosi: When I was 19 years old, an accquaintance of mine discovered I collected Movie Monster memorabilia. He approached me at a comic store that I used to manage/co-own. He then preceeded to brag/gloat as to how his grandfather had actually met Boris and Bela both in person in Cincinnati years ago at some plays they did, but the meetings were years apart from one another. He said his grandfather had their signatures in an autograph book(s),and one day he would bring them in and let me see them, as they were now his and worth "alot of dough". I thought he was full of hot air. I eventually did see them and was quite envious. About 8-10 years later: I am now working at a steel mill of all places and have lost contact with nearly everyone from the comic store days. I go to a Fantasy/Sci-fi/comic character convention and recognize someone at one of the dealers tables as none other than said individual...with the autographs for sale on his table. Knowing their history and their back story I immediately scooped them up. He had them madly over-priced with Lugosi marked at $700 and Karloff at $500, but I got the pair of them for a little over $750. Apparently he was going through a rather messy divorce and needed a little extra cash. Poor fellow.
3.) Lon Chaney Jr....let's just say "it takes money to go to college".
The first Lon Chaney Jr. I ever bought was a blatant outright forgery. It was pretty easy to tell after I had been doing this for awhile, but it was one of my first acquisitons from a "professional" autograph dealer/scammer. The money spent was well worth the lesson learned however. I later acquired a legitimate Lon Chaney Jr. in bright red fountain pen from a dealer with a string of letters registered after their name (UACC, IADA, Manuscript Society Member in great standing), who had a spotless, complaint free reputation and was even well spoken of by their fellow dealers. A rare thing to hear from the competition. The name of this company was/is "WALL OF FAME AUTOGRAPHS". Make no mistake though, he wasn't cheap. $350.
4.) Lon Chaney Sr. THE BIG BOY: My Lon Chaney Sr. Would not be acquired for nearly 5 years after the others. I would often see plenty of obvious fakes. Or I would see plenty of original/real deals...but they were well over $1,000.00 and I didn't want to sell a kidney to afford it. So I waited and waited. Finally I ran into registered UACC Dealer #42... " 3-D Autographs". Right up there with Wall of Fame and R&R Enterprises Auctions, he is my favorite. Because he is the real deal. He has a website hosted by Angelfire, just google him. Or if you would like his snail mail address I can supply it. He let's you pay in installments and his matting is outrageously exquisite as you will see if you visit his site. I wanted all of my signatures to have matching mattes and frames however, and so I took the Chaney Sr. from his matting ensemble. I then and my brother, who is an artist in archival matting and framing place all four of the great masters under matching velvet mattes and museum /archive glass. The Chaney Sr. is not on an album page...but on a social card, such as one would send over to a table at a fine restaraunt, the paper is so thick, it is almost cardboard like. It has a little yellowing around the corners of the card(matted out) and has a man and a woman illustration in the upper corner dancing and says "Social" at the top of the card as a header. It is in pencil, but it is fresh, crisp and totally authentic. It cost me $950.00, but it was worth every penny. Especially since he took three monthly installment to let me pay it off. Which enabled me to work Overtime to pay for it.
And that's the story. My room of monster goodies id filled with many other autographs. For more of my collection check me out at eternal collector's website. I have lots of Vincent Price and 3 items each signed Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee from having written to them, and a lot of obscure monster actors were obtained for me by Paul Parla, writer for scary monsters magazine and a super, super guy who has a knack for finding the most obscure actors on earth. He shouldv'e been a private investigator. I hope this was informative/enjoyable. Thanks!
