Recent content by JMSupp

No, you've got it all wrong... they are now a PART of Star Trek history... Their name will be a footnote in the Big Book of Scammers, Frauds, and Cheats... or at least, Memory Alpha. That is real immorality. I mean, Immortality.

On top of all that... doing it quietly! "One payday that would not actually set me up for life" is really the telling part. The risk of failure is high, and stakes are, frankly low. For the time and effort involved, the money doesn't really make sense. The prop auction biz has shown us that...

And if they have... how would we know? That is the scariest case. An 95% accurate reproduction that's a few decades old with a bit of damage from handling would be really hard differentiate from an original.

That all seems likely, though the descriptions and photographs are quite... lacking. I'd expect an item that is expected to sell for even a few hundred dollars to be better described. Looking at how many items failed to reach the low estimate is telling. Either the bidders didn't trust the...

That's... disturbing. If those items really are from Earl Hayes... and production made, I would have expected much more press, and much better prices. I mean, someone would have made out like a bandit buying these. Gray's Sports Almanac selling for $2,600? If real, I'd expect almost 10 times...

The emotional twists and turns this thread makes for good cardio, not gonna lie! I'm glad it's not currently damaged, the question is... when was it damaged? That's more for curiosity's sake than anything else, at this point.

That is... tragic. The fins on the back just being tossed on top is fortunate... they could have attempted to JB weld them into place. Was this photo taken at a preview? You forgot to mention the inaccurately reassembled communicator... Assuming the emitter is broken off, and not just shoved...

Just to be clear, if I owned a 2001 space suit, I'd have that helmet on in a second! Not sure that I'd do that on camera with something I'm trying to sell....

It's not always just theater. The antiquarian book community goes nuts on this one. For many reasons, gloves a discouraged for books, as they can catch and tear the pages, etc... but for other objects, especially metal ones, cotton gloves are almost a necessity. Anything made of steel or iron...

There are a bunch of different styles of these NASA Texas-Ware melamine plates. They look to be mid 1970s, and they are not particularly rare. They are readily available for $10-30 each. Hope that helps!

I'm on board with it being a reassembled Zeta, with a few issues. A lot of the wear details matchup to the photos on HeroComm (Glad its back up!). The replaced hubs are not ideal, but what can you do?

Ummmm.... Question. I thought Greg Jein owned the Epsilon and Zeta communicators. The one shown above doesn't really match either, it's closer to the Theta phaser, with the red jewel in the leftmost position. Is there an 11th phaser?

Just to echo everyone above, replacing the plug should have no appreciable effect on value. Ideally, replace it with a plug of the same vintage as the sign, or a similar style as the original.

Got it! It's unlikely to be stainless steel, plating was far cheaper. A lot of products from that were galvanized steel or nickel plated.

Once you've stripped it, why not just get it chrome plated? I imagine it won't cost too much more, considering the amount of time and effort spent in stripping and painting.