Find Free Memorabilia among the Discards of the Creative

Good morning, Live Better than a Billionaire-a-Holics!

Based on the huge number of readers who showed up after yesterday's post, I can see that many of you cannot get enough information about how to acquire free and inexpensive memorabilia.

While attending a faculty dinner last night for a school where I teach people to become wealthy business owners, one of the guests made an arresting comment. He noted that in today's society, celebrities play the role that kings, queens and saints did in the medieval age. He recalled the traffic in relics of saints that was so popular and profitable then and related it back to our current fascination with autographs and mementos of celebrities.

While I hope I'm not endangering any souls by helping you understand how to acquire memorabilia, I will attempt to offset any potential harm of that sort by focusing on memorabilia that have intrinsic value . . . rather than emotional value.

Artists, for example, have often felt that their sketch books, drawings, study pieces and proofs were essentially worthless compared to the final work of art. While few would argue that that view is correct, such artists have often overlooked the potential interest that artist historians and those who like art have in the artistic process of creation. I was reminded of this twice in the last month as I read the catalogues of remarkable shows done at Princeton and Dartmouth that featured their drawings and water colors by American artists. Such works are often hard to find because in the days before art museums, artists often discarded these intermediate media. Yet the understanding we have of the artist's purpose is greatly enhanced when we see how the ultimate result was developed.

I particularly remember having this experience a few years ago when I stumbled onto an unexpected Seurat show in Paris that featured a vast number of small studies for Seurat's masterpiece, La Grande Jette, which is owned by the Art Institute in Chicago. I realized how immensely rewarding it would be to routinely be able to assemble such pieces and present them with the original (which, unfortunately, was not available to the French for that wonderful show).

Even today, many artists do not keep their sketches, drawings, notes and models. I suspect that they either don't have the space . . . or assume that no one will be interested. Yet history has shown that many great artists make little splash until long after their deaths.

If you find an artist whose work you love, contact that artist to inquire if you can have their discards so you could maintain for posterity. And ask for the artist's help in cataloguing the discards so that they can be properly dated, referenced and maintained. Chances are the artist has no one to do these tasks and lacks interest in doing them personally. If nothing else, the artist will be deeply flattered by your interest.

Although I cannot guarantee that you will hit an economic gold mine among these discards, I can assure you that you will enjoy a delightful relationship with the artist, learn a great deal about the artist's work and process, and spend many happy moments contemplating your collections of discarded works in progress.

To encourage you to think about doing this, realize that it's not unusual for Old Master drawings (once thought to have no value) to sell for millions. In my own lifetime, I've seen the hand-painted cels that were used to make the Disney animated features of the mid-20th century go from being discards to being worth as much as tens of thousands of dollars each. You could have had a million dollars worth of them for free when I was young simply for the cost of picking them up from the Walt Disney studios. So think in terms of commercial art . . . as well as fine art. I suspect that the opportunities are wide open in commercial art to make enormous memorabilia coups.

Here's a simple example. Whenever I attend a large comic book show, there will be a number of leading artists present who will make remarkable sketches of their most popular characters either for free or for a few dollars. While they are doing this, you will have lots of chances to ask them if you could acquire their discards.

A few years ago, a friend of mine approached me about this. His Dad had been a famous cartoonist who had kept all of his original strips. My friend had no idea what to do with the strips . . . failing to realize that they were enormously valuable. He was only worried about their safe-keeping. Had I offered to simply archive them for him, I'm sure he would have given them to me. Knowing that he had a treasure trove on his hands, I advised him instead on how to make the strips more valuable for him.

If a lot of you read this post, I'll write more on this subject in the next few days.

Donald W. Mitchell, Your Dream Concierge

Copyright 2005 Donald W. Mitchell

Be sure to check out my blog dated May 16, 2005 on how to plan Your Dad's Best Father's Day! and May 30, 2005 on Plan Your Best Fourth of July!