 
GW: Well, economics aside, as a fan who loves the franchise and owns six or seven of these things in his house, I'm certainly glad that you did it for as long as you did.
PB: Thank you, it's very gratifying to hear that. We know a lot of fans that we've mentioned this to are very disappointed. We think the quality of what we have done has been very good. We've enhanced the value of the show in terms of the artifacts that people want to own.
This show deserved the kind of quality products that we gave them, and we put a lot of good effort into all of the products that we did manufacture. There was nothing tacky in what we did. We think it was pretty classy. Right down the packaging. And that was important.
Yeah, I'd love to see it continue, but it's not an economically viable program for us, and we do need to be focused on the other things that we do. Our company is a diverse company in other areas of memorabilia, and that is something we need to get back to doing. We've really put a lot of other projects on the backburner in the last few years because of Stargate. We've been so heavily engrossed in Stargate.
Brown expects to spend the next phase of his life working to help support Anderson's charities. | |
But now, of course, I'm also heavily engaged with doing things with Richard Dean Anderson in particular. I can't be making replica props and doing things with Richard and things like this as well. These are things I've got to allocate my time, where is it best spent.
My desire right now is to work with Richard on his charity program, which is what we've been doing very intensely for the last two, three years. As you know, over the last year or so we've brought Richard to two events now. As you've seen for yourself, at this event this weekend, he thoroughly enjoyed himself.
He and I are going to embark on a program where we're going to now extend this program into further fund raising activities for the causes that he supports. He's lending his name to these causes. My job now is "How do we best merchandise that and bring funds into those causes?" So I'm looking forward to doing it. As of next week we're getting that program underway rather intensely.
GW: Wow. That's fantastic. His signature is so hard to obtain. Did you approach him about this and show him how you wanted to do this? Did you get recommended to him?
PB: It was very interesting how that whole autograph project developed. Because we were so well known with the fans as being a supplier of props and costumes, and they knew that we were close to the studio and the cast, many fans would send us autographs and say, "Can you tell us, is that a real signature?" We also are in the autograph business as a company. We've been in the autograph business since 1995.
GW: Yeah, and that's tricky, man.
PB: Yeah! And so often they would send us an image, and I'd look at something, and I'd know right away it's a fake. This became rather prolific. One day I decided to go online and do some checking. I looked through the listings on eBay one day, and I was really staggered to see so many of the autographs I felt were not real.
So I came up with this program whereby, if the fans trust us, which they do, and they know us, why can we not bring the autographs to the fans through our company but not in a profit making sense. Let's do a charity.
So I approached, first of all, Amanda Tapping. Amanda was wonderful. She loved the idea. She got me together with Chris [Judge] and Michael [Shanks], and then finally she got me together with Richard. When I met Richard, the day before I had gone on eBay and I had downloaded 12 autographs. I believed 11 of those 12 were not real. That was my suspicion.
GW: Wow. That's substantial.
| 
Fans purchasing Richard Dean Anderson's autograph through Legends are assured an authentic signature. |
PB: I met with Richard, told him what I had discovered. He was quite shocked. I simply said, "Did you sign these?" He looked at all of them carefully and said, "Yeah, I think I signed that one but I didn't sign those. Where did you get these?"
I told him the story. He said, "What do we do about that? How do we solve that?" I said, "Well, very simply. We'll sell your autographs online. We'll give them the certificate. We'll donate 100 percent of the proceeds. One hundred percent will go to your charity, and the fans, I think, will be very comfortable that they're getting the real thing.
GW: It's pricy, but it's authentic.
PB: Yep. Well, we let all the stars set their own prices for their autographs. Richard and I discussed it and we set it for 45 dollars. Right now you can go online and find dealers selling his autograph for 150, 200 dollars. They're marking it up and that's the kind of price they're getting for it.
But that's getting fewer and fewer. Most of the fans know they can come to us to get that autograph now. This past year our autograph activity with Richard Dean Anderson and his charities, and all the events we did with him for his charities for his autograph, exceeded 80 thousand dollars of donation revenue, which is wonderful.
GW: That's extraordinary.
PB: So we've done a very good thing, I think, with his autographs. We've extended that into various other cast members as well. This whole charity thing has become a big part of my life, that's for sure. And certainly with Richard. He's such a joy to work with.
He and I have really hit it off well. I'm honored to say we've become friends. I think he respects what I do and he's entrusted me to do something with his name, so that's what I'm going to do. And we're going to do it right, and I think we're going to have a lot of fun doing it. And that's the next phase of my life.
So no new replica props coming down the pipe, but some very interesting things concerning Richard Dean Anderson, which I think the fans are going to enjoy hearing about as time evolves anyway.
|
|
|
