Trekkies with Disposable Income Pay Millions for Memories

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


For the Trekkies among us:

The BBC reports that fans spent $7.1 million for Star Trek memorabilia in an auction at Christie’s this weekend. The auction house apparently underestimated Trekkies in estimating that a 78-inch-long miniature of the Starship Enterprise (used in the title sequences of Star Trek: The Next Generation) would go for around $30,000. Someone scooped up the plastic prop for a cool $576,000.

Other top sellers included $62,400 for a replica of Captain James T Kirk’s command chair from the bridge of the spaceship on the original series, and $144,000 for a costume belonging to the original series’ Dr McCoy.

For those who may not have nabbed any of the thousand items there is still a way to tap into the nostalgia. Some fans, distraught over the series coming to an end took matters into their own hands and started Star Trek: Hidden Frontier, an online series which has so far produced 46 episodes over seven seasons.

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate