October 9, 2006

Trekkies with Disposable Income Pay Millions for Memories

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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.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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