Sadly, I recently celebrated my birthday, collecting the usual miscellany of presents along the way: a can of Dr Pepper from the kids – surprised doesn't begin to describe it – and, from the in-laws, a ticket to see punk poet John Cooper Clarke, a skinny man with big hair. He told the same jokes he did the first time I saw him. That was 30 years ago, around the time of my 18th birthday funnily enough.
I say "sadly" not because I don't like birthdays, though that's true, but because I never know what to say when I'm asked what I want in the way of gifts. It was the same this year, hence the Dr Pepper, the concert tickets and the brown Finnish sauna soap that smells like smoked mackerel (didn't mention that earlier, did I?). A pity, then, that I hadn't come across website ScreenBid a month ago. Then when I was asked for my birthday list it would have read: Don Draper's blue straw fedora.
The beauty is, this would be the actual one Don Draper wears in Mad Men. With a starting bid of $200 dollars, it was one of thousands of costumes and props which went under whatever the cyber equivalent of a hammer is last weekend. Every item will have come with a certificate of authenticity, so that the lucky person who nabbed the navy blue swimming shorts Don wears in the penultimate episode of the award-winning series will know that they have touched the haunches of Hamm – as in lead actor John Hamm, the man who plays the show's mercurial anti-hero.
What a fantastic idea ScreenBid is. Everyone wins, don't they? The makers of the television series whose props and costumes are being auctioned get to recoup some of the money they spent acquiring the stuff in charity shops and thrift stores in the first place – c'mon, you don't think they actually run it up on a sewing machine do you? – while the fans get an ace piece of memorabilia. ScreenBid, of course, get a healthy cut of the financial action.
Among the other shows whose goodies have featured are Breaking Bad, Boardwalk Empire, True Blood and Entourage. Costumes from the first, including the yellow "hazmat" suit Walt wears to cook up his crystal meth and Jesse's hoodie, were sold in an auction in February. The biggest sale concerned Walt's copy of Leaves Of Grass, a poetry collection by his namesake, Walt Whitman. Someone paid $65,000 for that.
It's a shame I've missed out on the Mad Men bonanza but I'm going to start saving up for Damien Lewis's codpiece if they ever do a Wolf Hall auction. Another show that would have me tripping over my chainmail slippers in excitement is Game Of Thrones. So, on behalf of the legions of Throneheads like me, I've emailed ScreenBid asking about the prospects of such an event - and, if so, whether there will be any boiled leather underclothes available. I haven't heard back yet, but if it's happening you'll read it here first.
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