
A Malibu resident followed his dreams in collecting and selling historical items and auctioning Hollywood memorabilia on consignment. his company is set to auction movie memorabilia This week, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
By Sara Shereen Bakhshian / Special to The Malibu Times
Care to own the bloodied shirt worn by actor James Gandolfini in the sixth season opener of “The Sopranos”? Or, how about the bat suit worn by Val Kilmer in “Batman Forever”? Perhaps a complete Winkie guard costume from the “The Wizard of Oz” would be more to one’s taste.
These costumes and more, as well as other Hollywood memorabilia, are up for auction this Thursday through the Calabasas- based company, Profiles in History. The Winkie costume doesn’t come cheap though-it is estimated to go for $100,000 to $120,000. That price flies over the head of the Kilmer bat suit costume and the head-to-toe Superman costume worn by Christopher Reeve in the first film, which are each estimated to go for somewhere between $50,000 and $70,000.
Who has collected all this Hollywood stuff?
Malibu resident Joseph Maddalena, a man once featured on A&E’s “The Incurable Collector,” that’s who.
Maddalena is president and CEO of Profiles. He is an entrepreneur who followed his dreams in buying, collecting and selling historical autographs and documents, and auctioning Hollywood memorabilia through consignment.
His passion for collecting started at a young age. Born in 1961 to antique dealing parents in Cranston, Rhode Island, Maddalena’s childhood included many trips to antique sellers. Through these outings he caught the baseball card-collecting bug.
“Back then there was no eBay,” Maddalena said. “You would go to antique shops, and people would have cards out … my generation grew up on baseball cards.”
When he was 12 years old, Maddalena used his paper route income to rent a hall and organize the first local baseball card show. That event’s success led to more shows, and by the time he was 14, he had accumulated more than a million baseball cards and a thousand autographs.
The collection enthusiasm grew in Maddalena with age, and his interest in Hollywood memorabilia grew with his move to the West Coast, where he graduated from Pepperdine University in 1983 with a double major in television production and broadcasting, and in political science. He would spend his weekends driving to Hollywood and rummaging around what he called the boulevard’s “great stores.” Maddalena was thrilled that he could find scripts for the “Maltese Falcon” and “Citizen Kane” for up to a $100. He started buying items from these stores and, little by little, Maddalena built a network of collectors, asking others if they had this or that and receiving calls from around the world asking him the same.
In a time period before the Internet, Maddalena stood out because of his youth and the fact that he was located in California, a rarity among collectors in this difficult industry.
“You had to pound the pavement to look for this stuff,” Maddalena said.
And he did, part-time in college before making it a full-time occupation in 1985, officially launching the company Profiles in History at a Century City location. The company, whose name is a play on John F. Kennedy’s “Profiles in Courage,” would spend 20 years in Century City and Beverly Hills before a recent move to Calabasas Hills. Maddalena is in the Guinness Book of World Records for paying the largest sum at a private auction for a handwritten letter-he purchased a letter for $748,000 written by Abraham Lincoln, dated Jan. 8, 1863, to General McClernand in which Lincoln states, “Broken eggs cannot be mended. I have issued the emancipation proclamation and I cannot retract it.”
Maddalena started the auctions of Hollywood memorabilia in 1995.
Lorna Hart, a former agent in the entertainment industry and now general manager of Profiles, started working with Maddalena 13 years ago. Hart said she thought it would be boring. Now, she’s fascinated with what the company does and with Maddalena.
“He’s very entrepreneur-able and passionate about the collectibles field,” Hart said. “He’s really good at foreseeing future collectible markets.”
Many in the entertainment industry go to Maddalena’s company to get costumes, props, scripts and other items they’ve accumulated appraised. Profiles boasts three auctions a year, like the one set for this Thursday with such pieces as the rare “Winkie” costume and producer David O. Selznick’s bound 1939 presentation script of “Gone With the Wind” to screenwriter and Oscar winner Sidney Howard, said to be worth between $30,000 and $50,000.
Each audience auction is held in conjunction with a live eBay auction for which potential bidders have to go through special registration, and with telephone bids and absentee bids. Maddalena said any auction could have anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500 people participating throughout the world in a six- to seven-hour time period.
The company grosses an excess of $15 million a year, he said.
However, Maddalena said it’s not about the money as much as it’s about loving his career and giving back to the community.
“Do [a job/career] because you love it; the money will come,” Maddalena advises students when he speaks at colleges.
For someone who was laughed at when he started in this business, Maddalena said: “You’ve got to encourage kids … if I can do this, anyone can do anything.”