So Cal with Val 6 20 25 Guest Mike Van Eaton- Episode #8

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Today's guest is someone whose gallery isn't just a place,
It's not just a store, it's an experience. Nestled in
the heart of studio city, van Eton Galleries has become
a wonderland for animation lovers, for Disney fans, collectors, and
anyone who appreciates the magic of storytelling through art. Mike

(00:42):
Van Eaton, the founder, curator, and passionate collector himself, has
brought to us as he's built a treasure trove of
popular culture history, He's going to tell us about it today,
bringing everything from original Disneyland ride vehicles to rare animation
cells and museum worthy pieces of art in the hands

(01:04):
and hearts of fans around the world. So, with the
much anticipated Disney Studio in Park's auction coming up actually
this weekend, right Mike, then there's been a better time
to peek behind the curtain of what it takes to curate, collect,
and celebrate this kind of living history. So, whether you're
an avid Disney file, a SoCal native with childhood memories

(01:25):
at the park, or just someone who loves hearing about passion,
trend into purpose or cool places to go, you're going
to love this conversation. So let's jump into the magic
with Mike van Eaton. Mike, thank you to so Cal
with Val.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Hi Val, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
You are very welcome. Tell us about just kind of
give our listeners and our viewers and OVERSI overview of
what your gallery is. If they come to vent Eaton Galleries,
what are they going to see?

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Well, they'll see a little bit of everything pop culture,
where we're very heavy on Disney because I started collecting
I was a big Disney animation fan. That's how we
started out. But now we have Disney, Disneyland, pop culture,
you know, movie posters, props from movies, things like that,
and you never know what you'll find when you walk

(02:14):
in because it's always changing as we do different exhibitions
or different auctions, things change, of course. And then we
have a retail gallery and it's full of art and
ceramics and just all sorts of interesting things for anybody
pop culture.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
So are the things in your gallery things that people
bring to you, like on consignment or is it mostly
things that you've found you've curated your own collection. Is
that the right?

Speaker 2 (02:40):
It's both, Actually, it's actually both. Actually both we have
a Our auctions are almost all consignment. People bring us
their collections or something they may have found, a treasure
that's been passed out in the family, and we auction
that off for us. And then our retail gallery is
usually stuff that's either from my own collection over the

(03:01):
years or things that we've just acquired on our own.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
So you found them and you thought that might be something,
that might be something, I have the place for that, right.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah, exactly what we do. Yeah, you know, as we
all are sometimes and I'll walk into an antique mall
or I'll be somewhere and I'll see something that, hey,
I know what that is. You know, we'll get something
and I still collect, so so I'm always looking for
stuff from my own collection too.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
And and how long it tell us about your gallery?
How long have you had it?

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Thirty? This is our thirty first year. So we've been
doing it.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
A while and it's always been just yours.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Mine and my partner. We both do it together. We
opened it the year we got married and we've been
doing it ever since. So there you go.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
So you both were collecting already.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yes, too, In fact, we met each other through collecting. Yeah, so, oh.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
Fun yeah, and are you in the same location as
you were at that time.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
We actually moved to this location in the Studio City about
three years ago. It's we were in a two thousand
square foot place in Sherman Oaks and we just moved here.
This is twelve thousand square feet in Studio City because
the business was expanding so quickly. We didn't have room
for for We have fifteen employees and we didn't have

(04:25):
room for it doing exhibitions or you know, having space
for people to come in, so we had to move
to this space.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
Yeah, you definitely want to have people, have room enough
for people to wander around and live, right.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
And right now, all that goes right, that's it exactly.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yeah, So let's start at the beginning. Do you remember
the first animation cell that made you fall in love
with this world?

Speaker 2 (04:48):
I do? I do? Oh tell us, well, I'll tell you.
It's a it's a quick it's a longer story. It's
may take your whole hour.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
But so if it's good for you, it's important to us.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
So I was always a fan of cartoons ever since
I was a kid. Maybe you were too. We all
watched cartoons as a kid, And.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
I said, Saturday mornings, I think.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
Saturday Morning cartoons. I used to always watch The Disney
Wonderful World of Color, so that's how it started. And
one of the shows on Disney's Wonderful of Color that
I remember as a kid was them showing how they
made cartoons and these animation cells. So I always thought
they were really cool, and I said, well, I'd love
to have one of those. So I actually moved to
Los Angeles in nineteen eighty five, and I was here

(05:30):
for I was a musician, so I was here doing
some work and I was just walking down the street
in LA and I found somebody's wallet, and then the
wallet was a card that said I sell animation cells.
So when I called the guy up to return his
wallet to him, I said, hey, you sell animation cells.
And he says, yeah, says I've always wonted one, and
he says, you know, So we met and he gave

(05:51):
me a cell of Daffy Duck as a reward for
finding his wallet. And that was the first cell I
ever got and the first cell I ever collected. And
what he was really doing was he was setting the
hook in me, you know, and starting to reel me
in because I started to buy from him everything he had,
pretty much, you know, every cell. Every time he said
I got these cells in, I'd say, oh, give them
all and me give them all to me, you know,

(06:13):
And so eventually I almost bought everything he had. So
when other people would call him, mainly dealers who were
selling cells on the East Coast, this was just starting
to become a big collectible, and he would refer them
to me and saying, I'm out of Daffy Duck cells.
But this guy bought ten of them. Why don't you
call him up and maybe he'll sell you one. So
that's how it all began. And so these people started

(06:35):
calling me and I said, wow, I can actually sell
these make money and then go buy more. So that
was it, and I had a business, so you could.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
Buy them from him and turn around and sell them at.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
A profit, and sell them at a profit. And then
I bought almost everything he had, and he said, you know,
here's what you should do. You should go down and
meet these guys. They also sell cells. So I started,
you know, he put me in touch with other people
who were selling cells at the time and animation art,
and I started buying them and selling them for a
profit so I could buy more and eventually, you know,
build my collect The intent was to build my collection.

(07:07):
It wasn't to have a store. But then I got
so much stuff. I said, gee, I was my framer there.
I was taking stuff to get framed. Says, why don't
you hang some stuff in my frame shop? And so
I started hanging stuff in the frame shop. And then
she said, hey, why don't you take the place next
to me, and you know, you could have a little
shop there. So I had a little shop there, and
then I met my partner and we said, well, let's

(07:28):
open a bigger shop, and then we opened our first
big van Eaton gallery shop. So just fake were you?

Speaker 1 (07:34):
What were you doing at that time when you first
got started what we did? You have another job?

Speaker 2 (07:38):
I was a musician. I was out here doing the
work as a drummer.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
Oh as a drummer. Yeah, yeah, my goodness. So do
you have any of your original cells from that time?

Speaker 2 (07:48):
Absolutely? Absolutely you do. Yes, yes, I I you know
I would through throughout the thirty years. You know, as
times are good and times are bad, you get rid
of things in your collection. But I always kept a
couple of the pieces that the guy gave me when
I found his wallet, you know, to remind me of
that time. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
Absolutely, And of course we have to say and to
remind you of the story that if you should be kind,
because look at what that. What if you hadn't done that,
What if you hadn't picked up the wallet, What if
you hadn't called the man, what if you hadn't seen
his card there?

Speaker 2 (08:20):
Yeah, it was all just just all worked out. It
was good karma all the way. And I still keep
in touch with them. He's moved out of LA but
we keep in touch. And and uh so it turned
out he put me on an interesting path.

Speaker 1 (08:31):
He absolutely did. So let me ask you, so, for
the benefit of our viewers and our listeners, what is
a sell.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
Well, let me let me uh the people who may
not know. Yeah, well, when they're making in the old days,
back before we had computer animation, they could, uh, the
animators to make a cartoon had to draw every character
and they would draw them on paper. And they don't
just draw the character. They'd have to draw the character

(09:01):
moving like if you imagine a flip book is the
best way to think of it. So for a cartoon
that was going to be in the movies, they would
have to draw twenty four frames for every second of
that character, say Mickey Mouse walking across the screen right
and in sequence. Now, once they're drawn, they're given to
another department I'm going to use Disney as example, who

(09:23):
would then trace them onto a clear piece of plastic
and then paint them. And that's what you see on
camera are these painted pieces of plastic or sell material
as we call them, one frame that are then photographed
one frame at a time to give the illusion that
they're moving. And so those individual frames of hand painted
artwork are what we call animation cells. And for the

(09:46):
most part in those days, in the early days, they
would wash those off and reuse the cells because they
were expensive. And in the later days, once they got
into the fifties and sixties and seventies, they would just
throw them in the trash can because they were they
were done with them once they made the film, they
didn't need them anymore. A few were held back to
be sold in different ways. If you're a Disney fan,

(10:06):
they sold Disney cells at Disneyland in the fifties and
sixties and seventies, and that's why some of those survived.
In the thirties, there was a company in San Francisco
that would take sales from Disney and sell them as artwork,
but for the most part, the majority of that stuff
was destroyed. So they became in the eighties a collection
was sold through an auction and they became a big

(10:27):
hit and became quite collective black for that, and that's
what That's pretty much the beginning of our business.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
That is a great story. And did you so you
started out with almost all Disney, Well, Disney, and I.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
Liked Warner Brothers, Bugs, Bunny, and Disney, so those are
always I tend to buy what I like. That's what
we started out with. And one day a gentleman came
to us and said, you know, I collect stuff from
Disneyland and I want to sell it. And I looked
at his collection. It was pretty amazing, and I said,
you know, it'd be better to auction this off. And
then he said, well, I don't know, I've never been

(11:04):
done an auction. And I said, well, I've never done
an auction either, but let's do one. So we put
together an auction and my first auction, and it was
incredibly good, and his stuff sod incredibly well, and we
sort of created a market for stuff from Disneyland, and
so we've done Now we do Disneyland auctions, and we
do animation auctions and pop culture with movie posters and
all that kind of stuff like that just sort of

(11:25):
sort of falls into place.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
Well, So fan Eaton Galleries has become a kind of
a pop up pop culture pilgrimage not pop up up
pop culture pilgrimage spot in la where people go and
they love it and they and people were interested in
that love to go and spend time there. Did you
ever when you first started, did you ever dream of
of turning it into this?

Speaker 2 (11:48):
No. I just wanted to have fun with it. And
just just part of the fun for me is doing
that and having these exhibitions, and we do panels and
things here a lot, and it just, like I say,
it's just iottle it fake, take us course, it just
goes the way it goes. And then it just worked
out good. And but I was hoping to have a
place where people would come and be a part of

(12:08):
this community of people who appreciate this art or appreciate
the Disney parks and things like that, and so it's
worked out very well.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
Do you have and do you have like educational events,
like do you have nights when people come and they
learn about it or you talk about a specific product
or season or series.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
We usually have to Yeah, we we do. We we
were trying to do more of them. They're very difficult
for us to put on some times, but we we
just recently did an event celebrating an animator named Bob
Clappett who created Porky Pig actually and later of course yeah,
and Daffy Doc and Beanie and Cecil and things like that.
So we had, you know, his family here, We had
some of the pieces of his artwork and puppets, and

(12:49):
we did a whole presentation on that. And then we
did another one recently for Jay Ward, who is an
la icon who created Buwinkle and Rocky back in the sixties.
It was a very pot or Saturday morning TV show
and had a store on Sunset Boulevard. Yeah, so we
did a whole thing with his family here also, and
we had some of his artwork and things like that,

(13:09):
and those are a lot of fun. We enjoy doing them.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
Do you ever have the families approach you and say,
you know, my dad died and I've got all this stuff,
and I just kind of want to share it with
the world. I'd like for can we do an event?

Speaker 2 (13:21):
And that's exactly what we did with the Bob Clampett
family and with the jay Ward family. Yes, those are
a lot of fun. Let people remember these guys so
they don't get forgotten, you know, and it's very important.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
So we definitely do those absolutely absolutely. So I'm sure
you've had some jaw dropping pieces and items passed through
your gallery. Is there anything that you wish you would
have saved for yourself?

Speaker 2 (13:47):
The only thing I can say, yeah, this sounds crazy
unless you're a collector, is that I used to have.
If you're familiar with Disneyland, the Haunted Mansion, when you
get in the elevator of the Haunted Mansion, they have
these paintings that get longer as the elevator goes down.
They're called stretch paintings. And very early when I started out,

(14:07):
I bought a couple of those, and they were expensive
to me. They were two thousand dollars a piece, I think,
which was a lot of money, and they're about ten
feet tall and I don't have a house that I
could put them in, so they were rolled up in
my closet for twenty years, and one day I think
we needed to buy something, and I was talking with

(14:29):
my wife and I said, you know, maybe we should
sell one of those haunted mansion paintings. So we put
it in an auction. This is before we had our
own auctions, and it sold for eighty thousand dollars. This
painting that I bought for two thousand dollars, which is great,
but I still regret that painting not being in my
closet right now. I really miss it. So that's one

(14:50):
of those things that because of a collector and I said, oh,
I'm never going to see another one of these, and
darn it, I've really messed up by selling it, you know,
even though it got us through a tough time and
we got money from it and everything like it was,
I really missed that painting. And since then, those paintings
have come back up in our auctions, but now they
sell for one hundred and fifty or two hundred thousand dollars,

(15:11):
and so I can't even buy one now, you know.
So it's crazy.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
Nobody ever wants to donate one to you. Hum.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yeah, no one wants to donate him.

Speaker 1 (15:18):
Unfortunately, not hardly. So you have an auction coming up
this weekend, correct.

Speaker 2 (15:24):
Yeah, this weekend tomorrow? Excuse me, tomorrow's right, Saturday and Sunday.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
Yes, So it's a Disney Studios and Parks auction. It
looks incredible from what I've seen. So what are a
couple of your headline pieces that collectors and founds should
be watching for in this auction?

Speaker 2 (15:41):
This one has a lot of them, a lot of them.
So the First Party auction is a sort of a
history of the Disney studio itself, starting back in the
twenties and going forward. It has a piece of Walt
Disney's first animation studio, which was his uncle's bar garage
and in nineteen twenty three moved into this garage and
paid his uncle five bucks a month to be able

(16:04):
to use it as an animation studio, him and his brother.
So we have a piece of that garage and a
lot of old photos of that time which you're really neat,
and then beautiful animation art from snow White and many
of those classic features in this auction. And there's one
other thing. Oh, there's a company called Old King Cole.

(16:25):
Then in the nineteen thirties when Mickey was just the
star of everything. Made store displays out of paper mache,
and they're beautiful, large displays of Mickey or Minnie or
Goofy or any of those characters. They're very rare because
they were made out of paper mache, and we have
a nice collection of those in this auction. And then
on the Disney Park side, the big leader is we

(16:45):
have a Dumbo ride vehicle here from the nineteen fifties,
which if you go to Disneyland and fantasy Land, they
have an attraction, you know, where you can get on
inside Dumbo and write them up and down. Well, in
the fifties, after this particular ride vehicle got a little
bit old, they took it off of the ride and
they put it in the park as a vehicle you
could sit in and get your picture taken. And then

(17:06):
in the nineties they decided that they would sell this
one ride vehicle in a special auction at a convention
they were doing. And the gentleman that bought it in
that auction has kept it. That was in the nineties,
so he's kept it for about thirty years and now
he's selling it through this auction. It's a very very cool.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
Piece do you wish to estimate what you think it
might sell for.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
It should sell in the two hundred to three hundred
thousand dollars range.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
We hope people will and they'll just keep it in
their home.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
Or I would think so. Keep in mind that from
ear to ear he's nine feet wide, he's about six
feet long, and he weighs about fifteen hundred pounds. So
wherever they can put him, I guess, you know, maybe
they'll put him in the front yard. I don't know,
but we'll see.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
Or a hotel or an office gallery or something like that.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
I mean, we've sold a lot of ride vehicles in
the past, and people tend to really like them. This
is one of the larger ones, so it's a little
harder to put somewhere. You have to have a really
big space, But somebody does.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
Are there any personal favorites in this auction that might
be flying under the radar that maybe tell a special
story somebody might not normally know about.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
There's a lot of stuff in this auction, especially for
the Disney Park side. That's what we call the backstage things.
You know, how stuff was built or what I find
interesting are the manuals for you know how to how
to how to drive the train. If you're going to
be if you're going to become the train engineer, you know,
you have to know how to do it. So we
have a few of the manuals for the railroad or

(18:46):
for the rocket jets or Space Mountain, those kind of things.
We also have a beautiful painting for one of the
attraction posters that was made for Disneyland Paris for Space Mountain,
and it's the actual original artwork for it, and it's stunning,
really really stunning. So that's that's an exciting piece too.

Speaker 1 (19:06):
That is exciting. And these pieces just come to you
from every families, collectors everywhere all.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
Over the world. I mean we have I think we
have a lot of Pirates of the Caribbean props from
the movies that came from London and over that way.
But stuff comes from all over the world to us.
It's it's really interesting and all from these auctions. We
don't really advertise, but they just hear about it or
or their fans and they follow and and it just

(19:35):
builds from there.

Speaker 1 (19:36):
Of course, there's people listening to disc Is saying, oh,
that must be such a cool job you have of
course they forget that you have a lot of risk
and you have to take care of all these.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
It's still a cool job. I think it's a cool
job too. I really like it. It's a lot of fun.
And you can walk in here. You'll see me walking
around looking at things too. Because it changes so much,
you know, I have to come back on it. I
wonder where that piece went that I just got, and
you know, I'll go out and look for it and say, oh.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
What do you mean somebody bought it? I might have.
I wanted to deliver.

Speaker 2 (20:00):
I do that all the time, like, oh no, I
was hoping that wouldn't sell, you know, but yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:04):
Or at least sells so fast. So I'm curious, and
I'm sure our listeners and our viewers are also curious.
Who are your buyers? Are they older people? Are they
urge who lived through the Disney the beginning of Disney?
Are they younger people who were just catching on? Who
are they?

Speaker 2 (20:20):
It's a nice wide variety and what it is the
buyer changes depending on what we're selling. So if you
if we sell like in this auction, we have original
artwork from snow White, the movie snow White, and the
Seven Dwarves. They're nineteen thirty eight movie. So there's a
group who will buy that. But they're an older group
of people because you have to be a certain age.

(20:41):
You buy what you what you identify with, or what
you grew up with. Right. There was a time when
snow White was d movie, you know, and you didn't
have to be thirty eight. Even in the fifties, you know,
our sixties or seventies, that movie was being shown and
that was the Disney movie, right, and if you were
if you were a parent, that's the movie you wanted
your kids to see because that was the movie you saw.

(21:02):
So there's that age group that buys snow White. Then
there's another age group who grew up with The Little Mermaid,
which was nineteen eighty nine. You know that movie now
is coming up on forty years old. We don't realize
that now you were a little girl or boy and
at ten years old watching The Little Mermaid. He wiz,
you're almost fifty or sixty now. And that group buys

(21:23):
the Little Mermaid stuff, right, And that's how it works.
Everybody buys what they identify with. So we keep a
ride writing. The one thing that stays constant is Disneyland,
because Disneyland doesn't change that much. So you may have
gone to Disneyland when you were a kid. I went
to Disneyland when I was a kid. I took my
kids to Disneyland. They'll take their kids to Disneyland. So

(21:44):
everybody seems to identify with that. So the range of
buyer for Disneyland stuff is just straight across the board.
The range of buyers for animation art depends on when
you were born and what we're selling. We will see
a little Mermaid cell go for more than a snow
white cell nowadays, and it was the opposite twenty years ago,
you know, so it's crazy, that's true.

Speaker 1 (22:04):
Will there ever be a time when the people that
are older like I won't? I don't know how yours.
I'll just say my age who because we grow out
there were gone from that era. Will they still be
as popular? Will they still bring as much money?

Speaker 2 (22:19):
They won't? Don't bring less money? I think. I think
A perfect example that I tell people is that if
you remember the character what he would Pecker? I do.
I remember the character what he would Pecker? Of course,
so when I first started selling animation art, that was
a very popular character, but after about nineteen seventy, he
sort of disappeared from TV. There's no movies or anything

(22:41):
like that with him, so he sort of got forgotten
by anybody who was born after nineteen seventy. So now
that character doesn't sell for hardly anything because there's nobody
who really identifies with them or cares about him some much.
Is that right? And we see the same thing happened
with the flint Stalls Bliard or Not, which you can remember,
and you know, which was a sixties but it was
also a seventies TV series on Saturday mornings and even

(23:03):
into the eighties, but again it's disappeared for like twenty
or so years. So the newest generation of collectors, they're
not so interested in the Flintstones because they didn't grow
up with them, and so those starting to go down
a price. But the one constant, the one company that
keeps all its characters alive and keeps reinventing them as Disney,
and that's why we still see all their characters be popular.

(23:26):
You know, Jungle Book, which was done you know, seventy
years ago or sixty years ago, still popular because they
keep recreating the characters and keep getting the cartoons out there,
and so that's why Disney sells so well is because
they've kept their characters alive.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
A lot of effort, I'm sure goes into everything you do,
but especially curating an auction. Do you ever go out
and seek pieces? Do you ever think, like, gosh, I
really would like to add this to the auction, And
how do you decide what makes the cut and what doesn't.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
Well, we try to tell a story in every auction,
try to like the one year that we have this
coming up tells a sort of a story of the
Disney studio starting in the twenties to present time. And
so I might look at it and say, you know,
we're missing stuff from the nineteen fifties. We need more
from the nineteen fifties. So I'll try to seek out
some interesting things, whether it be animation, art or documents

(24:20):
or toys from the nineteen fifties that I can put
into that area so that we tell a good story.
And with the Disney parks, it's a matter of having something,
excuse me, from every land, you know, and sort of
showing an evolution of the park, having maps, having tickets,
having a little bit of something because there's a different
collector for every little thing from Disneyland, popcorn boxes, you know, napkins, everything,

(24:45):
So it's a crazy thing. So and then the cutoff.
As it used to be, I didn't care what went
into the catalog as long as I liked it. But nowadays,
because it's so expensive to make a catalog, we have
to make sure the value is going to be in
at least a few hundred dollars per item. So, but
and we try to keep the auctions reasonable within you know,

(25:07):
maybe six or seven hundred items a day maximum, and
then we just have to cut it off. So we're
already building an auction for September now because we have
so much stuff. So it's crazy, and they take months
to do anyway, these auctions take months to curate them.

Speaker 1 (25:24):
So do you with an auction, do you try to
have a specific number of items?

Speaker 2 (25:32):
We try it, it's more of a specific value of items.
We have to make sure that we can pay for
the labor that's gone into it and the catalog costs,
like I say, which you're very expensive, and the mailing
of the catalog too. If you buy in one of
our auctions, you'll get a free catalog for the next
few auctions, and so we end up selling or shipping
thousands of catalogs out which no, I weighed a few

(25:55):
pounds and it costs a ton.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
So do you think that this that your business and
your auctions will change as there's more technology put into
the movie making and cartoon business.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
I think it well. I think with animation for sure,
since they don't even use paper anymore. You know, everything's
done on a computer now, so there's no physical piece
that can come from it. So at some point in time,
as as we age and as cartoons age, there's what
people are going to be looking for are pieces where
there's really no nothing that was made or done by hand,

(26:30):
you know, So that'll change the way we sell or
what we can sell. You know. Then we're going to
be selling replicas of things probably, and stuff like that.
I think with movies themselves, you're always going to have
props for the most part. You're always going to have
things that we can find that we can sell. And
the posters obviously.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
Yes, that's true. That's true. So you've done so many
Disney themed auctions, Now, what is it about the parks
specifically that draws such passion from collectors?

Speaker 2 (26:57):
I think it's nostalgia. I think I think if you
go to those parks, we all seem to buy stuff
that makes us happy, that makes us remember a time
that we had a really, really good time. And I
think when you go in those parks, you have such
a magical time, you know, such a great time. You
want a piece of that to beat your home or
on your wall so that you can remember it and

(27:18):
you can go, Oh, Disneyland, I had such a wonderful
time there when I was a kid. You know, those
kind of things like that, And I think that's what
drives in nostalgia. I think that's why we keep going
back to that park is nostalgia. I mean, it doesn't
have roller coasters or a lot of roller coasters or
big rides, you know, but it just has a charm
to it that you makes you want to go back.

Speaker 1 (27:36):
So it does, and they change the rides in Disneyland
and Disney World and Disney paris a little bit too.

Speaker 2 (27:47):
Game field. When you walk down Main Street or you
go into Adventureland, you know, there's a certain feel that's
exactly how it was when you went there twenty years ago.
So it's an interesting thing. It's a great, great place
to read of a child, for sure, but.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
Some things are gone, like that the message from mister Lincoln,
you know, from President Lincoln. Isn't there anymore, of course,
and a lot of the other things have changed since then.
That ages me if I remember that, right.

Speaker 2 (28:11):
He's coming back though, but but he's kids coming back.
He's coming back with Walt Disney, and he's still down
in Disney World. So they just move things around and
make room. But like I say, and that's fine, they
need to do that. But again, you still walk in
there and you'll say, I remember walking this main street
when I was a kid, and I remember the Dumbo ride,
because that one hasn't changed, for the teacups, for those

(28:33):
kind of rides like that.

Speaker 1 (28:34):
So yeah, absolutely, you tell us some great stories from
collectors that have brought something that really changed their life.
You must have some stories like a Jungle Cruise sign
that turned into a shrine in somebody's.

Speaker 2 (28:48):
House, or we had I can say that we've changed
the lives of people who brought ustuff. We had a
lady who had a piece on eBay, a map of
Disneyland that her husband, who worked on the railroad when
they were building it had, and she had it on
eBay for six hundred dollars I think, and someone saw

(29:08):
it and says, take that off eBay and take it
to Mike van Eaton. I think you'll get more. And
so she brought it to me and very nice lady,
and we said, sure, we'll put that in an auction
for her. And it turns out the map was very rare.
It was a very early version of Disneyland that they
had planned on building where they had an archery range
in Disneyland, and they had little things like that that

(29:29):
never actually made it to the part. And the map
sold for a little over fifty thousand dollars, oh my gosh,
rather than the six hundred dollars on eBay. And I
mean whoever told her to take it off eBay was
very very nice, I mean, very a wonderful thing for
them to do. But that changed her life for sure.
And we had another gentleman who called me up who

(29:53):
worked at Disneyland and had a map that he thought
was really important, another map, and it was in Utah,
and he sent me a picture of it and I
recognized the map. So I flew to Utah and met
with this guy and he was about at the time,
he's about ninety years old, and he had worked at
the park when they were building it and when they

(30:13):
were opening it. And he actually got this map from
Walt Disney's office and it was the first map of
Disneyland ever made, and it sold for just south of
the million dollars in auction, and so that made the
rest of his life and his family's life quite quite different.

Speaker 1 (30:31):
So that was good, and he and he trusted it
to you. How nice.

Speaker 2 (30:35):
Yeah, it was great, It was absolutely great. Actually, I
flew into Utah saw the map and it was too
big as a large map to take back on the airplane.
So I had a fly home, get in the car,
drive to Utah and pick it up and bring it back.
But I knew I wanted the map, so it was
it was worse.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
That's what you did. Huh.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
Yeah, that's fine of a job, actually.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
So yeah, absolutely. I saw a lot of homes in
the the land area or have had over the years.
And it's always fascinating to me the people who come
in and say they live in the home where their
parents lived when Disneyland was being built, and they say
tell me stories about I lived here, you know, Disneyland

(31:16):
was being built, and these were my experiences of going
here and my parents and my dad worked there, and
so yeah, it's a lot of history still left in
that neighborhood as well.

Speaker 2 (31:26):
History. Yeah, we sold another map that we sold, which
was all the tracks that Disney bought in Anaheim. You know, Mark,
we bought this one. We bought this one. We don't
have this one yet. You know, it's like they're planning
the orange growers they were buying, and it came from
a gentleman who parents or grandparents i think, actually owned

(31:49):
a farm and wouldn't sell it to Disney. Oh sure,
and still haven't sold it to Disney. Instead they leased
it to Disney. And so one area of Disney it's
actually in California Adventure that is not owned by Disney,
that they actually still lease from from somebody who had
a phone there. It's like one hundred year lease or something.

Speaker 1 (32:09):
So yeah, and you see some see that happen from
time to time where there'll be one house that's still
you know, there's a little fence that cuts out like
this in the house is right there. You see a
lot of that which is really really over by South
Coast Plaza, you know where the bean fields are now,
and how there was a few old farm cities that

(32:29):
the secrets from family of the archer's family kep. But yeah,
it's very fascinating. I love listening to those stories when
those people come in. When I'm selling a house in
an open houses something, they come in and tod they
tell me the story about when they lived there.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
And now one of my clients owns a house that
I guess was owned by one of the daughters of
the guy who owned the main area there, and her
name was Kate, and I guess her sister's name was Ella,
and the road Katella is actually Kate Ella.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
Yeah, this was one of the daughter's homes that lived there.
So that's how I learned about Katella being Kate Ella.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
So yeah, absolutely lots of history, Yeah, lots of history
in that city. Yeah, so we know that. Of course,
we've said this in the beginning that Vanning and Galleries
is not just a business. It feels like a museum
and a memory bank for animation fans. So what kind
of a role do you think it plays in LA's
creative culture.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
Well, you know what we see we deal with a
lot of artists, not just artists working at the studio,
but artists in general who are heavily influenced by the
artists that worked at Disneyland, not necessarily, excuse me, not Disneyland.
At Disney. You know, all the artists that worked at
Disney back in the thirties, forties, fifties, even now are
fine artists and have their own works besides what they

(33:41):
do at Disney, and they've been very influential in styles
of art that many of LA's more popular artists have
used as influences. I guess you would say. So. We
do do specific art shows here that are themed to
a cartoon thing, but not really. We did recently a
speaking of Hannah Barbera, because people are forgetting it, we

(34:03):
did a Hannah Barbera theme night where we had one
hundred artists paint something representing Hannah Barbera on their own,
in their own style, in their own way, and just
did that as an exhibition and a show and things
like that. We want the art community to come in
and see, you know, the art here and look at
it not just as a cartoon but as art, and
because it is in many cases and so we try

(34:25):
to be involved as much as we can with that.

Speaker 1 (34:28):
So these artists painted it on their own or you
had it like a paint party at yourn.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
On their own and submitted it and we just put it.
We just had an exhibition theme too, you know, he said,
you know, our theme is Hannah Barbera, our theme is
Jay Warri. Wherever we want, paint something and they could
use their own imagination and pay what they want.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
How fascinating did you in that case like that? Do
you have people send things to you? Are they mostly
local artists?

Speaker 2 (34:50):
We're mostly local and mostly deal with local artists here,
and they're mostly heavily influenced by animation or by the
artists that did the animation back in the sixties and
fifties and things like that.

Speaker 1 (35:00):
Something that I wanted to ask you because you are
located right in the heart of Studio City, where so
many entertainment people live and work, and do you find
that you're often a place for animators or imagineers to
come and reconnect with their roots. And I think that's
what you're saying.

Speaker 2 (35:14):
Yes, absolutely all the time. For sure, all of you
that worked in the studio, we're so close to Disney Studio.
We're so close to Universal Warner Brothers all, you know,
within miles of us. So yes, we get all those
guys over here, and they're all meeting up over here
and just coming to see stuff, and especially when we
have these exhibitions that they want to come see the
art too.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
Yeah, sure of course they do. So let's have a
little fun. If you could hop onto one Disney ride
vehicle that you've seen come through your gallery and actually
take it for a spin. Which one would it be?

Speaker 2 (35:49):
Oh, let me think, probably it has to be for me,
it has to be the Haunted Mansion vehicle. You know,
they call them the Doom Buggies and they're those little
curved buggies that you get into for the Haunted manch
and I love those ones. We had, we had one
of those come through. They're very rare. And my second
choice would be a Mister Toad car, you know, the
the little Mister Toad car from the Mister Toad's Wild Ride.

(36:11):
I like that too, you did.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
That's fascinating, that's interesting. So let's let's be honest. Do
you ever get starstruck when a certain piece comes in?
Or are you really cool? You can handle it all
in that right now.

Speaker 2 (36:27):
Yes, I hate that when that happens, but it does happen,
and and it's a piece like I really really want,
and I, oh, I'm never going to get this because
it's going to go for way too much. And yes,
I get starstruck all the time. Yeah. Unfortunately being a
collect the bad thing. You know. I shouldn't be a
collector and be in this business because I want to
buy everything and keep it for myself.

Speaker 1 (36:45):
So that's a that's of course, of course, So that's
a that's a good question. So how do you balance
your business and your passion and your.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
That's why that's why I have a partner. See I
say yes, he says no, and it sort of balances
out in the middle somewhere works out really good, is
that right? Oh? Yeah? Absolutely? Yeah.

Speaker 1 (37:06):
And so you met your partner when she was also
kind of in this business, or the early parts of
this business.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
When I mentioned that I was, I had stuff in
a frame shop that I was selling, and one day
she came into the frame shop to try to sell
me some artwork and it turned out that she was
trying to sell me or work that I had sold
to another dealer. In Chicago, and so I didn't want
to buy the artwork, but I definitely wanted to take
her out. That's how it all started.

Speaker 1 (37:34):
Yeah, So does she influence your decision still today?

Speaker 2 (37:38):
Absolutely? Absolutely. We're a really good team. Like I said,
we balance out, you know, because otherwise I spend all
my money buying stuff. You know, I'm too impulsive, I
guess you would say, you know. So it's good to
have that voice that says, you know, wait a minute,
think about it before we do this. Are you sure
this can happen or you know, take it from there.

Speaker 1 (38:00):
And does she have different favorites than you do?

Speaker 2 (38:03):
She does. She comes from a more fine art background,
actually be quners with me. And she's also much more
into movies and movie posters. So when we get into
those auctions, those pop culture auctions or Hollywood memorabilia auctions,
she's a big help in deciding what might be best
in the auction and what might not.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
So, and you have a bring in auctioneers that correct.

Speaker 2 (38:24):
Yes, we actually use two different three different auctioneers. We
use four. Really, we use two from Northern California to
have a sort of a that style of auction that
we all like I call it hog calling, you know,
where they talk real fast and then get through that,
and we use them because they can move faster in auction.
So like this, this next auction we have, which has

(38:45):
almost a thousand items in it, we have to move
at a fast pace, so we'll use those guys. And
then we also have two ladies from the East Coast
that will fly in who are more like what you
see for those auctions that like Christie's or Southeby's, but
they go we have this, thank you very much, how
about this? And they work much slower, and we'll use
them for a different style of auction when we don't
have to move as fast.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
And you said you're going to have about a thousand items,
is that correct?

Speaker 2 (39:10):
Yeah? I think nine hundred and sixty nine to fifty
somewhere in there, So right, about a thousand items over
two days.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
And where do you hold where do you hold your auction?

Speaker 2 (39:20):
Here? In our studio in our gallery here. One of
the reasons we moved here was so we'd have an
area where that we could dedicate to exhibiting things and
having these auctions. So we have a stage set up
in there and it streams live online. So people there
are a lot of people who just like to watch
the auction and don't necessarily bid. But you can also
bid online or you can come here and did There's

(39:42):
all sorts of ways to do it. But it's quite
an entertaining thing to watch.

Speaker 1 (39:48):
Do you enjoy it?

Speaker 2 (39:50):
I do enjoy it. Yes, I have a great time
with it. I usually when the auction is actually going on,
all the work is done and you can just sit
and just watch it happen. You know, it's a lot
of fun.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
Is that right? To enjoy it? And do you pretty
much sell everything in your auction?

Speaker 2 (40:07):
Yeah? You nine five ninety eight percent usually go in
these auctions, so it's a it's a pretty much almost everything. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
And how many people come to your auction live and
in person?

Speaker 2 (40:19):
Just a handful of people. If you're in the LA area,
can you know, come in and sit in the chairs,
because these auctions last about eight hours. It's a long
sit you know. Uh, most people are online watching it online. Uh,
so we'll have a handful here. We'll have maybe two
thousand people online, and then we have people who are

(40:40):
on the phones who we call when certain items come up.
And then we have people who have placed bids in
advance with us, and so all together there's probably between
twenty and twenty five hundred people usually per auction.

Speaker 1 (40:53):
So if someone wants to participate, do they do they
have to register way you in advance?

Speaker 2 (41:00):
They do? They do. They have to register at least
by the day of, you know, and and they do
that through our website. If they're coming here live, they
can register when they get here. But for the most part,
if you're going to be online, you have to go
to the online platform and register on there. It's very simple,
it's very easy, and so.

Speaker 1 (41:18):
It's not often that people just walk in and watch.

Speaker 2 (41:21):
Yeah. People do. People do watch yeah, but and they're
more than welcome to it's like I said, it's a
lot of fun. Most people don't because it's an eight
hour Like I said, it's an eight hour journey, and
it's a lot of sitting, you know.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
So for that and in an auction, is there a
certain in one of your auctions, Is there a certain
time when you say, like, now we're going to auction
off this, and you know, two o'clock we're going to
start auctioning off this, or do you mix them all together?

Speaker 2 (41:45):
Well, they're actually so they're they're numbered in the catalog
like one through nine hundred and fifty. So the morning
of the auction, I think it starts at ten am.
We'll start with lot number one, and then when that auction,
when that one's over, we go to two and three
and four, and they just go in out order. So
there are order we want. Yeah, they're pre pre lotted
in the order we want them to be. Inswer.

Speaker 1 (42:05):
That's been a few minutes talking about consignment. Okay, I
saw that you say you will take things on consignment. Yes,
what do you accept? And how would someone approach you
if they wanted to do that.

Speaker 2 (42:16):
Well, we usually asked them to do is email me
at Mike at ve Galleries dot com and let me
know what you have and or better yet, send pictures
of what you have. And then what we do is
we decide if we have an auction coming up that
it would fit into because our auctions are themed and
they're trying and tell a story. So if you have

(42:37):
a Frankenstein movie poster, I'm going to make sure you're
in our Hollywood auction. You know, when's the next one
of those? Or if you have a Disneyland piece. I
want to make sure you're in the Disneyland auction, and
so we'll find out what you have and where it
might fit into our auction schedule, and then we'll just
email you back and say here's what we can do
and here's where we can auction it. And then we
take the piece in and we photograph it and we

(42:57):
catalog it and get it all set to go, and
then we exhibit it and then reauction it.

Speaker 1 (43:03):
And it's only animation art.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
Well, no, no, it can be anything popular culture. You know,
Hollywood is a really big with us. Toys are good
with us. We recently did a guitar auction that went
very very well.

Speaker 1 (43:15):
Oh my goodness.

Speaker 2 (43:15):
We sold guitars at surprisingly amazing high prices, and those
another very popular collectible. So there's all sorts of different
kinds of auctions we have. I mean, the main ones
we do were the Disney but we've done two guitar auctions,
and we've done multiple Hollywood auctions where we have Hollywood memorabilia,

(43:36):
so that's fascinating.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
I've done a call last week with a lady who's
helping someone who wants to sell their home. I want
to say it was in Tennessee, but it might have
been in Virginia somewhere, and they had the gentleman had
passed away. He had a collection of eighty guitars and
she had no idea what to do with them, and
so we were all saying, do this, do this. I
never thought about and now I'll go back dur and

(43:58):
say she should reach out to you.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
They're some of the one of the most popular collectibles
I think going right now are guitars and they can
go for enormous amounts of money. It depends on what
they're So to give you an example, we did a
charity auction which we also do h for some people
from a band called You Two, which is if you
know You Two are not updated, So we did. We

(44:21):
had them here and we u They got all their
friends to donate guitars. So we had a bass that
Paul McCartney used in Wings and we had and that
went for half a million dollars. And we had this
guy's guitar and that guy's guitar is an amazing auction.
Those are rare, so I get that. But in our
last auction, we had a electric guitar from the nineteen sixties.
It's called a stratocaster, a Fender stratocaster, and that one

(44:44):
sold for twenty five thousand dollars. Just an everyday guitar
from the sixties. So you never know, and I'm sure
there's plenty of those out there, honestly, so you never
know what they might he might have when it comes
to guitars. And I think that's a hot collectible right now,
very hot collectible.

Speaker 1 (44:59):
And I to ask you, do they always need to
be signed? But it sounds like that's not the case.

Speaker 2 (45:03):
No, that was just an everyday, regular guitar that he
could have bought in any music store in the sixties
or seventies and it would have been buying.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
So and what about music scripts that's signed by the
author of the composer.

Speaker 2 (45:17):
It can be if it's especially if it's original. Now
there's two because there's two ways. We sold lots of
music from Pinocchio and from things like that where it
was the original scores, and those have gone for quite
a bit. But depending on who composed it and how
popular it is. It's all about demand, you know, and
what people are into. So it could be worth something,

(45:39):
depends on what.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
The music is, and do you also include items from
like Star Wars.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
Absolutely. Star Wars is funny because well now it's owned
by Disney, so it's considered a Disney product. But but
we don't put it in the Disney auctions. We put
it into the popular culture auctions. Yes, I just before
our interview, I was just bringing and somebody just came
to with some Star Wars stuff. As a matter of fact,
we do a lot with the toys. The Star Wars
toys are very popular and go for a lot of money,

(46:04):
and we've had a few small props and stuff.

Speaker 1 (46:07):
And what if, like, so, what if someone had a
piece of music that was a Star Wars score signed
by John Williams. Let's say, does someone have to be
is it too soon to start putting something?

Speaker 2 (46:18):
And it's fine? I think those are absolutely fine. Star Wars. Again,
you're looking at something that has a gigantic following, you know,
a gigantic following, and you want to hit it now
these years while it still has a gigantic following. So
that movie came out in seventy seven, I think seventy
seven somewhere around there. So, but they've made so many
others after it's kept it alive through generations and that's

(46:38):
that's what you want. You want to cross through a
couple of generations. So yeah, that's great. And John Williams
is you know, an icon legend.

Speaker 1 (46:45):
Yes, yes he is. And I think he's still alive
is het?

Speaker 2 (46:48):
Yeah, yes, but he's got to be in his nineties,
I would think if he is, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
He is, I know, yeah he's. So if you could
add one item to your one item or one era
to your future auctions, maybe something hasn't been seen yet,
would that be what would be your dream inclusion?

Speaker 2 (47:03):
Oh? For me, there's a couple of things. One that's
never shown up is an original cell, the animation cell
from Steambo Willie, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, So that
would be the ultimate. I think none of those who
survived to be cost of you and that we know of,
but there could be one out there so we don't know,
so that would even the archive doesn't have one, So

(47:24):
that would be the ultimate for me, would be that
that's always been something I've wanted.

Speaker 1 (47:29):
That's fascinating. Yeah, And what about things from the early
Disneyland itself? I mean, like e tickets come to mind,
you know, when I wasn't.

Speaker 2 (47:40):
Here in Disyland. I think I've seen it all. Maybe
we even had a pirate from Disneyland one day. I'll
tell you briefly, this is amazing to me. So somebody
brought us in a skeleton you know, of the I
don't know if you remember the ride. On the ride,
there's a scene where you can see this skeleton at
the bar drinking a bottle of wine and the lions

(48:00):
going through him. Right, So he brought in that actual
skeleton from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. And so
I had to call Disney on this to make sure
it was real. And I had to get an imagineer
to come by who had actually worked on the ride.
And I said, why would you take this out of
the ride? And he told me a story, and I'm

(48:21):
sorry we sold us. I would have kept this. So
when they built that ride, they couldn't get They wanted
medical skeletons, those those ones you see in doctor's offices
in the movies. They couldn't get them. There was a shortage,
so they had to get real skeletons, actual real skeletons,
and put him into Pirates of the Caribbean. And they

(48:42):
got them, I believe from India, and so they actually
used real skeletons in that ride in the beginning. And
so this piece that we had was actually a real
skeleton that they took out of the ride once they
got the the medical ones to replace it because the
bone in that humid area gets soft and so it

(49:03):
would start to sag, and so they had to take
the real skeletons out. So this was one of the
original skeletons and fires exhibians. Crazy, crazy story that I've
heard it as an urban legend that that's what Really
they were real skeletons, but they and they really were.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
So they really were and you saw it.

Speaker 2 (49:17):
Yes, yeah, I saw it. I had a verified So
that's two eyes. Yeah. Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
Someone who knew I was going to interview you asked
this question. You also showcase Kim Weber Studio furniture. Yes,
what draws collectors to that side of Disney history. And
for our viewers and our listeners who are not familiar,
tell us about Kim Weber.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
So I will tell you. So in nineteen the Disney
Studio is just to be on Hyperion Avenue, and when
Mickey Mouse was a big success, you know, they did
snow White there and when snow White became such a
big success, he said, we need to move to a
bigger studio. So he built his Burbank studio and they
moved to it in nineteen forty. And when they built
that studio, they hired a gentleman named kem Weber, designer

(50:00):
to design all the furniture in the studio. Everything the chairs,
the desk, the animators would use, all everything that you
could think of, the lamps, everything was done by this designer.
And it's a and he was a mid century classic designer.
And his furniture, forget the stuff that was at the studio.
His furniture in general sells for thousands and thousands of dollars.

(50:23):
It's just a really great design and at but at
this time, of course it didn't and he did everything
in the studio. And so the animation desks, the chairs,
the I think in this auction coming up we have
an animation desk and a coffee table are quite collectible,
not only as Disney furniture, not only as classic mid

(50:44):
century modern furniture, but also as the work of this guy,
kem Weber. So they have three different collectors that can
that can pull from to collect them, and that's why
they're so popular. The animation desks are amazing. They were
made with little nooks and cranny so a place to
keep your pain brushes, a place to keep your pens,
even a place to keep a bottle of bliquor if
you needed it, and just everything was built into these

(51:06):
desks in different areas. So they're fascinating. A wonderful desk
and closets. I think we have a closet in this
auction coming up too. Everything just custom made by this guy,
KEM Weber, and just classic mid century modern furniture.

Speaker 1 (51:18):
So the people who know, if you know, you know, if.

Speaker 2 (51:22):
You know, you know, and there are quite a few
who do, and all that furniture. In the eighties, Disney
decided to go and get new desks for everybody, and
so they took all that furniture put in the parking
lot and sold it to the employees, you know, for
twenty five dollars or fifty dollars or whatever. And of
course these employees just bought it all up and that's
where it's coming from now or all these ex employees.

Speaker 1 (51:42):
But little did they know at the time.

Speaker 2 (51:44):
They just wanted it because it was an animation desk
and great to have at the house to you know,
work on.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
Why not more?

Speaker 2 (51:50):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (51:50):
Yeah, yeah, why not have it?

Speaker 2 (51:52):
Right? Why not have it? Yeah? And at that price
you can't lose, you know. Disney still today at Disneyland
will sell their employees the furniture from the hotels when
they you know, clean out the beds and put in
new beds, things like that. They'll sell the beds, the cabinets,
the tables, and they'll salt it employees and employees buy
it either put in their house or a lot of
them end up bringing it to us and we sell.

(52:13):
It's quite popular in auction. It's crazy.

Speaker 1 (52:16):
Yeah, that's those are great stories. So does it give
you personal gratification When someone comes and buys something, you
see how happy they are. And someone who buys some
in auction, that gets something that they really want and
maybe it really means something to them because of their
family history. They've always wanted one of these, And must

(52:37):
give you so much satisfaction more than just your job
to see people enjoying these because of what it is
that you sell in the animation, the history, the magic
of Disneyland, all those things.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
No, it does, and as a collector, I can say
I understand the feeling it is when you get something
you want, you know, and get something for your collection.
I get that feeling completely, so I share in it.
I love it when other people get to have that
opportunity also.

Speaker 1 (53:01):
For sure, well, and I'm sure this will be your
weekend to make a lot of people happy. It's been
so fun to have this ride through creativity, passion, collector,
and nostalgia with you. A huge thank you, Mike van
Eaton for sharing your stories, find the sells, the auctions,
the park memorabilia, and the people who make it all
come alive. So if you're in southern California, be sure

(53:22):
to visit Van Eaton Galleries in Studio City. The current
exhibition for Disney is this weekend, but as he said,
they've got auctions going on all the time, and their product,
their material, what their merchandise changes, so you can always
go and find something new. So remember that every piece
of art holds a story. For those of us are
fortunate enough to live close to Disneyland, we know that

(53:44):
that's the case. We love to see the magic when
people come and visit our vacation homes and they come
there because they get to sleep on a Mickey Mouse
bed or something. So until the next time, Thank you,
Mike Ben eating very much. I'm going to come and
see you. And this is so cow with val where
we find hidden jam as we have today, the creative
souls and the timeless magic all around us in southern California.

(54:05):
See you again next Friday.

Speaker 2 (54:07):
Thanks Beller