Buried Treasure

I searched my DVR for something cool to watch yesterday as I took a break from the day's duties. I knew that one of my favorite shows, Hollywood Treasure, had started up a second season a few days before, and there sat two fresh episodes waiting to be watched!

Hollywood Treasure follows an auction house based in southern California and it's proprietor/leader, Joe Maddalena, as he searches for movie props, artwork, clothing etc., to sell. Last season, he brokered the sale of the Wicked Witch hat from The Wizard of Oz, among many other cool movie memorabilia and artifacts. Joe finds stuff all over the world to carry back to L.A.. Some items are coy-- quietly waiting to be discovered and sold for more money than one can imagine.

In the second episode last night from Hollywood Treasure, Joe was approached by a career film industry guy named Dave Gregory, who had been holding on to the original title card from RKO Studios. In the end, this item sold for a whopping $85,000...a piece of forgotten cardboard propped up behind Mr. Gregory's door for 20 years, rescued from a trash heap!

Lauren Vogt, a San Francisco resident and longtime prop and makeup artist, was in need of a financial miracle to save her home. Joe scoured an outdoor shed behind her home, piled to the roof with various memorabilia, in hopes of finding some valuable artifacts. In his trouble, while ruffling through crumbling boxes and rat-infested containers, Joe discovered models from James and the Giant Peach and Nightmare Before Christmas, and masks from Enemy Mine. During Lauren's time in the movie business, she created these models, as well as painted cells for Saturday morning cartoons--many of which were found in the shed, on the verge of rotting and being tossed into the garbage. She simply took stuff home over the years after the productions were through, only to eventually amass a treasure-trove in her backyard. But she never knew it. Thank God that Joe found some cool stuff, collectors made a new home for the objects, and Lauren took home enough money from the auction to turn her dire circumstances around. Little did she know that this decrepit backyard shed would hold the key to unlock the cell door of her difficulties.

Sometimes we stop short of a miracle. Sometimes the mother lode is just a trowel-scrape away from revealing itself. When our hope is hanging on by an ever-fraying thread, the answer to our trouble might just be hiding in the backyard, or somewhere else we may never expect.