Via Collectorsweekly.com:
Brandon Alinger has a movie-prop collection that would make any Gen-Xers’ head explode: He owns an authentic “Ghostbuster” ghost trap with the slide-out cartridge, a “Star Wars” rebel pilot helmet, and the lightsaber that Luke Skywalker carried in “Return of the Jedi.” Alinger’s ownership of all these holy grails of 1980s cinema makes sense when you realize that for the last 10 years, the 34-year-old has made a career of buying and selling movie props as the chief operations officer at Prop Store in Los Angeles. Alinger has also researched and written a handful of official Lucasfilm books on the “Star Wars” movies, which allowed him to peruse the studio’s costume archive and the personal files of “Return of the Jedi” producer Howard Kazanjian.
Recently, Kazanjian, who was also an executive producer of “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark,” partnered with Comic-Con International: San Diego to create a streaming web series about collecting, available on ComicCon HQ. He called on Mark Hamill, who was a comic and sci-fi obsessive before he became a “Star Wars” hero, to host what became “Mark Hamill’s Pop Culture Quest.” In the 10-episode series that debuted in November 2016, Mark and a puppet named Pop, voiced by “Robot Chicken’s” Dan Milano, hang out in a “den” stuffed with beat-up furniture, outdated tech, and loads of pop-culture detritus before the show delves into collectors’ homes, stores, museums, and conventions. As Episode 9’s featured collector, Brandon Alinger had the privilege of joining Hamill in the man-cave-like set. There, he surprised the actor known as Luke Skywalker with the authentic lightsaber prop Hamill once wielded.
Click below to read the full article.
