‘Treasures’ looks at film collectibles

October 27, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

McClatchy Newspapers

The offices of Joe Maddalena’s Profiles in History look like the inside of a film buff’s mind. Stacked and scattered in every corner are hundreds of props and speciality items from movies and TV shows.

There’s the sword and shield from the original “Clash of the Titans,” a pair of self-lacing Nikes Marty McFly wore in “Back to the Future,” Superman’s suit from “Superman Returns,” the computer used to type cryptic numbers on “Lost” and even a small Santa and his sleigh decoration from “Miracle on 34th Street.”

“Everybody knows about baseball cards and comic books and other collectibles. But, this is the next big collectible area,” says Maddalena during a break from shooting an episode of his new Syfy cable channel series “Hollywood Treasures.”

The series follows Maddalena and his team — Brian Chanes, Jon Mankuta and Tracey McCall — as they bring together rare Hollywood collectibles for the company’s auctions.

The passion for collecting started when Maddalena was young. He organized his first baseball-card show when he was 12 and by 14 had more than one million baseball cards, thousands of autographs and more than 100,000 comic books and original pieces of art.

His interests changed to historical documents and books when he moved to California in 1980.

He had his first auction of Hollywood items in 1995.

Many of the items he sells come from the studios or actors.

The company is holding a special charity auction Nov. 6 that includes items from “Back to the Future,” which were donated by the film’s writer/producer Bob Gale. If you have always wanted to own your own “time traveling” DeLorean, the estimated cost is $80,000 to $120,000.

A list of auction items is at profilesinhistory.com.