Star Trek, The Collectibles, By Steve Kelley

Star Trek, The Collectibles, By Steve Kelley
I was honoured to receive a copy of this book recently. The saying, “First impressions count”, with this books cover, it’s off not just to a flying start, but traveling at warp speed.
Along with a Foreword by Chris Doohan, the son of the late James “Scotty Doohan, you are shown not just pictures of some of the authors Star Trek Collection, but of the authors family. My only regret is none of Steve where included.
The contents are broken down into 35 categories, starting from Banks, and ending with Video and Laser discs. This, of course, makes it useful for quick referencing.
Each item is catalogued with a detailed picture of an item, and 2 prices of each item, to quote the author, “A two-tier pricing system is based on the averages of “mint to near mint, out-of-the-box/packaging”. This helps the reader to determine the worth of a collectible that may fall in between the mint out of package and mint in package.
Jean-Luc Picard once said "The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We wish to better ourselves and the rest of humanity." But for any collector, the value of each item in your collection is a good thing to know, this book will help you realize that. I found this book came in handy, when recently I bough an out of print Star Trek book, which at first glance I thought the asking price was way too steep. After looking the title up in this book, I found to my surprise, that the price was reasonable if not a steal. Hence I was only too glad to pay the asking price.
I leave you with a quick summary from the jacket of the book:
* More than 1,200 full-color images showcase a variety of collectibles.
* Pricing in two condition grades for fast and accurate value assessment.
* Listings for popular collectibles including action figures, Lunch boxes and toys as well as harder-to-find items such as props, autographs and sleeping bags.
During an interview with a New Hampshire ABC News affiliate, Kelley was referred to as “New Hampshire´s Super Trekkie.” The interview can be viewed at YouTube.com.
As a Star Trek fan and collector for more than 35 years, I am proud to know the author, and to have him as a member of my Star Trek forum. The book can be bought or ordered from most book stores, or at Amazon at: http://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-Col...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226156788&sr=8-1
You can also meet and talk to the author at: http://krillmeed.com/forum/index.php

Paul Egan. 08.11.2008

 

It's a good book, well illustrated in full colour, but it's not the ultimate collectibles book. But then, you couldn't do that in a single volume. So this book focuses strictly on original series-related collectibles. It's well-documented evidence that Steve Kelley has one hell of a collection, but it's hard to be certain how comprehensive it is beyond that. The selection of books, for example, seems kind of arbitrary. Obviously not all Trek books are collectibles, and you could fill a whole book just dealing with Star Trek books, but I'm not sure how Steve decided which books to include and which not to.

Steve's also included some unlicenced/unauthorized material, but there's an endless amount of that kind of stuff out there, so again I'm not sure what criteria were used for determining what should be in and what should be out.

Still, there's a lot of neat stuff in here, it's fun to browse through, and it's the first book of its kind in several years. Definitely worth a look.

 

This book holds a special place in my heart. Steve was kind enough to send a copy after hearing that my brother Ben was fighting leukemia last month, and I will forever be grateful.

I had a wonderful experience going through the book with my Mom, the day after Ben passed. It warmed our hearts to look through it, compare Steve's collection with out own and share memories of putting our collection together.

My thanks to Steve and a big congratulations on a well done book that shows us the history of Trek Collectibles through his own unique collection and perspective.

 

My copy arrived from Amazon a day or two ago, and I flicked through to get a first impression of the contents.

Being the TrekLit junkie that I am (I STILL buy 2 copies of every paperback Pocket publishes -- 1 to read, and 1 to lovingly seal in plastic and place on the "Collectible" shelves) I immediately turned to the "Books" section.

Unfortunately, the first paragraph I read on page 51 contains a rather glaring error. In his description of David Gerrold's 1973 The Trouble with Tribbles, Kelley starts out "Gerrold's novel adaptation of his popular episode of the same name."

Kelley then goes on to detail "changes" Gerrold made in his "novelization."

Gerrold's book, as it's cover states, is "The story behind a Star Trek show! -- The birth, sale and final production of one episode." Not a novelization, but a "Making-Of" book.

I think Kelley's comments are actually about the James Blish adaptation of the episode, as found in Star Trek 3. Which, as Gerrold explains in his book, was based on an early draft of the script, and has some differences from the aired episode.

I don't mean to jump all over Kelley. It was just unfortunate that the first page I read contains what I see as a pretty significant error. It leaves me wondering how thoroughly Kelley researched stuff in the book that I don't already know about.

 

Thats a good catch on the "error" in my book. However, the error was not intentional and was actually caused apparently during final editing where I either missed it during a final proofing or probably never saw it at all. That is until it was too late after the book was published.
My original description did not say: "Gerrold's novel adaptation of his popular episode of the same name." but instead stated correctly: "Mr. Blishes novel adaptation of Mr. Gerrold's popular episode of the same name." In the process of the editor tweaking my rather long description down to fit into the space, they inadvertently edited out some of the text which included the mentioning of Mr. Blish's novelization of the episode of the same name and the changes that Mr. Blish made to where it suddenly then became Mr. Gerrold". This is not so much an excuse but more of a reality of what can happen during the editing process of a book with so many images, descriptions and details. With 250 pages and thousands of images and descriptions, sadly a couple errors did not get caught in this first printing.
This error is known by the publisher along with a few others and if the book goes into a second printing these errors will be corrected before hand.
I would like to point out that these few little glitches are just that, a couple minor editing errors and I certainly hope that they do not distract anyone from what is overall a very well laid out and beautiful book with lots of great images and information on collecting Trek memorabilia.

Steve Kelley

 

I recently got my copy of this book and immediately realized that it was dedicated to classic Trek collectibles. However, the fist thing I noticed was on page 43, where it shows the Hamilton action figures, he shows Deanna Troi and Geordi LaForge next to Kirk, Spock and Uhura. That jumped out at me within five minutes of browsing the book.

I also noticed that no mention is made of the Official Star Trek Fan Club Magazine. To me this is almost unforgivable. Certainly many of these, especially the early ones, who be highly prized and collectible. I would give almost anything to have issues 1 thru 48!

Third, no mention is made of the DC Comic runs of which there were two series for classic Trek.

Anyway, I may post other observations in the future if have time to look at the book in more detail.

Kevin

 

In the early process of this book the amount of content I provided for it's pages was on a much larger scale than what the publisher said they could fit in the allowed 250 pages and 1500 images. I had a very hard time with that as I obviously wanted to have as much packed into this book as was possible, even if that meant it would have to be a NY city phone book sized volume. But I was told that a massive volume like that would not only be very cost prohibitive but simply unrealistic. Being a huge Trek fan myself I didn't like the fact that quite a few collectibles would be missing and not represented, even in text, but the reality here is that it is near impossible to actually have "everything" ever produced put into a single volume. This has been true with every past Trek collectors book ever produced (except perhaps the Trek Playmates version) and so it was no different with mine.
This book still has over 1500 full color images, with thousands of descriptions and a lot more. It is literally packed from cover to cover with over 40 years of Star Trek collectible and memorabilia goodness.
I am confident that even with the publishing limitations Star Trek fans and collectors will still find this beautiful book to be one of if not the best Kirk era Trek collectibles books produced to date.

Steve

 

I like this book. The best thing about it is that it has a lot of nice color pictures so that I can see things (a lot of things, actually) that aren't in my collection. It must have taken an enormous amount of time and effort to put it together, and I appreciate the hard work. It definitely comes across as having been written by a person who is not only a Trek fan but also as one who likes the collecting experience as well.

One thing I do want to point out, though, is that the section in the book on Trek slides and film cells is a bit broad and awfully short. Specifically, there are many different types of film-oriented products out there -- e.g., press slides, mounted film clips, commercial "film cells," etc. -- and the section treats them as all being similar. The reason I bring this up is that current market prices for the various types range from a few cents to $100+ for single frames/cells. I realize that not everything can be covered in great detail in a book such as this, but, as a long time Trek film collector, I did want to point this out.

All-in-all, though, I think this type of collectibles reference book is really needed - it's a worthwhile endeavor (along with the companion magazine) and should be updated regularly.