Spy Movie Collectibles

James Bond collectibles are hot and it’s fun to have a few!  Here are a few of the favorites we have!

Hi, this is Dan Silvestri – while Tom Pizzato is traveling at the time of this recording – so I’m here solo, doing a podcast on some James Bond collectibles that are in our vault!  Think about owning a cool James Bond movie replica, or a prop manufactured for the movie that may have made it into the film or not, or an actual screen-used prop!  These are all fun to collect, so let’s take a look!

If you have listened to other podcasts of our, you know I am into collectibles, especially autographs.  But I have things from ancient Rome, NASA (US space program) collectibles and more.

So, naturally, I have some spy movie collectibles, especially Bond!

Autographs

Let’s start with a few autographs.

• Sean Connery, one of my top favorite Bonds, is certainly an area of interest, and so I have a signed publicity still of Sean Connery as James Bond in From Russia With Love,in the train car.  This is very cool, and so I actually framed it myself and found a small, inexpensive digital recorder and speaker kit – I don’t even know if they make them anymore . . . and attached the kit to the rear of the frame (takes 4 double A batteries) and the “play” button to the side of the frame.   When you press the button on my Sean Connery signed and framed photograph, it is Sean Connery, as Bond, saying, “A martini, shaken, not stirred” with the James Bond theme music playing.  Very fun!
• I also have a Pierce Brosnan signed photograph, and just recently bought a George Lazenby signed photograph from Anders Frejdh (FRAID). This last one was from the 50th-anniversary tour for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, one of my all-time favorite Bond films.   I’m going to try to get all of the Bonds – Timothy Dalton, Daniel Craig, and Roger Moore.
• My favorite Felix Leiter before Jeffrey Wright is David Hedison.  I say before Wright, but I probably like them both equally.  So I have purchased a David Hedison signed check!  This is very cool. This item was purchased at auction and had a PSA/DNA Pre-Certified Status – meaning it was reviewed by experts at PSA/DNA and is guaranteed to pass final testing and marking.   And bank check are great – because they tell a story in themselves: this one is made out to the Beverly Hills Postmaster for $15, on October 25, 1968 – for stamps!
• One of my favorite autographs is Caroline Munro’s!  Of course, she plays Naomi in The Spy Who Loved Me – Stromberg’s assistant who comes to collect Bond and Triple X (posing as Mr. and Mrs. Sterling) in Sardinia Italy and is later the helicopter pilot chasing bond driving the Lotus into the water, and the first woman Bond kills on-screen!  Tom and I met with her in London once for a few hours – she is a delight!  She signed a bunch of autographs for us, and we took pictures with her.  Wonderful woman!  Inscription on card: “Dear Dan – it’s so lovely to meet with you – your knowledge of Bond is amazing – Thank you so much for the lovely afternoon – All my Best Wishes, Caroline Munro as Naomi 007”   How lovely indeed!

Other things and props

I would love to own some screen-used props from the Bond movies – these are hard to come by and very expensive.   I know a guy who has one of the spearguns from Thunderball!  So, I have some stuff which is cool – made for the films and might be buried in some shots.

• I have a $100 bill from Licence to Kill – you remember the shot where Bond highjacks Sanchez’s drug delivery plane, and Bond cuts open the packets of money and the bills are flying all over the place – I have one of those bills!  This one looks pretty good from a distance and does say on the upper left: “THIS IS NOT VALID.  IT IS FOR USE IN MOTION PICTURES ONLY AND IS NON-NEGOTiABLE.  ITS USE FOR ANY OTHER PURPOSE WILL BE IN VIOLATION OF LAW.”    Its provenance is that the bill was originally obtained at the shooting location in Key West Florida (Sugar Loaf Key) at the airport office from the airport manager who was keeping a bunch as a collectible from the film.
• I also own a $100 bill from the Pierce Brosnan Bond film, Tomorrow Never Dies.  When Bond breaks into the safe, there are a few piles of bills stacked on the left side of the safe.  This one I have looks like a real $100 bill – except . . . it has printed in the upper right-hand corner: “For Motion Picture Use Only” – and if you notice in this scene in the film, the bills are stacked in piles strategically to cover the upper right corner of the bills!   This one is cool!  So maybe it as somewhere in one of those stacks!  It was originally obtained from Pinewood Studios.
• In Licence to Kill, again, one of my favorite Bond movies, the title sequence shows a casino table, a roulette table to be specific, and there are chips all over the table.   I have two clay chips: a green $25 chip and a purplish $100 chip.  Again, there are piles of chips, and others made for the movie but these are marked Casino de Isthmus and have the top-hat and cane indented patterns along the edges, which were the ones used for the movie.   My contact says that these chips can be seen in the opening title sequence of the film.
• From Octopussy,  I have a $100 Rupee paper money prop, issued from the fictitious Reserve Bank of Indapur.  The seller claims it was used in the film scene where Bond and Kamal Khan are playing backgammon, and Bond wins $200,000 Rupees.  Khan starts writing a check and Bond says, “I prefer cash.”
• From Casino Royale, I have 4 playing cards that were made for the movie (probably nowhere on-screen) that have Casino Royale logo on the backside twice and the crown logo.   AND a $500 chip, with Casino Royale around the center, and the crown pattern along the edges.  Cool!  These were probably overruns, and never used in the film, or who knows – they could be in the background somewhere, or in the card shoe!  But fun to have!

Books:

I have one weird book that is apparently a collectible.   A friend found it in a used book shop, and it is a hard-cover only about 5.5  inches by 7.25 inches, it is entitled: “The Book of Bond – Or Every Man His Own 007” and is written as though it was by Lt. Col. William (Bill) Tanner *M’s assistant) who authored the book.     It is “written” by him – a fictional character!  It is a Viking Press book from 1965, and on the inside cover flap is priced at $2.50 US.  The book is broken up into chapters entitled things like, Drink.  Looks.   Smokes. Etc. and in the margins, to validate what is written, are the initials of the title of the relevant Bond story, like FRWL (From Russia With Love), along with a number indicating the relevant chapter.  And he does something similar for the short story collections.  And it really is about YOU becoming like 007 in all these chapter aspects, and more amusing than serious for sure.  This is really written by Kingsley Amis, who wrote three books including “The James Bond Dossier” and the first Bond continuation novel, “Colonel Sun”, under the pen name, Robert Markham.  Thanks to my friends on Facebook, Nick, Oliver and Daryl for this insight!  Very odd indeed!

If anyone knows more about this book, email me at Dan@SpyMovieNavigator.com – I have found some info on it but not a ton.   I know there were two different versions of the book.  On one version the cover reversed and the opposite side said the Bible – in case you wanted to read clandestinely!  My version, the cover does not have anything printed on its reverse side.  Even in this used book store, it was priced at $40!

Replicas

If you remember in Casino Royale (2006) when Alex Dimitrios is playing poker and Bond joins in at the Ocean Club, Dimitrios wants to up the stakes and throws in a keyring with an Aston Martin DB5, and car key, as part of the pot.   Well, I purchased the same kind of DB5 keyring along with the Lotus Esprit keyring – you remember the Lotus Esprit in The Spy Who Loved Me that turns into a submersible.   These are VERY cool and are available with a lot of other reproductions and collectible at 007.com, and their US counterpart https://usa.007store.com/.   Tell them SpyMovieNavigator.com sent you!  They have a lot of 007 collectibles and are awesome to work with.

There are also other prop shops and online stores to purchase real movie props and additional replicas.   We will get you more info on these places, on our website.   Tons of fun stuff on the 007.com site!

Well, this concludes our quick look at some of the James Bond memorabilia that we have  – remember, there are lots of places online to purchase movie memorabilia.   We have a place near us in Chicago which we are going to visit, and the guy has tons of movie memorabilia, including spy movie stuff!  So look for that podcast soon, and maybe even a video!

This has been Dan Silvestri – and Tom Pizzato is still on vacation even after recording this – hah!  If you were listening to this podcast. Check out our YouTube channel.   We plan on shooting a video of the items for your viewing pleasure!

Have fun collecting, always ask about the provenance (history of ownership of the item,)  and have a great time!  Please tell your friends about our podcasts, and give us a 5-star rating!   Thanks!