New TV Series - FanAddicts!

As many of you know I'm a huge collector of movie and TV action figures and memorabilia, so when I saw commercials for this new TV series on the Reelz Channel I had to check it out. It's called FanAddicts! Here's a quick synopsis: "You think you’re a movie fan? Wait until you meet the FanAddicts!. Get inside the minds of those who simply cannot stop adding to their incredible movie memorabilia collections. With homes and storage lockers overflowing with the some of the most fascinating collections ever, they persist in the never ending quest for more. Learn why the collection has become such an obsession. What motivates them to do this? Do they ever sell anything? What are these things worth?  We'll see memorabilia from Harry Potter, Superman, Star Wars, E.T., James Bond, Star Trek, The Wizard of Oz and more, and these super fans will find out just how much money their obsession is worth.

They aired two episodes last week back to back. First one was a fan of Harry Potter, this guy is in the Guinness World Record book for having he most Harry Potter items, I think it's over 1000. It was a really good story about an 11 year old troubled kid who's grandmother gave him the first Harry Potter book when he was being grounded. He says HP saved his life and made him into the man he is today. Of course I was just entering my 30's when Harry Potter caught my attention with the first movie. I guess his experience with Harry Potter was kind of like my experience with Star Wars, being only 6 when the first movie came out (life changing). The second episode was about a fan of Superman. This guy was a bit more socially awkward. He actually portrays Superman down on Hollywood Blvd. He choose his collection over his marriage. You can love something and be obsessed about it but once it starts interfering with your "real" life then that's when I think you have a problem.

What I enjoyed about the series is that they don't make fun of the collectors. They portray them as passionate fans who love to collect things. I mean the Harry Potter collector loved all things Potter but it didn't cause chaos in his life, in fact it saved his life... unlike the Superman collector.

But tonight's episode is my favorite by far and it was about two different collectors of Star Trek stuff. The first guy is a pretty wealth guy who is also a Star Trek fan. About seven years ago the Christie's Auction house and Paramount sold off a ton of Star Trek set piece, models, uniforms and everything else they had in storage. Well this guy was there and purchased a ton of models. That's the bulk of his collection. He had quite a few of the big ticket items like the working model for Deep Space Nine. He said that these ships were in bad shape when he got them and he had to do alot of restoration to bring them back to prime condition. But the bulk of his story is when he purchased the full size shuttle craft Galileo from the original series for a whopping $70,000, but when he got it, it was a huge mess so he spent countless dollars restoring it. In the end he wound up donating it to NASA where it will be on display for everyone to see. It was an pretty amazing story and even brought me to tears.

The second story in this episode was another Star Trek fan but this guy was more your average collector... he just had alot of things. He's the type that would buy the same figure five times to get every color variant of the weapons... yeah I'm not that bad. He also built Captain's Kirks chair from the bridge of the Enterprise and they show him donating his time and his chair for photo ops for charity.

What I really liked about this particular episode, besides it being about Star Trek. They show these guys, who might be a bit obsessed with Star Trek collecting but they are doing good in this world with it.

So if you're a geek and ever collected anything, please check out this series.. it's always airing on Reelz and showing repeats all the time just check your listings.