Florida man’s big Disney collection, born in Orlando, now headed for auction block

[Disney4me]

Joel Magee, a.k.a. the Toy Scout, to auction off his vast Disney collection, including rare theme park items.

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Florida man’s big Disney collection, born in Orlando, now headed for auction block

The original three hitchhiking ghosts from Magic Kingdom's Haunted Mansion are part of Joel Magee's collection. He turned down an offer of $750,000 for them three years ago, he said. (Joel Magee / Courtesy photo)

 

Joel Magee, noted appraiser of toys, memorabilia and theme-park relics, is getting rid of his Disney collection.

It’s a big deal, literally. Workers needed two weeks to move the items from his West Palm Beach house into five semis. Eventually, the Disney goods — ranging from name tags to retired ride vehicles — will be auctioned off, but they may pop up in exhibitions across the country before then.

Magee has appeared on History Channel’s “Pawn Star” and MeTV’s “Collector’s Call” and is referred to as “American’s Toy Scout.”

“I travel the whole country. I’ve done this for 30 years, so I’ve had access to being able to put my ads in the paper. ‘Hey, if you have anything Disney-related, bring it out. I’d love to see it,’” Magee said.

His personal jumbo Disney stash began at a collectibles event in Orlando, he said.

“There was a gentleman there that had a whole bunch of cool Disney items. They were from the park, and I didn’t even know that you could get items from the parks,” Magee said. “I bought some of the pieces, and I caught the bug.”

Magee has kept ride models, costumes, attractions posters, figures, signs and various other theme park memorabilia in his West Palm Beach home. (Joel Magee / Courtesy photo)

Among his early purchases was an original poster for Haunted Mansion, his favorite ride.

“I remember giving him at the time $1,000 for it. I’m like, ‘Oh my god, I just paid $1,000 for a poster,” Magee said. “And now that same poster goes for $10,000. I mean, it’s just crazy.”

His Disney attraction predates that pricey poster. His first visit to Magic Kingdom was after his high-school graduation in 1980, when he was drawn to the If You Had Wings attraction, he said. Now he owns a biplane from the long-gone ride.

“It’s the only prop that I know of to exist from that ride,” he said. “There’s got to be something else somewhere, but we’ve never heard of one before.”

He recalls losing out in the bidding for a cast member costume for If You Had Wings.

“It ended up going for like $6,000 or $7,000 for just an outfit — a polyester outfit,” Magee said.

His collection also features the original 1971 Haunted Mansion trio of hitchhiking ghosts figures, a Dumbo the Flying Elephant ride vehicle, a control panel from the monorail cockpit and an early Disneyland maintenance worker uniform. He has Disney toys dating back to the 1930s, he said.

Then came the decision to downsize his home and download the collection.

“We’re moving, actually, and I’m like, it’s time,” Magee said.

Magee has collected pennants, hats, lunchboxes, games and tabletop figures from Walt Disney World and Disneyland. (Joel Magee / Courtesy photo)

He reached out to Mike Van Eaton, co-owner of California-based Van Eaton Galleries, which regularly runs large Disney-driven auctions. Van Eaton flew to South Florida to check out the collection, much of which was stuffed into Magee’s 9,000-square-foot home.

Now the gallery plans to have an auction solely of Magee’s possessions, and Van Eaton hopes to have a pop-up exhibition that travels from city to city before the event.

“The thing that makes this collection great is that it actually tells a story. It tells the history of Disneyland through artifacts, from the clothing that the cast members wore to the signage to the props to the attraction posters,” Van Eaton said. “It was not random. It’s thought out, and he focused on certain things.”

 

Van Eaton Galleries previously exhibited a one-man collection — smaller than Magee’s — in a former Sports Authority space. It was opened up to the public.

“We were hoping to get a few thousand people, and we ended up getting about 50,000 people. … And people were waiting three hours to see this exhibit,” Van Eaton said. “This is in a town where Disneyland is right around the corner.”

The Van Eaton Galleries staff will inventory, catalog and photograph Magee’s collection in a rented facility in Southern California before displaying it.

“We’d like to see it move through the spring and the summer and then come back to Los Angeles, then go to auction in the fall,” Van Eaton said. “For me, it’s an adventure on its own to try to figure out how to make this work.”

Auctions are impossible to predict, but there are “major, major pieces just scattered throughout,” Van Eaton said.

“He’s got some key pieces that are going to do well. I can tell you that Dumbo ride vehicle, which the only other one I have seen offered for sale was in 2018. That one went for half a million dollars,” he said.

Magee said he was offered $750,000 for his hitchhiking ghosts.

“That was three years ago. We turned it down,” he said.

The auction also will feature items affordable to average Disney fans, in the $20 to $50 range, Van Eaton said. The wide appeal of the collection was another draw to him, he said.

“I don’t want an auction of just stuff that costs $100,000,” he said.

 

 

Dewayne Bevil

Orlando Sentinel