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Introduction - My name is David Kuflik and I believe I may have one of the best Celebrity autograph collections out there

(apologies in advance for the length of my post)

Hello, my name is David Kuflik and I believe I may have one of the best celebrity autograph collections on the planet. My father (Harvey Kuflik) and aunt (Rhoda Kuflik) started collecting in-person autographs in New York in the early 1950’s and continued vigorously collecting their whole lives (Harvey passed in 2002 and Rhoda passed in 2012). Both collected for the love of it and didn’t sell their autographs. Their collections are fully intact and almost all of them were collected in person. My father also acquired a couple smaller autograph collections from his collecting friends in Hollywood. I collected actively with my father in Hollywood as a kid in the 1980’s. I inherited their collections and after working 17 years at Microsoft, I left my day job and have dedicated the past two years full time curating this collection.

I’ve got close to 80,000 autographs, more than 20,000 of which are signed photos. I have very few duplicates of the same photo. 22 Marilyn Monroe autographs, 6 of which are signed photos. I’ve also got a lot of good sports and music autographs as well.

My celebrity autograph collection is going to be featured in a dedicated 30 minute TV episode on a major cable network in the coming weeks.

What am I going to do with all these autographs? I’m going to sell them. I did a small auction with RR Auction in September. http://www.rrauction.com/past_auction_results.cfm?SearchCrit=kuflik... .

I’m currently in their February auction with some modern autographs. See here. http://www.rrauction.com/browse_gallery.cfm?SearchCrit=%20%20&C...=

I plan to use RR Auction at the high end of the spectrum, but that only covers a few thousand items. For all the other autographs, I plan to sell those directly to consumers along with my unsigned headshots from my website (hasn’t launched yet), via eBay, and Amazon. I’ve decided to roll my sleeves up and sell directly because there is just too much sweat equity in these autographs to sell in bulk at wholesale prices. I have no plans to ever acquire autographs from outside sources. I’m just a guy who inherited this awesome pristine collection and will exit the business when everything is sold.

It’s also worth noting that I also have several hundred thousand original unsigned Agency Headshots with resumes of almost every actor and actress from the late 1970’s until 2004. These headshots were actually used in the casting process and nobody else has these in any quantity. Many of the photos are not on the Internet. I never sold autographs but I sold these headshots on eBay in the early 2000’s under the name risingstarphotos and they were very popular. We were the top seller of the Movie photos category on eBay for years. I’ve never sold autographs before but have a lot of past experience in the memorabilia business selling headshots on eBay at high volumes. My father got over 3,000 of these headshots signed, many before the actors were even famous.

Here's a glimpse of the b- list signed headshot collection. I’ve put aside hundreds of a-listers in a different folder: https://1drv.ms/i/s!An5aCe8YraAGhr4Mq3b8WlWlOgJdug

Here’s is where it all started:

https://1drv.ms/f/s!An5aCe8YraAGieY0SgwkxE1Q5Tb8uA

There is sooooooo much more than this in many different forms (Lobby Cards, Books, Color Photos, Candid Photos, Cast Photos, etc.) I’ve been a lurker here on autograph live for the past two years and thought I would introduce myself before my TV episode airs. I’m also hoping to learn from the experts here and gather feedback and reality checks on my business approach. Unfortunately, the autograph ecosystem is full of forgeries, which hurts the industry. I’m hoping I can inject some needed authenticity into the business.

Tags: Awesome

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Kuflik on February 2, 2017 at 2:48pm

This is what I've found so far. The far right one is from 1956 and the middle one is from 1961.

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Permalink Reply by Mark Roberts on February 2, 2017 at 2:51pm

Really nice!!

Mark

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on February 3, 2017 at 3:12pm

How did your mom get that one, David? What's on the envelope?

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Permalink Reply by Greg on February 2, 2017 at 2:54pm

Thank you SO much for sharing on here, with us 'real' collectors first! Not only is this probably THE single greatest collection out there, but more importantly serves as an amazing resource of unquestionable exemplars for all of us! Please keep us informed as to when and where you will be featured on tv, as well as the site you'll use to eventually sell off your collection.

If I could ask only one favour, it would be to have whatever you sell off cataloged on the site you chose, so that even when sold, they will still be accessible to view, for research purposes, as they are, for example, on sites such as 'rrauction.com' and 'classicentertainmentautographs.com'.

Thanks once again David, and friend request also sent!

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Permalink Reply by Don Webster on February 2, 2017 at 6:59pm

Hi David...

Just a friendly to suggest you check your private messages....I'm confident you've got more than a few to answer !!

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Permalink Reply by David Kuflik on February 6, 2017 at 2:44am

Thanks for all the kind comments and great feedback.

As a heads up, In the coming weeks I'm going to be posting ~25,000 autographs (Mostly signed photos) to a public image gallery so folks can see my collection. I've scanned everything and am in the process of building the galleries. I'd like to keep the gallery online permanently as an archive of known good real autographs. I'll post the link on this site as soon as I'm done.

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Permalink Reply by Eric Keith Longo on February 6, 2017 at 9:10am

This will be stupendous! Thank you!

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Permalink Reply by David Kuflik on February 13, 2017 at 10:53pm

By the way, it was this post right here that gave me the idea to post a big chunk of the collection online at www.thekuflikcollection.com . I put a pause on my ecommerce site and spent the last 11 days scrambling to get this online for the TV episode. Thanks.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on February 13, 2017 at 10:55pm

Thank you, David. I loved looking at the collection. You got an amazing amount of autographs up in very little time.

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Permalink Reply by Jason Charnick on February 13, 2017 at 11:32pm

yes, very well presented and well organized! some of the full/multi sugned cast photos from 80's TV shows, both well known and obscure were very fun to look at! Thanks again, David for putting in all the hard work to properly pay respect to all the hard work and hustle your family went through!