In a Season 9 episode of “Seinfeld,” Kramer reconstructs the remnants of the “The Merv Griffin Show” in his apartment so he can host his own talk show. As far as “hipster doofus” fantasies go, it’s a pretty good one — what TV lover hasn’t fantasized about sitting down behind Johnny Carson’s desk from “The Tonight Show,” or wished they could post up for a pint next to Norm and Cliff at the bar from “Cheers”? Thanks to James Comisar, curator of the Comisar Collection, you can now do just that — and unlike Kramer, you don’t have to fish it out of a dumpster to do it. Starting on June 2, Comisar is selling almost 1,000 items from his personal collection of television memorabilia, from the 1950s to present day, that fans and collectors can win for as little as a dollar, if they’re lucky.
Starting in the early 1990s when he was working on studio lots as a young television writer, Comisar began collecting anything he could find from various props departments — not just shows he loved, but from any whose history threatened to disappear as production companies recycled or in many cases discarded their ephemera. Decades later, he’s assembled an expansive archive that includes everything from Adam West and Burt Ward’s Batman and Robin costumes from the 1966 series “Batman” to Pamela Anderson’s C.J. Parker swimsuit from “Baywatch” to the well-worn furniture occupied by Carroll O’Connor’s Archie Bunker on “All in the Family” to, yes, the actual bar used on screen in “Cheers.”
After this literal and metaphorical clearinghouse, what do you expect or anticipate will be your status as a collector?
Well, I think my days of collecting for my own archive are over. I feel like I will continue to represent the buying interests of important buyers all over the world. But in actual fact, what I’m going to do after this is going to my wife and I and my daughter. We’re very committed to rescuing animals, dogs, and cats. Always with an interest towards very senior animals, animals that have stage four something-or-another. We always take those animals into our home. As my daughter was when she was a little younger, we had to put that on hold because it was hard to see an animal in the house three months and then it was gone. But we see a future in really focusing in on saving these animals and giving them a little dignity and comfort in the last chapter of their lives. I guess in some ways, that’s another saving and collecting. But that’s where our interests will go, though it’s not going to be any more years of gathering. We had a incredible run. We’ve created a collection that never existed. We fostered and pioneered an area of collection that simply did not exist before I got the call to be of service to these pieces. That’s for me personally, it’s very satisfying. Because at many times during the journey I thought, “Am I out of my mind? Does anybody care about this stuff like I do?” The answer is hell yes.
