mikey said:
Actually, the story behind the scythes (directly from the prop guy on Buffy - which is where my scythe actually came from then through screen used) is each one of them were used - there were 3 rubber (used for the stunts) and 1 hero (the problem is each time they were used in stunts - they had to be re-painted due to damage and the next one was used, and the bigger problem was the paint job never excatly matched the last one they did - no biggie for fight sequences), so each got some screen time, and all of them still have battle marks and damage/cracks from impact/etc. I can place the paint job on mine on screen 3 times (amazingly enough). ;-) Watch the fight scenes with the scythe in slow motion, you can actually see the rubber bend in many of them, also all the rubber ones have solid spikes at the bottom, where the hero has hollow or cut out spikes (the silver spikes are at the bottom of the scythe before the stake), you can tell easily on screen when the hero and the rubber ones are used.
Where they are, Fox auctioned one on ebay and screen used got the other 2, Joss does own the Hero.
Hey, thanks for sharing that bit of info--I knew there were at least 3 in public hands, but I wasn't aware that all were verified to be screen-used. I thought the situation was akin to the troll hammers, where some exist that weren't used onscreen but rather were backups or pulls. It's good to know otherwise, although now I almost regret not considering buying one of the ones I saw on ScreenUsed. I regularly check that and the other major prop sites for interesting items, though I tend to buy more often from eBay merchants known to be trustworthy (which is a short list--there are more scammers than honest prop merchants on eBay).
mikey said:
From my understanding, there were 2 Hero Faith's knives - the one I have was used in season 3 and altered for the stab scene.
Faith did indeed use 2 different styles of knife, the Jackal in Season 3 and a different, custom style in Season 7. Of the S3 Jackal type, there should be 3 screen-used knives. The picture below comes from the guy who brokered many of the biggest
Buffy props (Mr. Pointy, the original Orb of Thesulah, etc.), though I can't recall if he said all 3 were metal or not. One of the 3 appears to be the one you have now.
mikey said:
I will say this, you have to be careful where and who you get props from, make sure you know the history of the item and you do your research on every aspect of it. ;-)
Absolutely. I typically only buy from the most established and reputable prop/wardrobe vendors, or from verifiable sources. Vendors like ScreenUsed, moviepropking, premiereprops, Propstore of London, etc., can be trusted more or less automatically, though one should watch the fine print. But, random sellers without a reputation in the prop/wardrobe community need to be dealt with carefully. Before buying my handwritten Whedon
Firefly draft script, for example, I verified that the seller did work with access to draft scripts on the show. Just this week I bought a dress worn by Claire Danes on the groundbreaking show
My So-Called Life (which is in some ways a direct ancestor to
Buffy), but only after comparing it inch-by-inch on a 100" screen to the dress seen on the DVDs to see that the patterns and seams match
exactly. The key is verifiability of some sort--you need to be able to verify either the seller or the item, if not both.
mikey said:
SergeiEsenin, I would love to see pics of the Gavrok spider, do you have any?
Unfortunately I don't have a picture of my two. :-( I just sold my digital camera to help finance a newer one, so I can't take a new image right now, either. But, I did save a picture of the other two, which were sold to a different buyer--it's not detailed and doesn't give a sense of scale, but it'll have to do for now. One thing you'll notice is that this is the spider Faith threw her knife into, plus an intact one. The ones I have are the one Buffy fell on/crushed, and an intact one. The blurry picture hides a lot of details--they're very realistically painted in greys and blues and greens, and the silicone "guts" are so lifelike I felt like vomiting when I saw my Buffy-crushed one.