Movies
The Time Machine at the Thrift Store
The gleaming Time Machine from George Pal's 1960 classic vanished after MGM's 1970 auction. Five years later, a collector found it wrecked in a California thrift shop — for $1,000.
The gleaming brass sled-and-dish Time Machine from George Pal''s 1960 classic was sold off at MGM''s infamous 1970–71 studio auction — the same fire sale that scattered the ruby slippers to the world. Film historian Bob Burns bid on it and lost to the owner of a traveling show. The machine toured as a sideshow attraction and then vanished.
About five years later, a friend of a friend told Burns he''d spotted something odd in a thrift shop in Orange, California. Burns rushed over. There it was: the Time Machine, wrecked — chair gone, pods broken — but with its great gold dish intact. He bought one of cinema''s most beloved props for $1,000, then called George Pal, who had years earlier given Burns the original blueprints.
With a volunteer crew that included future ILM Oscar-winner Dennis Muren and Star Trek writer D.C. Fontana, Burns restored the machine in four weeks. It debuted at his legendary Burbank Halloween show in 1976 with a delighted Pal in attendance, and went on to appear in Gremlins and Carl Sagan''s Cosmos.
The lo.st takeaway: A prop this recognizable still needed a lucky sighting by someone who happened to know someone who cared. Recovery by coincidence is not a system. A tag is a system.