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At what price fame? Depends on the name

Johnny Depp? $70. Uncle Miltie? $150. Celebrity scribbles are big business for this Brandon autograph dealer.

By JAY CRIDLIN
Published October 21, 2005

Here's Greg Albach with Jodie Foster. Here he is with George Clooney. Here he is with a teenage Jessica Alba, with Verne "Mini-Me" Troyer, with porn star Ron Jeremy, with each of the Kids in the Hall.

"You can't make friends like some of the friends that I have," said Albach, standing beneath a wall of photos of himself with dozens of celebrities.

Over the years, Albach, 32, has schmoozed more A-listers than Billy Bush, building a hobby into a thriving business with six-figure sales.

His shop, Sign Here Autographs, next to Brandon's AMC Regency movie theater, is lined with photos, posters and artwork from hundreds of celebrities, from Harrison Ford to Jennifer Lopez to the cast of American Pie.

Photos of R2D2 and Chewbacca signed by the actors who played them? Forty-five bucks apiece. Johnny Depp is $70. Milton Berle is $150. A Mel Gibson Braveheart poster is $499. Albach just sold a Bob Dylan guitar for $3,200.

In all, Albach has more than 10,000 celebrity autographs, including 2,500 different pieces. Each one, he says, was obtained in person by himself or an associate; he gives customers a certificate listing when, where and how the autograph was obtained.

Since opening his Brandon store in May, Albach has tried to bring Hollywood to the Tampa Bay area. He hosted a signing with actor Warwick Davis, from Willow and Leprechaun, that drew more than 200 fans in July. And on Friday he'll bring in David Carradine, Kung Fu's Caine and Kill Bill's Bill.

"We've put in our time. We've made the connections," said Albach, who lives in Valrico. "I have 10 people a day walk in and say, "I want your job.' "

The South Carolina native, whose first autograph was wrestler Ric Flair at a Hardee's, has always had a flair for entrepreneurship, working as a ticket broker and baseball card shop owner since his teens.

He has sold autographs online since 1994, in the early days of Internet commerce. Sometimes he'd fly out to L.A., hang out around movie sets, red-carpet premieres and awards shows for a few days, then fly back to Florida with dozens of signatures. Or he'd pay for a few hours with a star like Carrie Fisher and leave with hundreds of photos.

He briefly owned a shop in Temple Terrace in the mid '90s, but he says he has been waiting for the Brandon location to open up for a decade.

Fans wander in from the theater while waiting for a movie to browse the hundreds of photos on Albach's gallery walls. Eva Longoria in lingerie costs $65, the same as Tony Curtis in drag. At $125, a Paris Hilton/Nicole Richie photo is $50 more than the Al Pacino hanging directly above it. And music purists beware: Ashlee Simpson ($75) and Hillary Duff ($65) cost more than Moby, Kanye West and Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong ($50 apiece).

And each of those signatures costs more than a single signed shot of Don Knotts as Barney Fife. At $40, Albach sees Knotts as an investment buy. "Barney Fife is a timeless character," he says. "When Don's gone, Barney will go on forever."

A sales pitch? Maybe, maybe not. Autographs invariably rise in value when a celebrity passes on, especially one as iconic as Knotts.

For example, Albach has a delightful collection of celebrity self-portraits, from Mark Hamill to Slash to the late Rick James. When Albach acquired the James piece, he might have sold for $50. But that was before Dave Chappelle turned the singer's name into a national catchphrase. When James died, the portrait became a "portfolio piece," Albach says, suitable for a museum. Its current price tag? $800.

For an established dealer, autographs are a steady, but pricey business. Besides his rent, Albach has to buy last-minute flights to Los Angeles, hotel rooms, rental cars, thousands of glossy celebrity 8-by-10s, and even information on where celebrities can be found, from bellhops, hangers-on and even airline employees.

Obtaining an autograph isn't always easy. Prince doesn't sign. Barbra Streisand and Liz Taylor are notoriously difficult to catch. Marlon Brando would mercilessly insult any autograph seeker who came his way. Albach flew out to L.A. on a day's notice to wait 19 hours for Brad Pitt on the Fight Club set, only to have Pitt say he didn't feel like signing.

Then there's Angelina Jolie. Albach has met and chatted with the actor several times and bumped into her and Billy Bob Thornton before their engagement became public. Albach kept such news to himself - he wanted autographs, not gossip for the tabloids - and Jolie has always repaid him with friendly patience.

Once, as Jolie signed a stack of photos for Albach, he mentioned that simply by signing her name, she was effectively paying off his mortgage. A bit flabbergasted, Jolie signed every photo Albach had on him, then waited while he went to his car for more. He left with nearly 50 photos worth about $3,000, all in the span of maybe 10 minutes.

But over the past year, the paparazzi's relentless coverage of Jolie's personal life has made her unattainable. "Right now, I can't get within a thousand yards of her, just because she's so sought-after, because of the whole Brad Pitt thing," Albach said. "Her dad probably couldn't get near her right now."

It's an ever-changing business, this practice of collecting and selling smears of ink on paper. While Albach has a few special items in his personal collection - a piece of the ship from Titanic, the leather jacket worn by Edward Furlong on the DVD cover for John Waters' Pecker - he says he doesn't get too attached to anything he could someday sell.

"The way I look at it, everything has a price," he said. "It's not like a stamp - it's a signature, and every one's unique."

- Jay Cridlin can be reached at 727 893-8336 or cridlin@sptimes.com

THIS WAY, GRASSHOPPER: Actor David Carradine Kung Fu, Kill Bill will sign autographs at 6 p.m. today at Sign Here Autographs, 2498 W Brandon Blvd., next to the AMC Regency theater. Signed photos are $25, posters are $50 and replica samurai swords are $65. For more information, call (813) 654-8122 or visit www.autographdealer.com

[Last modified October 20, 2005, 10:29:05]