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dragon:
I've mentioned this elsewhere, but think it would probably be appropriate here. My friend Tom Royal, who long had a radio program on KUSC-FM in Southern California where he played original Broadway cast albums and interviewed many of his NY theatre friends, but mainly supported himself as an amazingly knowledgeable collector and re-seller. A few years ago he sold the metal frame for Ray Harryhausen's "Mighty Joe Young" at auction at, as I recall, Sotheby's, and they put it on the cover of their catalog. Director Peter Jackson bought it for $110,000 and it was probably the most expensive found item that Tom ever sold. I have a picture on one of my hard drives of my friend and Harryhausen and the model itself. (I'm using the wrong word when I call it "model" -- it's sort of the skeleton for the stop action model.)
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Great story Ron, and I hope dragon53 will forgive this slight deviation from his subject, but I too met Ray Harryhausen.
He lived the last few years here in the UK, and some years ago did a personal appearance and talk at the Pomegranate Theatre in Chesterfield. It's not too far from where I live and being a lifelong fan I went along, and saw up close his fabulous models - he was very keen people should handle them despite their great value, and believe me they were more precious to me than the crown jewels.
He kindly signed my copy of his Film Fantasy Scrapbook, and the cover of the then newly released Intrada Jason and the Argonauts rerecording. I was a little astounded to find he had no knowledge of it's release.
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RON HARDCASTLE:
On the original KING KONG Blu-ray, there's a special feature about Peter Jackson bought the Willis O'Brien model of the Styracosaurus which was deleted from the final movie. It was in pretty bad shape, but he and his staff used it to built their own and filmed their own "deleted scenes" mini movie showing the Styracosaurus and the scene showing the ship crewmen falling into the ravine where they are killed by various monsters, "The Lost Spider Pit Sequence".
Wow. I had this nagging feeling that the model wasn't from "Mighty Joe Young." I should have picked up the phone to confirm it with my friend who sold it to Jackson!!!
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Ouch!
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Sigh. Wish I’d kept my two original Aurora 1964 editions of this guy
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I always thought the model looked better than any of the movie versions. I painted one in a gray-green scheme for Godzilla and the other gray as Gigantis. I won first prize in modeling category of our elementary school’s art “contest” in fifth grade.
Sigh! I also wish I'd kept mine. The model I purchased was an Aurora re-issue with the some glow in the dark piece. I only used the glowing fins, painted them over except for the the edges thus simulating Godzilla's radioactive glow.
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Am I jealous? Hell yeah! But do I begrudge him? Nope! He earned everything he has. 
