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0:00 Hello Australia. I'm Caroline Ford and this is the sirens of audio. Leave the television show. It's the audio I want. Take it to my playlist. Yes, [Applause] [Music] [Applause] mistress. [Music] Heat up here.

0:50 [Music] Good day, audio files. This is the Sirens of Audio, the show that explores the universe of Doctor Who and other cult TV in the audio medium. My name's Dwayne. And my name's Phillip. Good day, Dwayne. Good day, Audio Files. Good day, Phillip. How's things with you? Things are great with me, thank you. with you. Yeah, real good. Um, I heard that there's uh some exciting developments in Doctor Who the television series this week that affect one of our events coming up later in the year. Well, you wouldn't believe it, but Caroline for Caroline Ford just happened to turn up

1:35 on the TV show. What a shock surprise that was. That's a very nice surprise. So, if anyone wants to grab tickets to that, she'll be appearing in Australia in Sydney and Melbourne in October. And you can get your tickets from sirensofa.com. But joining us today is someone I've been wanting to have on the podcast for a while because we're going to get a little bit of a different type of a podcast today. Something uh a little more unusual. Uh not that is not to say our guest is unusual, but let's introduce him. It's Aaron Challenger from Aaron's Collectibles in Melbourne. Good day, Aaron. Good day, guys. Do do you hear that sound? That's that's the sound of you scraping the bottom of the barrel with the guest list. Oh, that's so not true. [Laughter] Thanks for having me on, guys. Pleasure.

2:22 No, it's a pleasure to have you. Um, I've uh only met you in the last little while, not probably haven't got to know you, only in the last 12 months or so because of uh our events uh and the signings that have been happening at your store. We'll talk about your store and a lot of the beautiful collectibles that you have. Uh, but I'm interested in uh your your Doctor Who fandom. Is it, you know, you collect more than just Doctor Who. Uh, and that's more than more than Doctor Who's in your store, but is Doctor Who where you started with your science fiction fandom? It it absolutely is. And if you know me, um, and I guess you don't know me too well, but a lot of weird coincidences happen around Doctor Who and fandom for me. And

3:10 I have collected Doctor Who since the day I was born. Um, unexpectedly that that is um uh one of the things that parents do when they have kids is keep the newspapers and things on the day that they were born. And I'm I'm English. I immigrated when I was um 6 months old. Um and when I was in my teens, my dad was going through the garage and he found all the papers and the radio times was the John Perwe Who's Your Friend cover from 1973. So I can truly say that um I collected from the very first um day I was born. Wow. So collecting's in your blood. Absolutely. Um I've always been I hope not a hoarder. I've always been a collector and I was always a strange kid

3:55 where when my parents would buy me a toy, I would open it and I would keep the box in really good condition. I know all my Matchbox cars, I didn't wreck them. I got the boxes and just sat them on top of them and displayed them. And this is a four or 5year-old. So quite unusual. Did you have your Doctor Who moment where you knew you were a fan? Did you What was that moment for you? The W the moment where my mind snapped and I said, "Yes, I'm going to be a Doctor Who fan my whole life." Yes. Um back in 1983, Peter Davidson visited Australia. Um and he I think he was here for the Lois and he did um a signing at Meer and Ga Grace Brothers. So my in Melbourne, Grace Brothers in Sydney, and I would not have known this was happening, but my mom uh

4:42 found an ad in the newspaper and it said Peter Davidson was coming to a Maya store for a signing. And she said, "Look, Doctor Who is coming." I was already a fan, but not like obsessed fan collecting everything kind of then by that point. And um she said, "If you're really good, we'll go." And when you're a kid, I felt like I was really, really good for maybe months. It was probably only two weeks, but you know, when you're a kid, time sort of travels differently. And I eventually said to my mom, "When is this Doctor Who um thing happening that we're going to go and see?" And she said, "Oh, that was on a Tuesday. We weren't going to take you out of school for that." And that was the point where my mind snapped. And I think they caused an obsession. Uh from

5:28 that point, everything was Doctor Who. and I was going to collect all Doctor Who and try and amass the biggest Doctor Who collection. So, I was already collecting the Target books and Doctor Who magazines and things like that. But that would be the point where I remember myself going, "Okay, this is going to go into overdrive." Tell us a bit about this image. So, being one of those sort of stranger Doctor Who fans, I would ask my dad to uh take photos of me with my collection. So, I'm about eight there with my collection of Target books laid out on the bed in that first image in the top left corner. And then down below, I'm about 14 and I'm cosplaying. Before there was a word cosplay, just dressing up as the seventh doctor with my brother

6:14 on my 14th birthday. And then next to that is me in a different regeneration. Um, on my 40th birthday, we recreated the picture with my son. And then one of my biggest embarrassments ever has to be the newspaper article that was um in the papers here when I was about 16 because it managed to go out without anyone I know at school um finding out about it until we were in form assembly a couple of days later and my teacher at the end of form assembly goes, "Oh, and we've got someone famous in the class." Now, I was not a popular person. I was the withdrawn kid into Doctor Who. So, everyone sort of pipes up as what's what's this all about? And then she said, "Look, Aaron's in the newspaper because he's such a massive Doctor Who

7:00 collector." Um, so yeah, that was, you know, some some great social credibility for me right there. I I noticed in the article, uh, well, it says there under the under the photograph that your fluke items, one of them was a Doctor Who record, which sells for about £75 that you bought for a dollar. Which one was that? That was actually the Australian pressing of the original theme song. Um, and back before the internet, any international pressings were quite hard to find. And I used to buy stuff from an English dealer that a lot of collectors would remember called John Fitton. And he had two cataloges that would come out. One was the new merchandise, which was all the current stuff. And then he would also release a collectible catalog of all the

7:46 60s and 70s stuff. And in that was all the sort of in impossible to find in Australia stuff. And one year he had the Australian sing single for £75. Do you remember the very first collectible that you ever bought? Was it a Target book or something else? When I decided I was going to collect Doctor Who, I got three Target books. It was um Dalek, Zabby, and Day of the Daleks. Uh, I got three at the same time and they were the first three target books that I got and that was apart from some stuff that I'd accumulated without knowing I had got it, that was the first of the the stepping into the world of collectibles. So ultimately it led into

8:33 uh getting a store. So um, tell us how that happened. So these pictures are of my bedroom when I was in my teens and you can see it wasn't just Doctor Who. It was You're already mapping it out as a store. Yeah, but but it does look like a store, but that that was my bedroom. And and boy was it fun bringing girls home to see their reaction. I joke, I never brought girls home because I was a Doctor Who fan, but um but at at at the time it was I modeled my um Doctor Who display on Patrick Troutton from The Omen. I don't know if you guys have seen the Omen, the classic horror movie, and he was a priest and he blocked every every inch of his wall out um with the Bible that he stuck to the wall. So,

9:18 there was there was nothing showing. And I decided that's what I was going to do. I was going to block the world out by not a single inch of wallpaper. Even the ceiling is covered in posters actually. Um so, that's that's how I went about displaying stuff. But I got into I guess collecting into dealing and becoming a shop um very gradually. Uh I was an obsessed fan and I wanted to obviously buy more than I could actually afford. Um this is later. This is um this is as an adult sadly. That's you can see there's new series in there and that the top of that you can see it is stacked to the roof. Um so this isn't a shop. This is one of the spare rooms at at my house. So you can see again that sort of plaster every inch um way of of

10:05 displaying stuff never ended for me. And below that uh there's a cabinet was at my parents' house because my wife would not let me have more than one room. So my parents graciously let me slowly take over their their house. So a lot was at their place. And of course, um, whenever I change it around in the bottom corner there, my son would get into the, uh, the cabinet and not get out because he had this, um, obsession with getting into cabinets and stuff. So, I've just included that as a funny photo. But when I was growing up, I got, this is going to shock people how how much I was given pocket money. I was given $5 a month pocket money. And the $5 a month would cover Doctor Who magazine and the Target book for that year. And what we would uh

10:51 what I would do is I would supplement my collecting by going around op shops, Sunday markets, trash and treasure, book exchanges, all the things that collectors used to do before the internet came along and sort of changed the way that people collect. And I would find, you know, old target books. It was a revelation that there were uh first editions with different covers and things like that. And occasionally you'd find something weird and wonderful because back then there was no internet to show you what was out there. And um everything, you know, was a surprise if you found anything that was an old book that you didn't know about or or things like that. And I used to go into a shop in Melbourne called Moviola. Now Moviola was more of a high-end collectible shop. And I knew the guys in there pretty well

11:37 because I was like the little kid that went in and bugged them all the time. So, as a as a dealer now, I know I know me when I come in and I try to encourage them and and sort of be nice to them and and and sort of guide them on the way to um increasing their own collections. But I would go in after I went to Minotaur Books, which is uh another uh Melbourne sci-fi shop, and they had a 1960s Markx Dalek in there, and it was a tricky action one, and it was $450. And when you're on $5 pocket money a month, $450 might as well have been a million dollars because there was no way you could ever afford it. But because I went in there once a month, I pretty much knew all the other toys that were in there in the cabinet with the Dalek.

12:23 And there was a Robbie the robot in his um space patrol jeep from Forbidden Planet. And while I was going around secondhand um op shopping looking for Doctor Who stuff, I saw this toy in an op shop for $10. And I said to my mom, "We have got to buy this. I know this is 2 months pocket money. We have got to buy this. This is in Moviola for $2 and a half thousand dollars. And so my mom had no idea, but she trusted me and she she bought it. And we took it into Moviola and it was the toy that was in there for $25,000. And they said, "You understand? We don't buy it for $25,000." And I said, "I I don't want to sell it to you. I want to swap it for the Dalek." And they were like, "Oh, oh, we're happy to do that." Um, so I swapped the Robbie

13:10 the Robot for the Tricky Action Dalek. And from then on, when I was going to op shops or book exchanges, I wasn't just looking for Doctor Who anymore. I was looking for anything that I could buy to sell at markets or take into um the city to some of the more collectible shops to fund my Doctor Who collecting. Um to my detriment, I have to say, because this this way of making money seemed quite easy to me and really undermined my sort of enthusiasm for any academic achievements. My parents were pretty good. They said, "As long as you finish high school, we really don't care." Uh, they really wanted me to go on to uni and do other things and probably not become a secondhand dealer. But I know um in year 11 and year 12, I was wagging

13:56 school and I was buying what was in Australia called a or in Victoria an all day travel card. So, it was like a zone 1 2 3 card and I would pick a a railway line and I'd go to the end of the line and then I would come in to to the city and stop at every station and I'd go to all the book exchanges and all the op shops and things like that. And when I got to the city in the afternoon, I'd go to there was a a secondhand book place called Book Affair. There was movie and there was a couple of other collectible shops that would buy stuff. And some days I was making $600 from wagging school when I was on $5 a month pocket money. And I would walk into Minotaur books and I would blow it all. And my

14:42 parents had no idea where all this Doctor Who and all this merchandise was coming from other than I was finding it at book exchanges and and going around. And I do remember being pulled in by a year coordinator kind of saying, "You are taking so much time off of school that um you're going to fail the year." I didn't fail. Um I just got through um because I was aiming for just passing cuz that's what my parents had said they hoped. Um, and I do remember, it's really terrible to say now, but I was getting this lecture on my future and in my head I was just going no, I already make more than you n sort of thing. So that's how my collecting started. And I was very lucky. Um, I'm into music a lot

15:27 as well. Not a lot of people know that. I I have a big music collection too. And when I used to go around the markets, um, down in Cam, uh, down in Victoria, there's a place called Campberwell Market, which is one of the better, um, secondhand markets, and it still is pretty good compared to a lot of the stuff now. And because I was there from such a young young age and so dedicated and going around at 6:00 in the morning, one of the one of the dealers down there, a record dealer, said, "Look, if you're here in the morning, do you want to set up my store while I look around for records and then at the end of the day come back and close close it up?" And that worked for me cuz it motivated me to go to the market. And in in between, I worked in a sausage van. Um, so I went and set up a record store,

16:14 worked in a sausage van, and then closed down the record store and got there so early I could look for Doctor Who and anything else for myself as well. But the person who employed me on the record store, um, when I was doing university, well, I was actually studying, I was doing an I did an associate pler of art and design and I was going to get a dip and become an art teacher, which my parents would have really loved. he opened up a record shop and asked me if I wanted to go and manage it. So, of course, I instantly quit uni and started managing Antiquarian Records in Camberwell and I was the manager there for about 10 years. Um, and that gave me a good grounding on how to run a business, how to deal with people, secondhand dealer laws, all of that kind of thing. So, I've been very lucky in my

17:01 vocation that I've never had to look for work and I've been asked to um work for different people all through my life up into the point where I've opened Aaron's Collectibles. So, the pictures there um the the very first one in the top left hand corner would be the very start of Aaron's Collectibles, which was the top of my cupboard when I was a teenager. And that was all my doubles. You can I don't know if you can see but there's multiple versions of hardbacks which you know are impossibly hard to find now that used to be in Target in Australia and different versions of annuals and books mainly in Australia. You could only find books and um paper goods. There's a couple of other bits and pieces but I used to take that to Doctor Who club meetings uh mainly the Christmas meeting but maybe a couple of

17:47 the AGMs or something like that through the year. So that's where I was starting to fund myself and have my own little business. And yes, I I explained as I went to Antquarian Records and another collectible shop and eventually ended up with Aaron's collectibles and um there's some pictures of Aaron's collectibles. There's a queue for one of the events. I think that was the Janet Fielding and Sylvester McCoy day which was a massive success. And then there's the window. Um, we no longer have the Dalek on the window because someone drove a car through the window at some point. It wasn't a hit and run sort of smash and grab. It was a a learner who hit the accelerator too fast, but they took out the Dalek and the the Doctor Who sign.

18:33 They were doing a U-turn. They were doing a U-turn and someone came around the corner and they panicked, so just slammed on the accelerator to beat the car and just went straight into the shop. Luckily, none of the toys were damaged. And then there's just a a kind of general layout. We've got a lot of glass cabinets full of all different types of goodies, not just Doctor Who. How long have you been? Every time I go there, I watch Philillip and he's like a kid in a candy store. I love watching Philip shopping in there. So, we've been here for about 5 years now. And we do get a lot of collectors. I've got on the door always buying, selling, and chatting. We I have a very very good philosophy on it's being part of a community having a collectible store. So it isn't just buying and selling. We try

19:19 and run events. We try to do things that help the community as in um I guess like garage sales and things like that and put people in touch with other people um if they've got collectibles that we aren't interested in or we might find a better home for them that that aren't us. Um, I work with fan clubs a lot and try to promote fan clubs. And if anyone's listening and they come in and they're from any fan club in Australia, as soon as you say that, I'll give you a 10% discount in the store. And generally, we just like to have a laugh and a chat all the time. And sometimes I don't get any work done cuz the entire day is chatting about Doctor Who, Star Wars, um, Marvel movies, DC, any anything really. So, what a terrible

20:05 life. What a terrible job I have. And this at the moment is some of the Doctor Who displays that are in the the cab um in the cabinets in the shop. The one on the left is one of our older merchandise displays. A lot of the stuff in there isn't there anymore. That was an older photo. It turns over very fast. Um and then this is uh another photo from today on the right. Those two photos are just a a loose Doctor Who classic collection that came in last week that have just gone into the cabinet. So, um, we have a huge turnover of Doctor Who stuff. That's probably because of me because I'm a big Doctor Who fan and I champion the series all the time. But, um, Doctor Who is the biggest seller in the shop,

20:52 followed probably by Transformers and then Star Wars. Um, and we have different staff members who love different things, are an expert on different things, but all the staff members have slowly become experts on Doctor Who because um, so much Doctor Who stuff happens in the shop. That's my favorite cabinet that So, more more Transformers than Star Wars. That's surprising. Uh we could talk about Star Wars for a whole podcast sort of with the way fandom has um split on that, but what that has done really is a lot of the new fandom has gone away from collecting and the Disney product and Star Wars is mainly supported by the the three original movies and a little bit the the

21:39 prequels that sort of a generation have grown up with and loved as well. Um and it's one of those things with collectibles, they go through peaks and troughs. Marvel was on a huge peak and it's kind of gone down into a trough as well. I think everyone sees that who are just Marvel movie fans. Um there's quality ones and there's other ones that you know aren't as loved by everyone. So it is interesting. I've been in the um collectible business for so long just to see you know how different franchises become popular and go through waves and have a generation of kids that love them and then something else comes along and they're forgotten. And I've been around long enough to see the generation of kids that sort of grew up with episode 1 um and the original Star Wars prequels

22:24 now come back to it as adults where for me that's still new Star Wars because that came out when I was you know grown up uh kind of thing. So it is interesting and the Doctor Who stuff is crazy where you know people come in and say oh I had those gold Daleks when I was a kid and I'm like what do you mean when you were a kid? Those gold Daleks are still brand new. It's only the the classic series stuff that's really old. But it is lovely to see not just Doctor Who, but a few franchises have have stretched over multiple generations and some of the stuff that was new and interesting and no one knew how it would go has lasted and, you know, has had like a lifetime of support and given joy to different um people, not just Doctor Who, but a lot of different franchises.

23:09 I think that leads us very nicely into the next section because I like to take uh any guests that we possibly can get onto the podcast into a certain place. Philillip, do you know where that place is? Uh it's down a dark place, Dwayne. Down a very, very dark place. It's down the rabbit hole. Let's go. [Music] [Applause] [Music] The question I I want to put this to Philip first and give you some time to think about it. Um because uh I'm curious to know both your points of view. Um Philip, why do we why do we collect? Why do we collect things? We love this show, but what is it about the

23:55 things that we that we love to collect? Why do we do it? Well, I'd be curious to ask Aaron this question in terms is the majority of collectors male because I do think it's something to do with the male brain. I think um whether or slightly on the spectrum which lead us to collect more um I I think um yeah I I don't know what we collect it but it's really an obsession and for me it's complet I I need to complete everything when I start. So, I've got to be very careful when I start a collection up because it's it's very hard for me not to then work to make it sure it's complete in every possible way. Um, I don't know. I I just always have. As I say, I' I've started with a, you know, with my my first collection would have

24:43 been Doctor Who Target novels. I used to get $2 pocket money a week. So, I I was better off than Aaron was. Um but and and every week I would go to this local bookshop store and buy a $2. It was a $1.90 and $1.95. Um and I think Warriors when Warrior's D gate came out it was that was $250. Blew my budget. Um and so I just started collecting the target novels, but it was just cuz I was but I was reading them reading them over and over again. And so I just had to collect all the novels and then the Doctor Who magazine came out. So I got every issue of Doctor Who magazine until a particular doctor started. stocking the magazine in the physical form. Um, yeah, and then the hardbacks came out because I mean there's hardly any hardbacks at all when I was a kid and then you different bits came out like the

25:28 celebration and so suddenly I'm collecting all those books as well. So I think just something grabs you and then you start. I don't know what what what do you think it is or what I don't think it is? Why do we collect? It it's interesting what you say about there's not a lot of um girls or women that that collect. There's a couple, but you're absolutely right. It's like 95% men would be our our breakdown, I would say. But think about this. When you were in school, who was the most obsessed about collecting stuff? Usually bands and things like that. It was the girls. And it is this really weird thing. I think where girls mature, they stop collecting, you know, all the BRs albums or Wham or Michael Jackson and things

26:16 like that as they sort of move on to a new new new phase in life where men go the other way where they aren't so obsessed with collecting in school and at school age, but more and more of them start collecting as they get older. And you know, all the things you've said about collecting are absolutely true, but maybe from a more psychological thing, I don't know if men need to keep hold of their childhood more. And it is this weird thing about 20 years after something has been on, men sort of get a yearning to go back and collect that. It's like the 20 year rule. There's a lot of toys that I would never collect and never think would ever be collectible sort of the generations after I grew up. Um, so you know, things

27:02 like turtles are going to be collectible, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and and things like Transformers, but then there's little pockets of toys that you wouldn't think anyone would remember, like biker mice and street sharks and things like that where where 20 years after that sort of merchandise came out, uh, a wave of nostalgia grips people and they start asking for that. And I have just learned, do you know what? It's okay to collect anything. I can never I can never guess what's going to be the next big thing or the next collectible because it just surprises me. Um I do think people collect at different levels when you're talking about collecting target books. There's some people who will be happy to get a complete set and

27:48 that's a a collector. And there's some people that are happy to get a complete set if they've got all the different covers. So they might have two or three different versions of each book because they want um all the different cover variants and that's a collector. And then there's some people who want every single edition of every books book. So when it comes to the Daleks, they might have 13 or 14 identical books almost because they just want every single edition and they come into our shop and we have quite a lot of target books and they will go to the the um title page of each one and check the addition. So there's different levels of collecting within the collector universe and and I sort of deal with everyone and it's okay to be at any of those levels I think. M

28:34 did you find um did co inc increase it because I I'm so thinking certainly during co I finished off my paperback collection because I had well I thought I had them all and I worked out during co I didn't and so I've now got every cover every cover variant blue spines so I I got I collected everything paperback wise not every edition but every cover variant I've got so hundreds of those and then I started the hardback collecting as well during that time I've since I've got about three quarters of them. I've actually gone actually this is stupid. It's it's costing me a fortune and the last quarter is going to be almost impossible. So I've actually decided I'm going to sell my hardback collection. Um but so so co for me and and that's it was probably co when I started recollecting all my figures

29:19 again as well and I decided I wanted the targets. These are all signed prints by all the um the artists. So I certainly went a bit crazy during CO. Did you find that there was a bit more craziness happening with CO? Yeah, absolutely. Um because people were those of us that were in lockdown, I guess, but a lot of us were in lockdown. There isn't a lot to do. And you know, there's only so much Netflix you want to watch during the day. And maybe um some people had a wage that was more disposable income than usual because they weren't going out. other people didn't because you know they lost their jobs. But we definitely noticed some of the things that peaked during um co was the collecting of classic Star

30:04 Wars. Um the collecting of Pokémon cards that just went nuts during co I guess that's sort of um something where it's a game as well. And then also the collecting of classic Doctor Who went through the roof during co it peaked the prices. Um, interestingly, the Star Wars stuff's dropped back down. Um, the Doctor Who and the Pokémon stuff, the prices never seem to drop again as those sort of extra collectors that were collecting during co stopped collecting. Um, and people the the other thing it's it's increased the price and artificially um put the price of a lot of things up. I've seen with Star Wars if you are not really a lifetime collector but you were

30:50 sort of a hobbyist that collected more during co and more people were collecting it at time instead of paying $100 for something you might have paid $150 but now you don't want to collect anymore because you've got your life back and you're out and about but you don't want to sell that item for$1 $100 what it's come back down to. So there are a lot of co collections where they sort of per perpetually are on eBay or market place which are just overpriced because they're overpriced for the time now not what they were originally bought at. And that happened with comic books as well. A big one was actually comic books. We don't do comic books as much but um the collecting of comic books went through the roof and a lot of

31:35 people who seriously collected through co have lost a lot of money cuz the market inflated so much and it has come down maybe 20% and if you're you know buying $1,000 comics losing $200 on on comics is is a lot of money. So what sells better the the classic or the new series in terms of Doctor Who stuff? Did you want to have a guess? I would guess the classic, but I might be wrong. The classic 10 to one easily. 10 to one. Yeah. It used to be Look, we're going to I think talk about it a little bit, but it used to be um more even, but at the at the moment um it's all classic and hardly any new. When I say new stuff, I

32:22 mean if character release, you know, Shy and um Millie and then they release the John Perwe figure. The John Perwe figure like they're both new toys, but the classic stuff is sells a lot lot more. Right. Wow. And that that shooty figure that came out was sensational in terms of looking like him. I've never seen a figure so accurate before. Well, I think character look, it might not be their fault or it's the way things are distributed. This is I mean going back to Star Wars that the same the same thing. When episode 1 came out, I sold more episode one merchandise in the 3 or 4 weeks before the movie was

33:08 released into when the movie came out because you were selling on people's anticipation of what was coming. And in their head you could have it was going to be the most amazing thing ever. It was so hyped. And the same thing happened with um Shy where love it or hate it the Chris Chibnel era did not go down well with most people. There are some people who absolutely love it. A lot of people don't. And when they announced Russell T. Davies was coming back and David Tenant was coming back and there was a new doctor and it was Shudy Gatwa. I haven't seen Fandom United like that in such a long time of all looking forward to it. It's going to be a new era. We're getting David Tenant coming back. We're getting Russell T. Davies who's a pair of safe hands and we're getting a new

33:54 doctor and it's all going to be amazing cuz it's the 60th and then there's going to be a series and then Disney Plus uh with it. And there was such an anticipation. I do think waiting as long as they did to release a shooty figure was a huge mistake. I think by the time that the figure was released, all that momentum was gone. If they could have got it out in, you know, even 4 weeks before the series was released and just used images from publicity cuz they were around then, I think they would have sold 10 times as much as they did when the actual figures did come out. Was that a character choice or a BBC choice, do you think? I think it was a BBC choice because I'm not 100% sure, but Russell T. Davies is

34:40 a real uh has a real tight collar on everything, not just the show, but on all the merchandising, the offshoots, the magazine, the comics, and all of that. He really is a showrunner that really, you know, likes to have a holistic approach to how he runs the show. So, I would say it must have been his choice. I mean, they got the Jody Whitaker figure and the new David Tenant figure out just a couple of weeks after the special, so it's possible for them to be able to do that. And that sold out almost instantly. And the same numbers um came out of the Shy Gatwa figure. And I haven't checked lately, but I think they're still available. So from something that you know came out and sold out instantly to

35:27 something where the same amount of numbers are produced and it doesn't sell out at all um can't be seen as a success. And do you know how the selling in the shops went cuz there was the um the both figures were released again for the shops. Have they how's that selling gone? Well, the thing is when when the classic series figures are released, um they usually have a couple of Dalek waves, maybe if you're lucky, a couple of other waves. Um and then there's new series figures as well. And through everything, I always order, you know, 10 of 10 of every classic series Dalek set on pre-order and it sells out on pre-order. and then I offer another order another 10 for the shop and that will generally

36:12 be enough to sell out another eight and two two will hang around. So it's not huge numbers. Um I'm selling you know 30 maybe of the the popular classic series stuff. The new series stuff I'll put up for pre-order and we get one or two people pre-order it and they say they're only buying it cuz they're completists. And I got I think two of the Jo last Jody Whitaker set which had the angel in. And I think I sold one of them. And I've had a couple of people ask if I will open the set what I've got left and split it up which I won't because it's a new series. It's a new item which means I really don't make much out of it. We only put the new series stuff in because I support the Doctor Who line, not because you know you make millions out

36:58 of it anymore. Um so the classic series far and away for someone who has worked in the industry for you know 35 40 years now um totally outstrips and out sells the new series. So, while we're still down the rabbit hole, I would just like to say that I find myself uh with a little bit of FOMO because I don't collect as much as um as you two guys and um I've often wondered why. Maybe it comes down to marriage being happier, you know, because I Yeah, possibly. Possibly that, too. I mean, I look at your collection when I'm there at your place, Philip, and I just I'm just dazzled by how great it is, and I would love to have that on my shelf, too. Um,

37:44 but at the same time, I do also like having my wife in the next room, so that's nice. Um, yeah, so I I I plus it comes down to budget as well. I don't have unlimited income either. So, you've got to, you know, some sometimes think about what you want to collect. So, you can see the Blu-rays behind me. you know, I decided to start the Blu-rays right from the beginning. Um, I did the same with the DVDs when they came out as well. Lots of big finish until the postage price became absorb u, you know, too crazy to uh to justify getting the getting the CDs out. But I still have a lot of those, too. And if the prices for Big Finnish were like in on par with what they were, just going up just slightly instead of, you know, tripling in some cases, I would probably still be getting the CDs as well. So, um, you

38:32 know, that's that's I was kind of going more for the experience because, you know, I look just on my shelf and something like that that is is is my piece of nostalgia from from uh from my childhood, which um which I I love having sitting on the shelf just to remind me. So, that's my kind of merchandise, that stuff that I that made me go wow when I was a kid. So, it all comes down to nostalgia. It's a it's a very very bad disease, but it's a fun one. It's nostalgia versus cost. Um, the interesting thing with Big Finish, I would say the majority of the audience uh that they're selling to a sort of guys our age, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s sort of sort of thing. And we are the type of people that don't want to buy

39:19 downloadable media. Would rather pay more to get a physical CD and you have that CD forever. And unfortunately, the way things are with price, as sort of physical media disappears, not as many people will jump over to downloads as I think they think will because there's this thing where people from our generation do not see the value in buying a download. I do see the value if it is comparable with the CD release. So, if the download is £2 less than a than a CD, then I just don't see as much value in that, um, which is what which is what you get with with Big Finish. They have the CD and download very close in price to the act the download on its

40:04 own. Um, which makes it um, less attractive to an old Yeah, but I think it's 90% of people now download. It's only 10% of physical. So, it's almost it's almost transition. I mean, I resisted transitioning to download for a long, long time and then just gave up. And now it's fine. Everything's on my app. I'm happy to just pull out the app and it's very easy to have and the pictures come up. We listen in the car on headphones on our phones anyway. So, you know, the way we listen we we don't pull a I I'll have I've got all those CDs up there, but if I want to listen to one of them, I'll I'll download it on the app and and listen to it there before I take the CD out and put it into a CD. I don't even have a CD player set up. I've only got the the Blu-ray player

40:50 out there in the in the lounge room now. So, yeah, that's just how things are these days. Well, I I started with Big Finish when they originally started releasing them and the first couple I got was still on um cassette tape. So, yeah, I think I subscribed for 2 years and sadly thought the money wasn't worth it. And even back then it was because of the postage to Australia and I was a lot younger then. So you have to choose more wisely on where you collect. And I always thought Doctor Who was more of a visual media than an audio one. Um and if every single one had been amazing, I would have probably continued, but I found most of them I wasn't enjoying as much as. It wasn't that I didn't like them. It just wasn't worth the money to

41:36 keep collecting them and subscribing for them. H. Well, on that note, let's crawl up out of the rabbit hole and talk a little bit more about Big Finish because that is in fact what the purpose of this podcast is, is the audio medium. Philip and I love that very much. Um, but let's just talk about this image first because this is some of your early memories of Doctor Who. Um, we we'll get into Big Finnish very shortly and and other audio, but uh tell us about your early memories. So, my my early memories of Doctor Who are probably different from other people cuz I'm pretty sure the first thing I can remember of Doctor Who was the Peter Cushion Dalek movie probably when I was about 3 or 4 years old and it absolutely

42:23 terrifying me. Um, and I know it was I know it was the first movie because I vividly remember the scene where they're in the cell and they use their food to blind the Dalek. And what terrified me was the chief Dalek, the red Dalek, because we had a um a lamp with a red um lampshade on it and it was behind a sort of frosted glass window. And to a you know 3 or fouryear-old kid at night when that light was on behind a window, was it the light or was it the chief Dalek waiting there for me to go to the bathroom and things like that? So you have that wonderful fear that only kids have that is so nostalgic now. But that's my earliest memory of of Doctor

43:10 Who. Yeah. And the other the other memories are are weird because I actually remember them in black and white which might mean it was because I was watching them on a black and white TV or it might be because they're so old um that they're just in black and white. Now, I only remember Fragments, but the earliest I remember the TV series is um Power of Croll. I don't think that was repeated on the ABC, so it must have been the original screening when they did all the repeats in the 80s. They didn't do the Key to Time. They always stopped at Invasion of Time. And it wasn't until, you know, a lot later they repeated the Power of Croll um series. And probably the first visual images I have of television Doctor Who in shaky

43:56 black and white were the crawled tentacle grabbing someone in the refinery and dragging them in. And it's such an old memory until I saw the series when it was repeated on the ABC in the late 80s or early 90s. I was like, "Oh, wow. That's what I remember. I remember Power of Croll." And then the same thing happened um with Davos where I don't remember Destiny of the Daleks at all. Um but I do remember Davos coming back to life and being covered in cobwebs. And of course I could identify that as Destiny of the Daleks and and was able to pinpoint that. So I thought that was my earliest memory of Doctor Who being terrorized by Davos until I saw Power of Krollen and that was it. And neither of them are particularly

44:43 horrific or scary moments, but I guess when you're so young, and maybe if you're just watching something on the ABC in the afternoon after you've watched some cartoons, that is absolutely terrifying. My My parents were great. They didn't care about ratings. They let us watch whatever we wanted. And we could go and watch Doctor Who. Um it was on 5:30 during dinner because we used to watch it during dinner and they showed um Green Death and my mom was like maggots. Okay, we don't watch Doctor Who while we're eating anymore. So we got to go into the spare room and watch Doctor Who. So as a kid there's a lot of um series that are quite scary that I identified later when the internet came around. But I don't

45:29 know if you remember the changes um which was about uh 70s Britain sort of degenerating to no technology and also Sky which was about a boy from space whose eyes would turn bright blue and is very very sort of that Doctor Who kind of um British show which was a bit more intense for kids than they'd get away with now. When it comes to audio, um, did you did you have any exposure to those Doctor Who audios back in the day? Because one of my I saw Genesis, well, I say I saw I heard Genesis of the Daleks, the LP version, long before I saw it uh on television. And um, that has always been an overriding memory of mine. And I know that there's been other like there was

46:14 one other release, the Chase. So, I don't know if you have you ever come across that 7 in in your uh in your collectible travels. Is there many of those in Australia? Yep. There's three different versions. There's the English original and then there's the Australian edition. It was pressed in Australia and the really hard one to get. It was also pressed in New Zealand. So, for Completus, there's three different versions of it's just called The Daleks, but it's episode six of The Chase on TV Century 21 uh albums with David Graham doing narration. Is that right? It is. Yeah. So, and a really really weird version of the Doctor Who theme or not even the Doctor Who theme because of rights issues kind

47:01 of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, fast forward years later and you're um you've got a collectible store and you're picking up now I think you're coming across. Is it is it deceased estates that you're coming across and people are you know letting their big Finnish collections go and other audio memorabilia? Yep. Um go going back I did devour all the audios growing up. I loved Genesis of the Daleks. Um I don't know if you ever listened to any of the other Tom Baker stuff he did on audio like Dr. Jackal and Mr. Hyde. We had a an old record of that and a couple of others which are fantastic and almost, you know, fit so well into the Doctor Who universe. Um, I remember being very very disappointed with Slipback, uh, sort of

47:49 the what we got instead of the cancelled season 23, uh, or 22. And there was a couple of other, you know, audio oddities. Um, I don't know if you ever had the tape version of State of Decay, which was another one they brought out. I do. So, yeah. So, the the last time I I had the pleasure of catching up with Phil was actually in Sydney and that was because being an obsessive collector, um found this collection of big finish on uh Facebook Marketplace and it was one of those things where I got it for a very very good price because the guy would not split it up and it was pickup only which probably means you know anyone unless you're like me with within you

48:36 know 100k is not kind of go and work it all out and stuff like that. But I was already heading up um driving up to Queensland. So I managed to get this and this was um about a thousand discs which is amazing and I thought wow I've got the entire big Finnish collection in one go and then I found out um it was from a deceased estate and he stopped collecting 10 years ago. So there was a whole lot more than this um than there actually was. You can see there was nine boxes of Big Finish and um they have been incredibly uh popular in the shop. The Big Finish when we get them through probably does out sell videos, DVDs and Blu-rays just because they're so hard to get on the secondary market in Australia. Right. Wow. Right. So, had he

49:25 collected everything up until that point? Um or was there a few ranges that were missing? What What do you think? No, he seemed to have everything up into that up until that point and it was all in order and people were like freaking out about. We had whole runs of stuff and I got it at a good price so we put it out at a a good price and I think we've sold about 80% of it in two weeks kind of thing. So that gives you an idea of how um popular Big Finish is if you can get them for a reasonable price. So, this is going back to what Dwayne said about the price of postage, bringing it into Australia is really a killer for the the local market. So, what what what were you selling them for roughly? What's what's a CD worth?

50:12 Single single disc ones $9, double disc ones $19. Oh, that's a good price you're selling them for then. Yeah. So, I think a lot of people were very very happy. Yeah, there would be. No, I would I would I would add it to my collection. There were because I because it was something I had bought and people knew I'd got it. There were people waiting at the shop the day that I got back to go through it. So, it was quite a a feeding frenzy of big finish. And it was lucky that um some people like most people were collecting different eras of stuff. And we we actually had a fan who was in Austral um in Victoria. She was down from Sydney. And I said to her, we just

50:58 got these down from Sydney and they had the original um uh Galaxy Book stickers on the back where they had been purchased from. And I think we were cheaper than Galaxy when they originally came out 20 years ago. So I think Yeah, that's why Sorry, that's cheaper than I was buying them for. Yeah. Well, it's the other thing with the shop. Like I said, I like to help out the community and if we can get something cheaper, I will put it out for cheaper so everybody's happy and everybody was happy with this collection. Just out of curiosity, did you did you have the man gold logo or the updated blue logo in that collection? Would it disappoint you to say? I don't know. So,

51:44 um don't know. The gold one is the misprint that was uh highly s well it's not a misprint but the BBC didn't like it so they asked him to change it. I think it actually I think it actually probably was there because one of um one of the guys that bought a lot of them said he had all the man stuff but he was buying it again cuz it had a different logo on. So I bought from directly from them it would have been the blue logo but the original releases uh were were gold. So yeah. Well the thing is I I don't know about what the distribution is for Big Finish here. I know that um Minotaur would get them in and they were more expensive than ordering them direct, but it was still expensive to order them direct. So, Galaxy and any of the retailers that got them must have got them through a distributor, I would have thought. I know that the Doctor Who

52:29 Club of Victoria used to stock them for, you know, maybe 10 years ago, would get like four or five of each one, and they were using them to distribute them locally, but you really just don't see them around. those early missing episodes cassettes. Do you remember the ones that were narrated by Colin Baker and John Perwee? There was one Tomb of the Cyberman was about to be released when it was found so it was held back. Is that um is that a hard one to get or is there still plenty of those floating around? It's one of those interesting things if you were looking for them. They tend to be hard to find, but they're probably a lot easier to find than people realize because we will get collections from the 80s and they'll have all those tapes in and we just put

53:16 them out, you know, for maybe 10 bucks. So, they go for a lot more on eBay. I think the whole eBay thing is al it's not a a false market, but it's a very different market to going out and finding stuff locally. I know, for example, um someone was telling me, "Oh, I just paid $100 for these books and we had them in in our shop for $6 each." Um because they actually do turn up quite commonly in collections and we find books hang around if we don't put a a cheaper price on them. So, I I have had people come in and go, you know, I'm going to buy this to put on eBay. You can do it yourself. I'm like, "No, no, we've made our markup and I'm happy for you to do that." I think the collecting

54:02 game is being one where you're patient enough to find stuff at a reasonable price. If you need to find Tomb of the Cybermen on tape and you get online, there probably will be one where you can buy it now for $50 or $100. But if you're happy to just find it one day when you go into a collectible shop, you might get it for $10 or $20. It's the It's the same with all collectibles, though. Um online, people are trying to make the biggest profit they can. Um, you know, that's why eBay is an auction place um because they they want to auction it and get it to go for more. And what tends to happen on eBay, you might get two people who are after something and it artificially inflates the pl the price of one item and you can search that and you can see it and

54:48 people like this is going for this. No, it's because at Christmas, maybe someone who doesn't know what something's worth looks on eBay to get a present for someone and they know that's what they want, so they just get it and it goes for a silly price where um if you come into shops or go to fan club meetings that are selling stuff or collectible fairs, you will often find it for a lot less. All right, back to Big Finish. And one interesting thing is you said that um big finish they weren't all for you, but there was one big finish that stands out to you. Tell us about that. It's probably not um one that anyone picks as their favorite, and it's it's one of the more recent ones, I guess. It's the the fanfare uh for the Common

55:34 Men, and it it kind of talks to me on a lot of different levels. Now, I don't know how you listen to the Big Finnish tapes, but I've gone I've changed the way I listen to them. It used to all be about the story and is it any good and maybe judging it a bit too hard. Now I listen to them from a nostalgia point of view where maybe the story is not great but it takes me back to you know when um Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant were doing the missing episodes and some of them weren't great stories and you can understand you know why that series maybe didn't go ahead but you know what it was absolutely amazing hearing 80s Colin Baker and 80s Nicola Bryant um doing a story that you haven't heard

56:20 before. So, in that case, maybe the nostalgia for how it sounded and how it made me feel got some of the the more, you know, dodgy stories across the line. Um, I always love the Peter Davidson era. That was the era when I sort of became a fan. And it's a short era in the history of the show, but when you're that age, um, years go for years, you know, and like 3 years of Doctor Who seemed like 10 years of Doctor Who for me, you know. There was Colin um, sorry, there was Tom Baker regenerated in Peter Davidson. That was the first time I had been alive during sort of a a living regeneration because I was so young. All the regenerations had happened before

57:06 kind of thing. And you had the the five doctors which was the biggest event that had ever happened for Doctor Who. It was almost like Doctor Who was a serious show. It had gone for 20 20 years and the BBC had done a anniversary special and it was on the news about Long and the ABC had put money into The Five Doctors. We used to have to wait a year or two to see episodes. The Five Doctors was on a month after it was on the BBC, which was absolutely unheard of at the time. It triggered our family um buying a a video recorder because I had to record the Five Doctors. And you know, um being a spoiled kid, I guess we actually got that. I guess my parents were already considering getting one,

57:51 but so that era for me was a fantastic era. And I absolutely love um the the the TARDIS crew that was Nissa and Tegan and Adri. So as a kid they were the best. As an adult you can see through you know there's some shortcomings but as a kid they were the ones I grew up with. So anything that's good enough to give me the nostalgia and feeling of being a kid again and watching that era is fantastic. So, I like a lot of the episodes where Peter Davis is te um teamed up with Sarah Sutton just because it wasn't something that they really allowed to happen in the show that much. Janet Fielding and Tegan are fantastic, but she often dominated the scenes. And that still happens when you watch the DVD, DVD extras and Blu-ray extras and

58:38 anything where they're all together. And it's a nice relationship. It feels like they really do get on and they act like they're a family cuz families do that. Um, but having the Doctor and Nissa together for the run they did um on Big Finish is fantastic because it gives Nissa a much bigger voice and more to do than she ever had on the show. But what pushes it over the line for me is the nostalgia I have for music and the ' 60s and the Beatles and things like that. And this is one of those things where you look at the concept and go, "Well, how can they do a Beatles episode without being able to use the Beatles?" And I think they absolutely nailed it. And sometimes where you hear uh parody music that's meant to be set from an

59:23 era, it falls flat. A good example for that, and I'm not picking on it, is always a twist at the end for the latest series or the last series of Doctor Who, where it was okay, but if they bought the rights for Twist and Shout and did their own version of that, I would have thought it was it was much better. But when they did the Common Men, which um of course has that link right back to the original 60s Doctor Who with Susan and her listening to them on her um on her headphones, the songs are actually good. They actually sound like a group that could have stepped into the the void the Beatles would have left if they weren't around. So, one of the things about when they do a musical of any um of your favorite shows, be it Star Trek

1:00:09 or Buffy, it lives or dies for how good and how catchy the music is. And this wasn't the Beatles, but it was good enough that it had the nostalgia for the era and it wasn't embarrassing. And I thought that was great. And then they used that rule where you can get like three chords of a song before um you have to pay any copyright. and having them actually have the Beatles coming out and the Doctor showing this to the Beatles and them starting playing and the Beatles music fading into the the scream of the end titles. It actually gave me goosebumps. So that's why this probably very underappreciated story is my favorite Big Finnish story. Coming soon from Big Finnish Productions, Doctor Who

1:00:55 1963 fanfare for the common men. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome the year's top pop sensation. This is what I was talking about, Nissa. Why is everyone making so much noise, doctor? We can't even see them yet. This is what the Beatles inspired in people. Good grief. What is it, doctor? It's not me. Who are these Beatles then? Are they another group? Yes. Really good. You must have heard of them. Nobody's as good as the commons. Come on, men. You haven't landed us in the wrong place, have you doctor? No. 31st October 1963. This is definitely right. Something very, very badly. Head down.

1:01:41 [Music] Cheers. We've been the common man and continue to be so. Subscribers get more at bigfinnish.com. Well, I can tell you that it's very appreciated by us and we actually had the writer Eddie Robson on the podcast a little while back talking about it when we did a a feature on all three stories from that uh trilogy. It was a trilogy that was sort of leading up to the 50th anniversary. So, uh with the with the fifth, sixth, and seventh doctors. So, um, Eddie Robson, uh, did a great story here, and he always writes a good story that I that I that I love. He's one of the he's one of the good ones. He hasn't written anything for Big Finnish for a while, but it'd be good to to get

1:02:28 something from him again soon, I think. What do you think, Philip? Yeah. No, I agree. I think it's the thing it really does show is how you can do a Beatles show without the Beatles. So, you know, I I often say to me the best Doctor Who is actually now usually found on Big Finnish more than on the new series because the new series, you know, they recast the Beatles. They didn't look like them. They didn't sound like them particularly. They didn't use them to save the end the plot at the end of the day. Whereas, this is a story where the Beatles have been taken and missing. So, the Beatles are ever present in this story, but they're not in it. And it just showed how clever you can be in terms of clever writing and and problem solving, which the thing the thing I admire about Big Finish is they do a lot of very clever problem solving to deal

1:03:14 with, you know, small casts or limited budgets and what they get away with is just brilliant. Yeah. I think um again, one of the things that disappointed me with the new series, this is not a disappointment in in Lux, they actually used Rollover Beethoven, and it wasn't the Beatles, but they obviously got the rights for it. So, they could have used a song that was covered by the Beatles um when they had it. I guess the thing with the music being stolen meant they didn't really have to go down that track, but it would have been really good at the end. You know, the the Beatles covered Twist and Shout. The the Beatles covered some really good rock and roll songs. I know they want Murray Gold to to do the music, but I do wish if I I look I think if they had done a Beatles song and the Doctor had done a

1:04:00 cover of it or they done a cover of it, it would have probably been more more of a sting in the tail of that episode than what we actually got. Yeah. And they do they do play other songs and other hits. I think they use toxic again. They use Bucks Fizz and the one Yeah, because Bucks Fizz won that for England last in the Eurovision. They used Bucks Fizz last night or this week in the episode. So they they do get other they do get other performers to do stuff. So yeah, the the Bucks Fizz one is making your mind up. But the the other back Bucks Fizz song is Land of Makebelie. And I do wonder if if if that'll come into it next week. [Laughter] We'll see. Who knows? Yes. All right, let's let's change directions slightly.

1:04:45 Thanks for your recolle recollections on that big finish story. It's a great one. So, I'm glad you brought that one up. And uh let's let's just talk because you you you've appeared a few times on the 42 to Doomsday podcast uh talking about collectibles and things like that, but you've also spoken about a deceased estate which had some um possibilities uh for potential return missing episodes. You spoke about that for a while. It's been a while since you've uh given us an update. So, um is there anything you can update us with now? Yep. So, for anyone who's listening to this who listens to the audio side of things but doesn't really follow a lot of the other stuff, I'll give you a bit

1:05:30 of a background to that. As a secondhand dealer, I get to go and look at deceased estates. Um and when you go and look at someone's life, um you anything can be there. Usually I get called for toys. Uh this one was actually a friend who knew I was a Doctor Who fan. And so when I went out there I was absolutely blown away not just because of the Doctor Who stuff. Um it is a very strange thing for people outside of fandom. They often don't understand what is a collectible

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