Pam Grier told an audience at Winston Salem’s 2008 Riverrun International Film Festival that when she went to meet director Quentin Tarantino, he told her he had written a movie with her in mind.

She also discovered that he “has the posters from all my movies,” she said. “I don’t even have them. They’re worth thousands of dollars.”

We don’t know how many Tarantino actually owns, but he would need a few for them to add up to thousands of dollars worth, not that the director of “Pulp Fiction,” would have a hard time coming up with the money. Tarantino is known to collect movies in just about every format and movie memorabilia such as posters as well (more about that in a coming post).

Grier starred in 1970s action films such as “Coffy,” (1973), in which she played nurse battling
drug dealers. She also played tough roles in black action films such as Foxy Brown (1974), Sheba, Baby (1975), Friday Foster (1975) and Greased Lightning (1975), among others. She appeared in many other genre films, from westerns to the Blackula sequel.

Since 2004, she has been a regular on Showtime’s “The L Word.”

Tarantino starred her in “Jackie Brown,” (1997), which he wrote because of his fondness for Grier’s work in those action films. Those, she said she did primarily for the money.

Her movie memorabilia does attract buyers.

One-sheets from “Coffy” in very good to fine condition sold at from $192 to $229 in 2006, according to one auction house listing of poster sales results, and from $227 to $36 in a variety of conditions more recently. Oddly enough, one lesser condition “Coffy” sold for $224, while one described as “good” sold for $36–which just goes to prove, you can find bargains or pay way too much in auctions.

A pressbook—the advertising book movie PR folks used to send to theaters with every film—went for $36 and an 8 by 10 gloss still for a bit over $30.

By comparison, a one-sheet from “Jackie Brown” (advance, showing Grier), sold for about $20 recently.

Created in the 1870s by Florence Upton in England, the Golliwogg was a caricature used in advertisements all over Europe. It seldom appeared in the United States, however.

It was made into a doll by Steiff of Germany in 1902. If you have one of these dolls today it could be worth upwards of $10,000.

Here I have featured a 1922 Le Golliwogg perfume bottle by Vigny of Paris in its original box. It is a cross- collectible for perfume collectors and black memorabilia collectors alike. It has a value upwards of $350.00.

This bottle was promoted in its day as a cute and endearing creature for the lady’s dressing table with its fluffy seal-fur top. The rest of the bottle is glass with a black glass figural stopper. The details are hand-painted enamel.

Golliwogg tends to evoke different reactions today. The doll and the bottle are reminders of a time when racial predjudice and stereotypes were alive and well. But they remain highly prized by collectors all over the world.