The Professor Enters The Room

I have a couple of recent pickups that I am pretty stoked about, this is one card that has been near the top of my list for a while. In January Russell Johnson passed away, he was probably most well-known for his role as the Professor on Gilligan’s Island, though his acting career spanned nearly 50 years.

 

I had been looking to add his autograph to my collection for about a year now and when he passed away his autographs launched up in price. There are a number of licensed autographs from Panini, Donruss and Rittenhouse, and someday I hope to add some of these to my collection, but the one that I have been waiting for is this Dart card.

 

This card is part of a Dart Gilligan’s Island release in 1997 and even though this is a TTM autograph what drew me to this card is that the scene is from my favorite episode “The Invasion”. In the episode the castaways find a brief case marked “Secret” and Gilligan accidently handcuffed the case to his wrist. While he is sleeping he has a dream where he is Super Spy 0014 (because he is twice as good as 007). This scene is from the beginning of his dream where the Professor, acting as an M-like character, briefs Gilligan.

 

The card shot up in price after Johnson’s death and I have been waiting patiently for it to drop back down, and like most of Russell Johnson’s autographs, it finally did drop in price. After months of sitting at $19.99 and not selling the dealer first dropped it to $14.99 and then finally down to $11.99. I am very excited to have this card finally, now I can start looking to add a Dawn Wells autograph to my collection.

RIP Russell Johnson

Today we lost the beloved actor Russell Johnson, who is probably best known as Professor Roy Hinkley, or just the Professor, on Gilligan’s Island. He was 89 and suffering from kidney failure.

Johnson joined the US Army Air Corp out of high school and he flew 44 missions (as a bombardier on a B-24) in the Pacific Theater during WWII, he was awarded numerous medals and awards for his actions.  He began acting after he left the military and actually made a number of movies as the lead actor in the 1950s and 1960s, he appeared in a couple of television shows before Gilligan’s Island but it was this show that made him most recognizable to many of the people who were kids in the 60s and 70s.

I grew up watching re-runs of Gilligan’s Island, it is still on television and even now I watch the show daily on METv with my kids. His death leaves Tina Louise (Ginger) and Dawn Wells (Mary Ann) as the only two remaining actors from the show.

Russell Johnson was a friend of the fans, he enjoyed talking to the people who enjoyed watching him. He was a common signer and was even signing autographs for fans as recent as over this past Christmas holidays. He has cards in a number of sets like Americana, Golden Age and a couple of different Gilligan’s Island and Twilight Zone sets. He has autographs and relics in a handful of these sets and surprisingly, before his death, his autograph cards were selling for $20-50 easily but his relic cards can still be had for under $15 usually. I have been watching his autographs for the past few months hoping that they would drop a bit, looks like I waited to long.