About BattlestarProps.com

BattlestarProps.com is the official website of the Propworx & Universal Studios Battlestar Galactica prop and costume auction.

ALEC PETERS

Propworx CEO Alec Peters is an acknowledged expert on props & costumes from Star Trek and writes the immensely popular “Star Trek Prop, Costume & Auction Blog”, the # 1 resource for collectors of Star Trek props & costumes. Alec’s Star Trek collection started with the purchase of a Captain Kirk uniform and a Captain Sisko Uniform at the famous Star Trek auction at Christie’s. Since then, Alec has put together one of the premier Star Trek prop & costume collections in the hobby. He speaks each year on the subject at the biggest Star Trek convention of the year in Las Vegas and runs the “Star Trek Prop, Costume & Auction Forum”.

Alec’s background is incredibly varied, starting out with a law degree from the University of North Carolina, Alec passed on practicing law to coach men’s volleyball at USC (1990 NCAA Champions) and with the USA National team. He then became an entrepreneur and started three companies, including Marketworks, eBay’s # 1 partner for sales automation, handling the auction business of such giants as Home Depot, IBM and Disney.

Alec landed the contract to sell the assets of Battlestar Galactica after meetings with the Universal team who liked his eCommerce background and his passion and knowledge of the prop collecting hobby. Universal and Alec saw eye to eye that this wasn’t to just be a liquidation of assets, but an experience which would energize fans and the Universal brass.

“This is going to be unlike any other prop & costume auction collectors have seen.” says Alec. “We are going to set the standards for everything from Certificates of Authenticity and descriptions to marketing and promotions to customer service and just plain fun! Many of us, who are already collectors, have seen many prop and costume sales that have become all business and devoid of passion, or where one has to struggle to get decent customer service. We are collectors ourselves and so we know what is important to a collector or even a fan buying their first prop.”

ALEC’S BATTLESTAR HISTORY

Alec watched the original Battlestar Galactica when it first aired and being the Sci Fi junkie he is, took to it immediately. He met Richard Hatch (the original Battlestar’s “Apollo”) at the 15 Yaren Reunion in Los Angeles and wound up taking acting classes with Richard. “Those were great times,” said Alec “They were at Richard’s house, and Richard is so passionate about his craft, it was a blast”. Alec stayed friends with Richard over the years, and then in 1999 Alec hosted the 1999 Battlestar Galactica reunion which featured Richard, Dirk Benedict, John Colicos (in his last convention appearance before passing), Annie Lockhart, Herb Jefferson and Jack Stauffer. It was just after Richard had released his Battlestar Galactica: The Second Coming trailer, and it was a great event for all BSG fans. After that, Alec would regularly have dinner when Richard would come to Atlanta (Alec’s home since 1998) for Dragon Con. Being an entrepreneur, Alec would give Richard advice on his various business ventures. And so when Richard became involved with the new Battlestar Galactica and it was announced that the show would end, Alec asked Richard to help him get in contact with the person who was in charge of selling off the props and costumes. Richard put Alec in contact with Ron French, the Line Producer of BSG and the rest is history!

JOE BEAUDOIN JR.

Joe Beaudoin Jr. is the project leader and researcher for Battlestar Wiki, an online encyclopedia dedicated to all four of the Battlestar Galactica television shows. Outside of running the fan site, Joe is a writer, editor, webmaster, and vice president of White Eye Productions, Inc., an up-and-coming comic book company that launched in July 2008.

Early on, Joe’s entrepreneurial spirit lead him to become a columnist for the Star Trek Galactic Newsletter in the mid-1990s, work with the William Shatner Connection endorsed “Bring Back Kirk” campaign, and later working for sites such as TrekNation, BattlestarGalactica.com, and the Battlestar Fan Club. It is at the Battlestar Fan Club where he met Lawrence White, who had the dream of starting up his own comic book company where the creators retained ownership of their characters and stories.

Joe’s interest in Battlestar Galactica was born out of his general interest in science fiction, being a fan of The X-Files, Babylon 5, Star Trek, Space: Above and Beyond, and Irwin Allen’s various series. After catching reruns of the show on the Sci-Fi Channel back in the 90s and around 2000, he became a fan with a “love/hate” relationship with Battlestar, helping out in the revival efforts undertaken by Richard Hatch (Apollo / Tom Zarek).

In relation to this, he began the Battlestar Galactica InfoSphere, a large portal-like website that merged fan created endeavors and encyclopedic information, in addition to the PDF-published electronic magazine called, “The Galactican”, which featured interviews with such personalities as Herb Jefferson, Jr., articles about the revival efforts, and op-ed pieces about the show, which ended publication in mid-2003.

Initially heavily skeptical about Ron Moore’s re-imagining of the concept, he grew to love the series after watching the first season with recordings provided by a friend in the United Kingdom, where the show first aired. This lead to rekindling his interest in the series, and launch of the Battlestar Wiki project.

BATTLESTAR WIKI BACKGROUND

The Battlestar Wiki project, whose roots date back to the inception of the Battlestar Galactica InfoSphere fansite in 2000, was started in February 2005 after discovering Wikipedia—itself an online editable resource that many thousands of people collaborate on.

Starting off as just a mere hobby and side pet-project, Battlestar Wiki soon experienced large growth spurts that turned running the website into a job in and of itself. Realizing quickly that he needed to learn about the benefits and drawbacks to the wiki model, Joe began editing controversial subjects on Wikipedia to learn more about its community from the inside, entering himself into situations that contributors on the site face on a daily basis, eventually ascending to become a Wikipedia administrator in December 2005. “I deliberately sought to test the waters with the whole wiki-concept. Coming from an ‘old-school webmaster’ background, I had my fears about running a website that people from all over the world can contribute to on a dynamic basis.” Eventually, Joe left the Wikipedia project because “I had learned more about how not to approach a dynamic, so-called ‘Web 2.0′ website than I had ever believed possible. Plus, there is a disturbing lack of general oversight, accountability, and even abuses of power by the administrators. I really began to question Wikipedia’s effectiveness as a tertiary reference source.” Joe and the intelligent, hard-working volunteer contributors at Battlestar Wiki were able to learn from Wikipedia’s mistakes and generate—as a team—a website that AOL called “most comprehensive” in 2008.

Visited by hundreds of thousands of people per month, the Wiki is one of the largest and most frequented websites on the Internet, ranking in the top 20 to 30 thousand websites according to both Alexa and Quantcast. It has been repeatedly mentioned in such official venues as USA Today, Wired.com, UGO, and other well-known entertainment-based websites. Impressed by the Battlestar Wiki’s comprehensiveness, Alec Peters offered Joe a position helping chronicle the history of the new Battlestar’s numerous props, costumes, and set pieces.