Why a Krall is worth more than a Clinton

[scielle]

The way they were: Dealing in yearbooks: Why a Krall is worth more than a Clinton, Oprah more than a Bush

Siri Agrell
National Post
27 November 2004

Before the albums and accolades, before the car commercials and Elvis Costello, Diana was just another high school student with an unflattering yearbook photo.

The 1980 yearbook of Woodlands Junior Secondary School in Nanaimo, B.C., features a picture of the young jazz musician affecting an air that is not so much sultry as it is suspicious.

Her shag haircut and high-collared blouse do little to hint at the future career of the breathy musician with a penchant for heels.

But the caption does.

"Diana Piano resembles her Dad," it reads. "In her spare time she eats and sleeps. Her life ambition is to replace Oscar Peterson. Way to go Diana."

There is a small but growing market for celebrity yearbooks, the hardcover albums that capture a moment in the adolescent identity of those who actually achieved their life ambitions.

Diana Krall's yearbook, found in a Nanaimo thrift store by an enterprising rare book dealer, is available for sale on the Internet for the price of US$1,567.18.

For those who lack a taste for jazz, the yearbooks of countless sports stars, politicians, actors and criminals are on the market at more reasonable prices, most costing between $200 and $800.

But in the business of selling other people's memories, most dealers believe a picture is worth at least a thousand dollars.

Jim Stachow of North West Books in Ladysmith, B.C., found Krall's yearbook among a number of books a Nanaimo teacher had recently unloaded.

Although he does not normally deal in yearbooks, Stachow found the musician's yearbook caption "inspiring" and began to research how much the book might be worth.

"I was actually quite surprised to learn how affordable they are," he said of celebrity yearbooks, recalling the first example he stumbled upon online: Jim Belushi's that was selling for just a few hundred dollars. "I think there's a great opportunity for people to invest in these items," he said in an interview this week.

He regards celebrity yearbooks as "an undiscovered market" for collectors, and an untapped resource for history and pop culture enthusiasts.

Yearbooks are a unique collectible, he said, because they capture many elements of a specific period in time: the look, the dress, the overarching attitude of an era.

And the pictures of celebrities, because they were taken long ago by amateur photographers who may have forgotten their existence, often remain unseen by the public eye.

In his research, Stachow found a Princeton yearbook featuring George H.W. Bush.

"There's just a priceless photo of Mr. Bush, who was an excellent baseball pitcher at the time, he's dressed in his baseball suit. He's shaking hands with Babe Ruth. And this book was affordable," he said. "I just see people having an appetite for that kind of wonderful and rare thing."

Stachow said presidential yearbooks range widely in value from about $300 for George W. Bush to $3,500 for a John F. Kennedy yearbook, depending on their rarity.

Bill Clinton is going for about US$800.

Although it is hard to compare Diana Krall to a former leader of the free world, Strachow decided the jazz ingenue was worth more than the going rate for the 42nd president of the United States.

"Because they are uncommon and people have not too many other choices as to where they can buy them, I do price high," he said of the Krall yearbook and his other rare non-fiction books, which he has sold to institutions, including Canada's National Library and Kensington Palace in England. "That's just the business model I've chosen. We try to focus on more obscure items and the higher market."

Brandon Ross of Spanky's Yearbook Archive in Iowa City, who owns more than 1,000 celebrity yearbooks, has never heard of Diana Krall.

"I thought Costello was married to Cait O'Riordan," he said of Krall's matrimonial predecessor.

But then, Ross describes himself as decidedly anti-celebrity.

"The only way I know what's going on is through the books," he said. "By what people are asking for."

He divides his collection into two categories: "blue chippers," or old-time celebs like John Wayne and JFK, and "yahoo belly-button celebrities" like Britney Spears.

Ross has been collecting celebrity books for 15 years, having segued into the business from selling sports memorabilia collected from the Boston Garden, near which he grew up.

"I saw this yearbook for Nolan Ryan and I knew his card was selling for $2,000 at the time, but the yearbook was only $200," he remembers. "I thought that's gotta be more interesting than the card. So I took a shot just to see if there'd be any interest and there was."

Ryan was voted most handsome in high school and his future wife is also pictured in the book.

Ross was intrigued by the historical and kitsch value of the yearbooks, and began placing advertisements in the local newspapers of celebrities' hometowns.

"I knew that Bob Dylan went to school in Hibbing, Minnesota, so I wrote to the newspaper and started building this collection," he said. "I would send people payment and they would send me the books."

His collection includes a who's who of American and Canadian life.

Spanky's has been featured in collectable magazines and earned Ross an appearance on Antique Roadshow.

Wayne Gretzky's Brantford, Ont., book is in the archives, and Ross owns yearbooks for Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and William Shatner.

His company Web site features class pictures of John F. Kennedy (business manager of the Brief golf squad), Jack Nicholson (class clown) and Toni Morrison (under her given name, Chloe Wofford).

"Mark McGuire wrote in his high-school yearbook that you'll probably see me playing for the Reds next year. Sort of prophetic," Ross said. "There's a lot of things where people insult each other in their books. Tom Petty wrote something in his junior high book to some guy, saying something like 'You're not too bright, are you?' "

Bruce Willis posed for his high school yearbook in drag. So did Steve Martin.

Bob Dylan reminisced in the cover of a high school yearbook about a fun drive in a friend's car.

Ross said the yearbooks provide glimpses of past lives.

Ernest Hemingway played football.

Charles Bukowski was in the military.

Peter Falk played a detective in a school play.

Jazz musician Cab Calloway was on the basketball team.

Meryl Streep was a cheerleader.

"Then there's the famous picture of Bill Clinton in his high school yearbook shaking the hand of then president John F. Kennedy," Ross said. "That's a great book."

His yearbook collection is an archival source regularly tapped by news services and film companies.

Ross licenses the images or loans out the books for a set fee, depending on the book's worth.

Ernest Hemingway's high school yearbook from 1916 was difficult to come by, he said, and would probably be worth about US$4,000.

Ross also owns a John Steinbeck yearbook from 1919, which he would sell for a similar amount.

From there, the prices range downward to $400 for Oprah Winfrey, who was voted "most popular."

Bottom-rung celebs such as Tom Selleck and Bon Jovi have sold for $150.

At a Lelands Auction, Ross once saw Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Sandy Kofax's yearbook sell for US$8,000.

"Katharine Hepburn's high school yearbook would be very difficult to get," he said. "Books that don't really exist. Like Babe Ruth, there's no yearbook for Babe Ruth because he was in an orphanage. There is a group picture from the orphanage. Something like that would be major bucks."

Aesthetically, the books are worth more if the pictures of the celebrity student are large and numerous.

Junior high school is harder to get than senior, and signed is better than unsigned, although there are only so many times you can read "Have a great summer," Ross said.

The price goes up if there's more than one celebrity in the yearbook, as is the case with Robert Redford and baseball player Don Drysdale.

Notoriety is often worth as much as fame, but Ross steers clear of the criminal yearbooks.

"The Columbine books were popular," he said of the Littleton, Colo, high school where two students executed 12 classmates and a teacher in 1999. "The most important would have been the year of. They might go for about $500."

Ross said he would not buy a yearbook featuring John Lennon's killer Mark David Chapman or serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

"Notoriety is interesting, but I just don't go for those areas," he said. "But the books do sell. The Columbine books sold."

More and more celebrity yearbooks have become available over the Internet, one of the reasons Ross said the prices for contemporary celebrity books have stayed reasonable.

Yearbooks featuring President George W. Bush, for example, are in wide circulation, although Ross does not own one.

"I actually traded the copy I had for a Dwight Eisenhower," he said. "A junior or sophomore book, not a senior book. I just thought, the chances of getting that..."

Ross is not worried about the hole in his collection and said his opinion that the Bush yearbooks are not particularly remarkable is not entirely based in his own Democratic leanings.

"He wasn't voted for anything," Ross said of the President's high school achievements.

His archive is more focused on preserving the historical yearbooks, mementos of not only celebrities but of previous eras.

"Some really show the life and times of these people," he said. "The clothes, the values, the advertisements show you what was going on in their town. It gives you sort of a hard piece you can hold in your hands that came right from where they were."

Jim Strachow also believes the yearbooks should be preserved more for the information they provide than their embarrassing glimpses of a celeb's acne-prone moments.

"I love preserving information that I think someone is going to want in the future, no matter how obscure," he said. "Yearbooks from the 1920s are gorgeous. Totally beautifully, artistically done."

He believes the yearbooks represent the opportunities that each student faced, whether famous or not.

"For those of us who appreciate Oscar Peterson, to see the pictures of this young girl and to see the words right beside the picture ... that she wanted to be the next Oscar Peterson," he said. "And then to see what she has done, it's a very powerful item for me."

Powerful enough, he hopes, to earn him US$1,567 and put the Krall yearbook into a buyer's hands.