Why the song and dance over musical memorabilia?

How far would you go to get your hands on one of Willy Wonka’s golden tickets? Would you enlist your father’s factory staff to open thousands of chocolate bars, as Veruca Salt did? According to Joe Moe, specialist for popular culture at Bonhams in Los Angeles, “Golden tickets are golden tickets to collectors too.” Each of the five coupons from the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory were hand-cut and printed on gold-coloured foil, with a scalloped edge. They rarely surface at auction, but when they do they have sold for as much as $47,500. “The value is in the memory and the sentiment attached to the pieces,” says Moe. 

A golden ticket from (left) Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, 1971, sold for $35,000 at Bonhams in 2015

Gerard Butler’s Phantom of the Opera mask, sold for £3,750 at Propstore in 2022

From golden tickets to Cats T-shirts from the original 1981 stage production, musical merchandise and memorabilia have a niche but enduring fanbase. There is a tradition of theatre merch that is unique to musicals, and a swath of hit revivals – among them Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Merrily We Roll Along on Broadway, starring Daniel Radcliffe, and Nick Hytner’s sell-out Guys & Dolls at The Bridge in London – and shiny stage adaptations of films are nurturing new interest. 

The value is in the memory attached to the pieces

For committed collectors, historical significance is key. “Most contemporary productions have a merch store in the theatre,” says Moe, but “the nature of collectables is that rarity equals value”. Programmes and posters are the obvious place to start. While you can pick up a yellow-topped Playbill programme for a contemporary production for a marginally pumped-up price on eBay or Etsy, a vintage programme for a popular title that bears any hallmarks of the era can fetch hundreds. A significant signature; a vintage ticket slipped between the pages; annotations or if the show was a sell-out featuring a star at a major theatre are all factors that contribute to value. A programme from the first UK production of West Side Story in December 1958 is currently available on eBay for £159.99. A first edition from the original London run of Les Misérables in 1985 is selling for £250. 

A 1958 West Side Story programme, £199, ebay.com

A My Fair Lady poster from the National Theatre archive

A first edition of Mary Poppins by PL Travers, £3,500, peterharrington.co.uk

A first-edition script of Merrily We Roll Along by Stephen Sondheim, £12,500, peterharrington.co.uk

“They’re a piece of social history,” says Erin Lee, head of archive at the National Theatre in London, which has filed the programmes of every show it has staged since its opening night in 1963. She emphasises that it’s not just the performance history that makes a programme valuable – the adverts also paint a picture of that era’s style, preoccupations and socioeconomic mood. 

Rare-book dealer Peter Harrington currently has a bound first-edition script of Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along. “What’s interesting,” says senior specialist Dr Philip W Errington, “is that only proof copies were sent out for review, and because the first run was a flop the book was never published.” This rare edition, on sale for £12,500, features an inscription from Sondheim to theatre critic Clive Hirschhorn, together with a letter. Also in stock is a first edition of PL Travers’ Mary Poppins, complete with illustrations by Mary Shepard, available for £3,500.

A 1980s Les Mis T-shirt, up to £70, ebay.com

A 1981 Cats T-shirt

T-shirts produced to promote stage shows are more accessible. Designs for continuing and returning productions of the long-playing classics – Miss Saigon, Les Mis et al – are widely available, but discerning fans will be able to distinguish between a Cats T-shirt from 1981 that has the enigmatic yellow eyes on the back and the more recent versions where the eyes have moved to the front. Such T-shirts have sold on eBay for around £60. The iconic Les Mis representation of Cosette has undergone all sorts of permutations, with the bolder, bigger ’80s versions selling on eBay for up to £70, while a Phantom of the Opera T-shirt from 1986, the year it premiered, is currently available on Etsy for £410 (authentic Phantom T-shirts can be precisely dated by the copyright stamp from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group). Phantom memorabilia is hugely popular: Gerard Butler’s mask in the film adaptation sold at specialist entertainment auction house Propstore in 2022 for £3,750, well over a top estimate of £800. 

“For me, it’s about the chase,” says LA-based Michael Eisenberg, whose passion began when he had a motorbike-themed restaurant on the Sunset Strip and was looking for wall ornaments. “I kept winding up with things that had been in films, including musicals, like a couple of the black leather jackets worn by the T-Birds in Grease, which I bought at auction,” he says. “Once I’ve acquired them, it gives me pleasure to lend them to museums.”