The end of the future

I’m watching, live, the Christie’s auction of Star Trek props. For those of you not in the know, Paramount has decided to clear out their warehouses of props and costumes for the venerable sci-fi series, and dispose of it the same way MGM sold off their history in the famous auction in 1970.
A captain’s chair just sold for $12,000 or so. Now they’re selling a series of coffee tables — I had no idea that there were so many coffee tables in Star Trek.
Sadly, the auction house has almost no one in attendance, I’m assuming that most bidders are online. The seats in the room are empty.
Some of these things, frankly, are cultural icons. The captain’s chair should be retained by Paramount, or at least donated to a museum along with some of the costumes and the filming miniature of the Enterprise. Coffee tables? Eh. Chairs, flags, and desks… who cares?
I am a bit confused about the provenance of some Star Trek items. A while back there was a Star Trek exhibit at the Air & Space Museum, where I saw such items as the original Enterprise helm and captain’s chair; they were in terrible shape and the helm was falling to pieces. And later, we saw the helm refurbished and like new again. It makes me think that the original props are not actually original.
Captain Janeway’s ready room desk is selling now — and frankly, it looks nothing like the desk we saw on television. Odd. Just sold for $6,000.
$2,400 for a Star Fleet flag.
Insane.
Still, someone with more money than sense — and there are a lot of people like that — could pick up enough modern furniture and backlit plastic control panels to outfit their garage recreation of the bridge, for only six figures. Hell, they could save time by actually buying a bridge set already made!

Holy crap — $18,000 for Captain Janeway’s desktop computer terminal, a little plastic set dressing. Estimated at $880-1,200. Too much money, too little sense.