Screen used Ziggy wristlink and other props on ebay!

I wonder how many gummi bear handlinks were actually made for the show. This one looks slightly different than the ones in my screen shots below, but those are even slightly different themselves. Nevertheless, $500 is an absolute steal for a television prop like that, in my opinion. A lot of replicas that don't look half as good have gone for that much in the past...

Hey everone, from what I can tell there were two hero gummy bear units and several less than hero. The links are made from three layers of plex:

Front
Middle
back

On the heros the middle was milled from a solid block of acylic and the less than heros had a box built of acylic instead. The heros also had a fairly complex set of electronics where the little brass pips worked as touch switches turning on various different lighting combos. The less than heros used a "shirt lights" driver board as the sequencer.

The wrist link. I know this prop quite well, I worked on it back in March. It is the original screen used piece that arrived to me in several pieces. I put it back together and fixed a few issues that it had. I'll get more into it in another post. The two pictures shown in the auction are infact the ones I took right after finishing fixing it and I sent them to the owner.

Al,

Looks like someone involved in the sale has posted just above you (their post was just approved).

Cool!!! I never realized that these props were even still around. Much less that someone would even DREAM of putting them up for auction!

feldon30 said:

Al,

Looks like someone involved in the sale has posted just above you (their post was just approved).

Click to expand...

I wasn't involved in the sale but it suprises me that it went for such a low price.

During it's life after the show several related things happened to it:

Someone bridged the relay that turns the unit on and in the process also bridged the voltage regulator that drops the voltage from the 9v to 5v , when this happened they burnt out one of the leds. They bridged the relay because the switch tjhat turns it on either broke at that point or the wire running to the switch broke.

I returned the switch to working order (The white square thing with black square on the wrist unit).
I also returned the relay and voltage regulator to their original set up.
The wires running from the control box to the wrist unit were toast so I replaced them with like wire in color, length and gauge.
The led was also replaced with an identical vintage led.

The photos that I took were on the same background that I took pictures of my replica on years ago, it just looks Quantum Leap.

It's kind of interesting that the leds used in the Gummy Bear Link and the Wrist Link were last manufactured in the late 70's. The story relayed to me was that the manufacturer stopped making them in the late 70's and that the company Cal-Pak bought a surplus lot back in the mid 80's and started selling them under the name Speciality Leds with the package reading Cal-Pak. Sometime in the early 90's their supply of the original leds ran out and they started selling new replacements that were different sizes and color under the same product numbers. In the late 90's I hit up some 8 electronic stores within 200 miles of my house and found just enough of the original style to build a handlink and a wristlink and quite a few spares of the smaller square leds.

Wow thanks for taking the time to give us the backstory on that.

I think it went for so low because people don't know the documentation.

If the new owner were to open the control box, there is a piece of white electrical tape inside that says something like "repaired by cylandprops@cox. net on 3/__/2011"

Needless to say I have some real good referance on this prop. My next step is to finish my replica and then a replica that is all self contained.

Hi everyone, we are the owners of the original screen-used wristlink and have come in to give an update to the situation. We received the wristlink after waiting over a month and had to go through a bunch of excuses and BS to get it. The seller Staypuftman2011 was not reliable and we would not recommend dealing with them unless you have all your bases covered and want to fight to get your item. Too bad as we would have bought all the other items from them as well. So with all that said, we have had the wristlink since December and are very pleased with it. The prop will be going into a public display later this year or early next year in New York. Until then, here is the prop wristlink from Quantum Leap.

You are welcome Brian! The QL wristlink is actually sitting on the screen-used Captain's chair and bridge railing from Star Trek DS9 episode "Trials and Tribble-ations" and behind it on the seat is 2 of the rarest Tribbles in the world from 1967 ST TOS episode "The trouble with Tribbles" It is one of the 6 hero walking Tribbles and one of the FX breathing Tribbles. They will also be on display at the museum.

Thanks for the kind words Brian. We have been collecting for many years and have hundreds of science fiction related original costumes, props, and original production art as well as many books, toys, crew items, etc. all of which will be on display.

on an unrelated note - in one of those screenshots above we can see the label on al's cigar. it's fuzzy, but does anyone know what brand it is? there's only one other episode where i've been able to see a cigar label, but i don't know enough about them to figure it out.

Here's a video I took back when I had it:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqT6U1SUQM4&feature=youtu.be

Sorry for resurrecting an old topic, but I figured better late than never...

IMDB and TV Acres say that having Al smoke cigars was Dean Stockwell's idea, as a sneaky way to get free cigars for as long as the show lasted. His preferred brand was Zino, but checking Google Image Search, I found no similar-looking Zino cigar bands. So, I guess that they were "prop-ified" for the show by replacing the Zino bands with ones of their own design. I wouldn't be surprised if there is some kind of inside joke on them, since they would never be readable on screen. Maybe Project Starbright brand? That could be a pink star in a purple circle in the center.

Scotophor said:

Sorry for resurrecting an old topic, but I figured better late than never...

IMDB and TV Acres say that having Al smoke cigars was Dean Stockwell's idea, as a sneaky way to get free cigars for as long as the show lasted. His preferred brand was Zino, but checking Google Image Search, I found no similar-looking Zino cigar bands. So, I guess that they were "prop-ified" for the show by replacing the Zino bands with ones of their own design. I wouldn't be surprised if there is some kind of inside joke on them, since they would never be readable on screen. Maybe Project Starbright brand? That could be a pink star in a purple circle in the center.

Click to expand...

I remember reading somewhere about that. They probably didn't want to have to pay Zino because of product placement issues. They very well could have been, but had to have the labels changed or remain out of focus.