E AST O REGONIAN
WEEKEND, SEptEmbEr 7, 2019
POP CULTURE COLLECTOR GOES PRO
By PHIL WRIGHT
East Oregonian
U
Staff photos by Ben Lonergan
TOP RIGHT: Andrew Lamb transitioned his love of collecting into the business Totally Righteous Collectibles in Umatilla. Lamb
and his financial partners Kenny and Misty Radcliffe opened the shop on April 19. ABOVE: A Hulkamania shirt signed by Hulk
Hogan sits among other collectibles in the shop’s cases.
Staff photo by Ben Lonergan
Star Trek and Marvel action figures are among the variety of collectibles featured in Andrew Lamb’s shop in Umatilla.
Staff photo by Ben Lonergan
Staff photo by Ben Lonergan
Totally Righteous Collectibles in Umatilla houses a variety of
collectibles including toys, action figures, comic books and
trading cards.
A selection of Pokémon trading cards is on display at Totally
Righteous Collectibles.
Staff photo by Ben Lonergan
Totally Righteous Collectibles is at
1300 Sixth St., Suite 1, in Umatilla.
mAtILLA — pokémon cards were
Andrew Lamb’s first drug of choice.
He was maybe 12 when he
learned of the Japanese trading
card game washing over United State’s
shores and eventually to his home in
Hermiston.
“I rode that wave,” Lamb said. “That
was the one where I had to have the full
collection.”
He said his parents were big into Star
Wars, and that also rubbed off.
“They would take me to all the
midnight shows when I was a kid,” he
recalled.
He became more serious about col-
lecting in his late teens with grading
— having an independent third-party
company evaluate the condition of
collectibles, namely cards and comic
books. The gem in his private Pokémon
collection is the “rainbow rare Reshiram
& Charizard,” he said, which in pristine
shape goes for $250 ungraded and a
whopping $800 graded.
Lamb, just weeks from turning 30, is
turning his passion for collecting into a
business venture. The idea was to be a
vendor, he said, but he got a good deal
on renting the space at at 1300 Sixth St.
Suite 1, Umatilla, and on April 19 he
and a couple of friends as financial part-
ners, Kenny and Misty Radcliffe, also
of Hermiston, opened Totally Righteous
Collectibles.
“We’ve got a little bit of everything,”
Lamb said, from Star Wars toys to Mar-
vel action figures, Matchbox cars to
comic books. And those Pokémon cards
have a display case all their own. Most
of the items are from the 1980s and
1990s. About one-fourth of the inven-
tory comes from the Radcliffs. The rest
is Lamb’s. When it comes to collecting,
Kenny Radcliffe said, his friend is “hard
core.”
For Lamb, that means seeking out
quality pieces for the business. He relies
on a few vendors to keep stock fresh
each month, he said, and he attends pop
culture conventions to dive into what he
loves and to ask actors, artists and others
to scrawl their signatures across their
action figure, photo or movie poster.
The store already boosts Hulk
Hogan’s signature on an original Hulka-
mania shirt and “Spider-Man” movie
actor Tom Holland’s autograph on the
front of a Funko vinyl figure of the
superhero. Lamb said he’s heading
next weekend to Portland for the Rose
City Comic Con where he hopes to get
“Aquaman” star Jason Momoa to put
his John Hancock on a figure. The big-
ger prize could be getting the autograph
of horror movie monster Freddy Kruger
himself, actor Robert Englund.
Horror, it turns out, is more popu-
lar than superheroes. The store offered
a small “Halloween” movie poster bear-
ing the signature of Nick Castle, the
actor who played the killer in the orig-
inal 1978 “Halloween.” Lamb said the
poster sold within the first two weeks of
the shop’s opening.
What is not hot, however, are sports
items.
“It’s just really hard to move it,” he
said, so the store has more than it needs
or wants.
Totally Righteous also is not going
to buy your stuff. Signs on the counters
make that explicit: “We are NO longer
purchasing Any items from ANYONE!”
The reason is straightforward.
“We had more people bringing in
stuff than leaving with stuff,” Lamb
said.
The business is busier at the first of
the month, and Lamb and his partners
rely on social media to push promo-
tions and build a customer base. And on
occasions, Lamb — who is tall and bit
lanky — said he dresses up as Batman’s
archenemy The Joker to draw passing
drivers into the business.
But he stressed this effort is not about
getting rich. Collecting, Lamb said, is
about holding onto “very precious mem-
ories,” and the store is a way to spread
that joy. He said he sees it when a cus-
tomer walks in.
“Just the light in their eyes when they
have something they have been looking
for,” Lamb said. “It’s a really nice feel-
ing. I just like what I do.”