Post #571014 by Sabu The Coconut Boy on Sun, Jan 2, 2011 10:15 PM

Hi Jay,

Sounds intriguing, but we'd really need to see a photo of the tiki before we could give any kind of educated guess. Over the years we've become very cautious, because just like other antiques, stories get passed down that an item came from this famous movie or that famous restaurant and often the story is just apocryphal, and the tiki had no famous pedigree but is just a nice, vintage tiki. Sometimes the seller is trying to deceive but sometimes they're just passing on what they've been told themselves.

For example, tikis often show up on eBay that are purported to have come from the famous "Luau" in Beverly Hills, or one of the old Trader Vic's but turn out to be modern pieces from Bali or Thailand that are made to look vintage. A lot of folks on this board are knowledgeable enough to tell the difference.

As I recall, one of the minor gripes with Brando's "Mutiny On The Bounty" were that no tikis actually appear in the movie (I may be wrong in this, but I haven't seen any tiki scenes from this Bounty posted here on TC and we've posted just about every movie where a tiki appears.)

There is this photo from LIFE magazine which shows a tiki on the set of the movie...

... and I would expect any tikis from the actual movie to look somewhat like these: hardwood instead of palm and Marquesan or Tahitian in design.

Let us know if you can post a photo. I'm sure a lot of the folks here would be very interested in seeing it. Thanks.

[ Edited by: Sabu The Coconut Boy 2011-01-02 22:26 ]