For those in the Milwaukee or Chicagoland areas, I highly recommend checking out American Science and Surplus (https://sciplus.com/). Not props or movie industry related, but similarly fascinating. This store has catered to makers of all stripes since long before "makers" meant what it does today.
I've spent way, way too many hours digging through piles of old missile casings and used nuclear lab equipment at Apex.
Most of the screen-accurate parts on my old car came from Apex:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBo1DvKzRJ4
Apex was the source for many, many Hollywood propmasters.
I think I had to go to Black Hole for the last of all the original Ghostbusters parts, though: (sadly now closed)
https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/18130
I remember flying back from LA one time with a suitcase filled with bomb-looking parts from Apex and setting off some sort of explosives detector at LAX, probably from the toxic dust covering all the parts. First Wife ran off laughing while I got surrounded by security :D
I love how some of the photos in their site are sideways. When you've been providing stuff to the film industry for sixty-something years, you don't need a good site, just word of mouth.
Have a friend in the props business. He sees AI scene generation software replacing almost all of the physical props business. Props use huge 3D space, racks and shelves 20+ feet high and data bases of lists and photos to show the renter. He has already been impacted, but he is sunsetting his full props business and amassing photo archives, along with the rest. He expects a shift to one time fees for photos
Never been to Apex. But I sure remember C&H Surplus in Pasadena, which was a smaller facility of similar kind of salvage, and more focused on the Caltech/JPL crowd. Sometimes we would spend a whole Saturday afternoon there just looking at everything and scoring things we could carry on our bicycles.
All I can say is, if you like gear, you gotta visit a place like this.
I used to visit https://skycraftsurplus.com/ Skycraft in Orlando that was very similar. Not only for props [1] but most of it was functional. If you needed it, they probably had it. And a rad space ship out front.
[1] https://skycraftsurplus.com/products/vintage-ford-mgm-51-shi...
Norton Sales [1] used to be a legendary source of surplus rocket and aviation parts, but these days they seem to mostly rent stuff out.
There is a story how Peter Beck bought there an LR101 vernier thruster from Atlas ICBM, and then smuggled it to New Zealand. Examining the engine showed him that "professional" stuff was not necessarily too much more complicated than what he could make at home. This was probably one of the factors which inspired him to start Rocket Lab, which he did after returning from the USA.
Are they connected to Apex Jr? A lot of overlap between them, have sort of suspected Jr runs off of the trash of surplus but have never known for certain. Apex Jr helped make my electronics habbit possible back when I was young and poor.
As a Torontonian (Canada), this gives vibes of (now defunct) Active Surplus on Queen West:
* http://www.activesurplus.com
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_s5RkCWKQrA
* https://nowtoronto.com/lifestyle/the-gorilla-store-keeps-the...
This was the store where they found a lot of the parts to build Docs's DeLorean into a time machine.
Great documentary on it -
88MPH: Ths Story of the DeLorean Time Machine
https://youtu.be/fgOb22gz_TY?t=46m04s
Linked to the segment Apex is brought up.
The first thing I saw was "proton packs from the original movie" and even in the thumbnail I could tell they didn't look anything like the proton packs from any of the movies. It's three tanks. Pretty clearly a surplus flamethrower.
These people are clowns.
I've been. They have a bunch of cool old electronics as well. It's a fun place to spend an hour or two.
Need to create an account to see the prices of the stuff they're selling.
I guess if you "have to ask"...
Back to the future
Apex? I suppose Acme was taken.
It's interesting how they have a lot of individual parts for rent: https://apexsurplus.com/category/1602870794421x4091516396061...
How is this usually used? Do productions rent the parts to build more complete props, like a full plane interior, then tear it down and return the individual parts? Inventory control would seem very complicated!