My Life with André Hendrick: 'I am the middleman for the Irish autograph market'
André Hendrick from Oulart, County Wexford pictured with autographs of the Emperor and his Apprentice from the 'Revenge of the Sith' in his Star Wars Encyclopedia. Picture: Jim Campbell
“If you find something let me know, I’ve to be in work for 4am.”
The nurse was perplexed by my casual demeanour. I was in the midst of an ECG that night in 2018 and had no idea my life was about to change forever.
“I’m afraid you won’t be able to go to work,” she replied.
“You’ve just had a heart attack.” “A heart attack?” I asked. It didn’t seem real. Just the day before I had been out for a walk with my family.
I began to feel unwell but waited until the following day to visit my doctor. Next thing I knew I was in hospital waiting to undergo a procedure that would leave me with severe Post Traumatic Stress.
What should have taken two hours ended up lasting five and I was awake for the whole thing. I got three stents on the Tuesday and another three on the Thursday. My body could handle it. It was the mind that went. I had to quit my job after suffering the heart attack.
I moved to Wexford with my family after that. Dublin was expensive so we decided to swap city life for the country. It was at this point that, for financial reasons, I decided to sell my Star Wars collection. This particular collection conjured up a lot of memories for me. Those memories dated back to the first ever autograph I received back in 2010. It was from Dave Prowse who played the original Darth Vader.
While Star Wars is undoubtedly an iconic franchise many, like me, who grew up in the seventies, will remember Dave as the Green Cross Code man. Funnily enough, it wasn’t actually his voice that was used in Star Wars. Inreality, the voice was done by an American actor named James Earl Jones. However, Dave’s bodybuilder physique lent itself well to the imposing character.
There was a depth to our exchange that went beyond just an autograph. He told me about falling out with George Lucas. It’s no secret that Dave had been blamed for leaking the storyline about Darth Vader being Luke Skywalker’s dad. As a result he was only allowed to do the small conventions where there might only be 100 people. Dave was a man who was nice to everybody. He talked about how hurt he was about the story leak accusations, which he denied right up to his dying day.
Almost ten years after that I knew I needed to sell my Star Wars collection. I got in touch with Christopher Patrick Nolan, who played Toshma Jefkin, the Rebel Alderaanian consular guard who escaped with the Death Star plans from Darth Vader in Rogue One. I asked him about the autograph I had and if he was dealing with anybody in Ireland. It turned out he wasn’t. That was when it hit me. I knew so many actors like him who weren’t dealing with anyone in the Irish market.
A lot of these people knew me from conventions. At the beginning, it was just me meeting with the stars and getting their autographs. In later years, the meet and greets blossomed into friendships where they knew me well and asked about my wife and our (now 14-year-old) twins Joshua and Caoimhe.
The price of an autograph depends on the star. Noah Schnapp who plays Will Byers in Stranger Things was charging over a hundred pounds sterling for an autograph that I was able to obtain cheaper from another source. The conventions are always expensive because these are guarantees that the stars have been given.
Some autographs are more expensive than you would anticipate. An example would be Christopher Lloyd from Back to the Future who goes for £130.
A “pawgraph” from Peggy, who plays Dogpool in the superhero movie Deadpool fetches £40. She was at a comic con in northern Ireland recently where she outsold everyone combined.
One of the first questions I’m asked is if a star is worth more dead than alive. I have to laugh because this is the easiest question I could answer. As soon as an actor dies the autograph price is raised significantly. It sounds awful, but when a person passes away there is no more getting their autograph. I don’t increase the price myself after a star has died, but that’s just a personal choice.
For me it’s not about making money. Sometimes I don’t make anything. My family are very supportive. Even when I asked my son Joshua what he wanted to do for his birthday he said he wanted to spend it at a convention with me. I have close to 500 autographs at the moment.
I have a lot of high end autographs but getting the big stars isn’t the most rewarding part for me. Recently, I was able to get a birthday greeting for my daughter Caoimhe from Lynne McGranger who is known for playing Irene in Home and Away.
Caoimhe always waits for her mum to come home from work and then they both take the remote control from me to watch it. Caoimhe told me that the message from Lynne McGranger was the best birthday gift she had ever received. That was worth all the autographs in the world.
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