A Canberra Beatles fan has thousands of Beatles memorabilia items stored in boxes and, unbelievably, no museum in Australia wants his priceless donation – so it’s up for sale on Facebook.
Beatles fan and local musician, Dallas Atkins, started collecting Beatles memorabilia in the 1970s and out of his $80,000 collection, he boasts 1964 original autographs of George Harrison and Paul McCartney that were given to an Australian reporter (who lost the autographs of John and Ringo).
Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum originally agreed to accept the collection but cancelled at the last minute. Canberra’s National Museum of Australia and National Film and Sound Archives both said no to Dallas’s offer.
“They’re all going to regret it because in two-and-a-half years it’s 60 years since Beatlemania,” Dallas says. “The world will be celebrating.”
Dallas, 61, has been a singer most of his life and through his overseas touring, brought thousands of Beatles merchandise items back to Australia, where merchandise production was scarce.
He has a $50 band-aid with “help” written on it, which was put out by Capital Records to promote the Beatles’ Help album in 1965. Dallas also collected a Yellow Submarine lunchbox (used) and a single-pack balloon with Beatles written on it.
“The funny thing is, the Beatles made no money out of this sort of stuff because copyright hadn’t been properly worked out back then and anyone can take an image and use it,” Dallas says. “Elvis was the same, he had no control, it wasn’t law back then. Copyright’s gone overboard now, they want every cent for it.”
Dallas has met Pete Best (the original drummer before Ringo) and he’s seen Paul McCartney perform (in 2017) – but he never actually saw The Beatles. By the time he got hooked, the band had already broken up. He’s still weighing up whether or not to buy a ticket to McCartney’s current Australia tour.
“What got me in was a TV show called Super Flying Fun Show, they would show the Beatles cartoon and I would just sit there stunned, listening to this music with cartoon girls screaming,” Dallas recalls.
“I thought it was just fun and great music. Then Hey Hey It’s Saturday in the 1970s did the same thing and started showing the cartoon. It got me more interested. Eventually I found out this was a real band and I started saving up my money and got my first album – I bought that at Waltons – for very little money back then and I’ve still got it. That was only made in Australia, called Essential Beatles.”
So why is Dallas selling his life-long collection? His kids don’t want to inherit it.
“When you’re a collector, you don’t think about the future, what’s going to happen to it,” Dallas says. “My kids aren’t interested at all. There’s wall-to-wall knick-knacks of Beatles, thousands of little dolls and cigarette lighters and matchboxes, it’s overwhelming. When you say you’re going to pass down that, they run a mile.”
Dallas’s Beatles collection is currently listed for sale on Facebook.
“If someone came up and said I’ll give you $30,000 for it – even though that’s low – I’d be happy.,” Dallas says. “I would’ve put $80,000 into it. There’s no way I’ll get that back.”
Facebook @DallasAtikinsMusic
