Ice-T Collectibles: Get ‘em While He’s Hot

Ice-T’s sudden exit from Warner Bros. Records has created a swirl of activity on the collectibles market.

Sensing an opportunity to cash in on the notoriety, some collectibles dealers are trying to get their hands on now-discontinued--and therefore rare--products.

Cassettes of the Ice-T single “Gotta Lotta Love” were released by Warner Bros. before the the severance of ties. Between 20,000 and 30,000 were shipped to retail outlets and approximately 1,250 more were mailed to press and radio.

But Warner Bros. was also ready to go with a full-scale promotional push on the scheduled “Home Invasion” album and had printed posters, copies of both the controversial album artwork and the plain blue cover that Warner Bros. wanted to use as a replacement and--the big prize--CDs of the album itself.

“Everything that wasn’t released to the public was destroyed,” a Warner Bros. spokeswoman says. But collectors and dealers assume that some were saved and will find their way into the market.

“At first there will be some pandemonium,” says Jeff Piehler, who is in charge of collectible items sold at Rockaway Records in Silver Lake. “There will be dealers trying to get $100 for Ice-T things.”

But don’t think just because you’ve got a few of these that you can book that trip to Paris. Both Piehler and Jeff Tamarkin, editor of the music collectors publication Goldmine, warn that some dealers may try to inflate the prices while Ice-T is headline material and fans’ judgment is clouded.

“As far as how collectible they are depends on how long Ice-T remains popular,” he says. “If people forget who he is and he becomes Vanilla Ice II, there will be no interest at all. I doubt that will happen, but you never know.”

For those bullish on Ice-T futures, other collectibles include two promotional-only collections with Ice-T rarities. One is “Heck on Wheels,” a collection of “clean” versions of songs for in-store play, which includes a short track that had been scheduled for “Home Invasion.” The other one, “Trademark of Quality,” features an otherwise unreleased pairing of Jane’s Addiction and Ice-T’s hard-rock band Body Count on Sly Stone’s “Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey.”

And don’t forget there are still copies of Body Count’s album before the notorious “Cop Killer” track was removed last summer.

Piehler says that when and if he gets copies of the Warner Bros. “Home Invasion” CD he’ll probably sit on them to see if they gain in value. His best estimate on what the CD will be worth six months from now: about $30.