COUNTYWIDE : Dizzy Over Disney Memorabilia

New York restaurateur Peter Merolo says he has a multimillion-dollar collection of Disney memorabilia, including an animation cel from the 1935 Mickey Mouse cartoon “The Band Concert” said to be worth about $1 million.

Baltimore nurse Eileen Opdyke’s Disney collection, which emphasizes pins and other onetime giveaways, is worth considerably less.

But both are hoping to add to their collections at the second annual Disneyana Convention this weekend at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim.

The event has attracted about 1,300 fans from throughout the country who have paid $515 to $880 to register at the conference, attend an auction and various sales, and rub shoulders with Disney luminaries such as Mousketeer Cubby O’Brien and Frank Thomas, one of the Disney studio’s original animators.

On Sunday, the convention will be open to all comers. Tickets cost $25 if purchased today and $30 at the door Sunday.

“It’s great to be among people who don’t think you’re odd because you have an undying love for Disney and feel just like you do,” Opdyke said Friday as she stood amid boxes of souvenirs she and a friend had bought. A temporary Mickey Mouse tattoo was affixed to her left cheek.

“The general public just doesn’t understand,” she said.

Maybe not, although it was obvious that her fellow conventioneers do.

Some stood in line for as long as five hours to buy T-shirts, coffee mugs and other items decorated with the convention logo. The items were so prized that limits were placed on the number any one person could buy.

The auction Friday night was expected to be heated, organizers said, with hundreds of people bidding on 60 “one-of-a-kind” items. Those included a cel from the Sorcerer’s Apprentice sequence in the animated film “Fantasia” that was expected to sell for between $10,000 and $15,000, according to the auction catalogue.

Merolo had his eye on a new painting of Mickey from “The Band Concert” that was done on a tile. The catalogue estimated that was worth upward of $5,000.

A 1941 personal check Walt Disney wrote to himself was among the items to be auctioned. It was presented in a frame with a photo of Disney and was expected to draw bids of more than $1,000.

Other conventioneers were planning to sleep in line outside the hotel’s Grand Ballroom this morning so that they could buy limited-edition sculptures, paintings, dolls and figurines (costing from $25 to $8,000) when they went on sale.

Martyn Lewis was representing the Connoisseur of Malvern, a British company that was selling the most expensive limited edition pieces--10 handmade porcelain sculptures of Alice in a Wonderland scene.

“I have a customer in Switzerland who wanted to buy all that I have left when this is done,” Lewis said. “I told her I would probably be able to send her two or three, but after I talked to some of the people here, I realized I’m not going to have any left.”