As a kid, every year on Thanksgiving night, Joseph Maddalena and his family gathered around the TV set to watch The Wizard of Oz. He was entranced by Dorothy and her ruby slippers, the yellow brick road, the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Man and even the Munchkins, but there was one prop from the 1939 movie that held him under the deepest spell: the broomstick of the Wicked Witch.

“To me the broomstick was the central plot device and the coolest thing in the movie,” he says. It became a holy grail

Today Maddalena, 47, owns Profiles in History, a Los Angeles dealer in historical documents and movie memorabilia. He has bought and sold some impressive historical documents, including two letters from Abraham Lincoln (from the Malcolm Forbes collection) that went for $660,000 each.

But in the last decade the company’s business has moved more in the direction of Hollywood keepsakes. He sold Luke Skywalker’s light saber from Star Wars for $200,000.

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