For three decades, Mike and Janeen Van Eaton have sold and auctioned memorabilia from movies and theme parks. Among the unusual items their Van Eaton Galleries has handled are the head of a Goofy costume, squares of wallpaper from Disney resorts and a Doom Buggy from Magic Kingdom’s Haunted Mansion.

Some of them sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. A Disneyland map that was hand-drawn by Walt Disney himself went for $708,000.

In the days leading up to Saturday’s “Disney Parks & Popular Culture” auction, based out of their showroom in Studio City, California, the Van Eatons talked with the Orlando Sentinel about their Disney memories, the search for Dumbo, the mysterious charm of trash cans and the star power that comes with them.

Orlando Sentinel: What came first for you, Disney fandom or the gallery business?

Mike Van Eaton: I first visited Disneyland; it would have been ‘68 or ‘69. So, my grandfather lived in California, and we were in the military, and so we would travel quite a bit. And whenever we were in California, we’d go visit my granddad, who would always take us to Disneyland. So there’s all these fond memories of going to Disneyland. So it started there, and then, of course, especially living overseas, where we didn’t get a lot of regular TV, the “Disney’s Wonderful World of Color,” the TV show. I lived on that show, so I didn’t have to go to Disneyland to know what it was or go to Disney World to know what that was. It was all given to me from this TV show.

Janeen Van Eaton: Same thing, “Wonderful World of Color” and going to the feature films when I was a kid. It was a very big family thing to do.

MVE: My family lived on the East Coast, in Virginia, so we went to Disney World right when it first opened. And then, of course, being in the high school marching band and college marching band, Disney World was always one of those trips the band would take to go march in the parade.

JVE: I actually think my first visit was in my late 20s. … but as soon as I went, of course, it is the happiest place on earth. I had the best, best trip.

MVE: I think, for me, the park is just full of nostalgia. I’ve been coming to this one [Disneyland] since ‘68 and coming to Walt Disney World since ‘72, and although Walt Disney World evolved a lot more than the one out here, there’s still a lot of great memories around Disney World … the Contemporary Hotel for me and the Polynesian hotel. It’s all about hotels down there.

OS: Was your auction business always Disney-heavy?

MVE: We started as an animation art store with all sorts of animation from cartoons, which wasn’t always all Disney, but it was very Disney-heavy because Disney’s very good at keeping their characters in the popular culture, keeping them alive. So they’re always in demand, much more than Woody Woodpecker or the Flintstones, you know. It became Disney-heavy. … With the advent of Disney Stores and things like that – more popular. When we started the auction business, the way we started was a guy brought us a Disneyland collection and said, “I want you to sell this for me.” And I said, “I don’t want to sell this. I want to auction it.” … Our first auctions were always Disneyland auctions, Disneyland and Disney World.

OS: How do you get these pieces? Can I, as an individual, bring you a button I have, or is it bigger volume than that?

MVE: We get a lot of people just emailing us buttons and things like that. Yeah, it just sort of falls in our lap. It used to be we had to search it out, and now it just sort of comes our way, which is great and helpful. We still are always looking, and searching, and calling people, but so there’s much interesting stuff. We have an auction this Saturday, as a matter of fact, and somebody just walked in with a piece from Walt Disney World that’s the cover of the auction catalog. It’s the sign from the Peter Pan ride that says the waiting time. This is how old it is: It only goes up to 40 minutes.

OS: Where do people get the unusual items like the theme park trash cans that you sell?

MVE: It’s the same thing with, like, ride vehicles. … Disney sold them on eBay back in the ‘90s, just very briefly. There was a Dumbo on there. It was $5,000 on eBay. I could afford the $5,000, just barely. But then they wanted $1,000 to ship it to me.

When they’re [Disney] getting rid of stuff, they don’t just throw it away, necessarily. They’ll offer it to employees through their employee stores. So a lot of stuff, a lot of furniture, things like that, comes to the employee stores. With trash cans, they’re sold for scrap, and then the people who are buying them for scrap sell them. … Yeah, it’s funny, but the trash cans always make me think because they go for amazing prices. Yeah, just crazy. It’s a mystery.

OS: What has been your newsiest Disney item, the one that’s gotten the most attention?

MVE: I think we sold an original map that Disney used to pitch the idea of Disneyland to Bank of America and a bunch of bankers in New York – I want to say it was a 4 feet by 4 feet trifold map that had been hand-colored by this Imagineer, Herb Ryman. It was the first concept of Disneyland, a very famous map, and I think that sold for $600,000. …  That got a lot of news, but it always seems to be the ride vehicles. We had a Doom Buggy that got a lot of attention in the last auction.

JVE: You don’t see a lot of those come up.

OS: Your auction catalog is wordy and full of facts. Who produces all of that?

MVE: One thing I hated about other auction houses were their catalogs. They were boring to me or they just didn’t really feature a piece the way it should be featured. So I tried to change that when we did these. I have two guys writing with me. One of them used to work at the Disney Archives. The three of us, we write all the descriptions for the catalog. It’s very labor intensive.

I just like to put in little extra things, like little backstories, when I can on these pieces. And so we do a lot of research on stuff like why was this part of it, who did this. In this auction, we have some pieces from a lady named Charlotte Clark, who did the Mickey Mouse doll originally. … For me, it just adds great information if I’m a collector that I can tell people about this piece I bought.

OS: Sometimes the catalog notes that shipping could be difficult or expensive. What has been the biggest shipping challenge?

JVE: Sometimes, we have to parcel it out to a second freight company. That’s usually sort of our saving grace. We have two companies that we use, one that’s really skilled at doing international crating and then the other guy is really good at white-glove service. Ironically, a lot of the big stuff actually goes back to Florida, which I think is funny. People from Florida love this stuff.

MVE: There have been some pieces that we’ve had hand-delivered because they’re just so fragile we’re afraid to ship them.

JVE: Hopefully, if it’s local, we say it’s for pickup only, even if you’re, like, an hour away, we sort of insist that we won’t ship it.

MVE: In this upcoming auction, there’s these ceramic Snow White and Seven Dwarfs from France from 1938, and they’re like, 2 or 3 feet tall, and they’re heavy. … They’re incredible. They’re beautiful. I’m so afraid to ship those that I can’t tell you. I actually drove six hours up north to pick them up because I didn’t want them shipped.

OS: What are your earliest fond Disney memories?

MVE: When I was a kid, on the “Wonderful World of Color,” they showed a movie called “The Reluctant Dragon,” and in that movie, they showed the workings of the Disney studio, and they showed these guys making the sound effects for a cartoon and things like that. And I saw that as a kid. I said, “Oh, my God, that’s what I want to do.”

JVE: I enjoyed the whole park. My favorite is Storybook Land, when you go through Monstro. I like miniatures, so I love that you can visit, be on the water and see miniatures. It’s a great combination.

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OS: I’m imagining that [famed Disney collector] John Stamos comes to your gallery and hangs out. True or false?

MVE: The great thing about Hollywood, about being here, is that all our favorite people seem to walk in every once in a while, and I get starstruck really easy. Janeen doesn’t. She’s like, whatever.

JVE: It’s their job. Honestly, if anybody’s here that is famous, I like to give them their space because this is what they’re enjoying, this is like their little passion. And they don’t want to be interrupted with pictures and signatures and talking about themselves. They want to come in and geek out on what they love.

For more information about Saturday’s auction or to see a digital version of its catalog, go to vegalleries.com.

dbevil@orlandosentinel.com