The Celebrity Collector: Corbin Bernsen

How Corbin Bernsen’s snow globe collection began

Corbin Bernsen traced his snow globe collection to his years on L.A. Law (1986 to 1994), the hit television series on which he played the opportunistic divorce lawyer Arnie Becker. “I used to travel around the country promoting the show,” he said, “and someone once gave me a snow globe as a gift. I liked it and decided to keep an eye out for others just as nice. I would bring them home and display them in an old pine hutch that had once belonged to my grandfather.”

By the time L.A. Law ended, he had about 30 to 40 globes, some gifts and some purchases. His first purchase came in 1990, on a shopping trip in Pasadena with his wife, the British actress and designer Amanda Pays. He spotted a globe that was also a piece of black memorabilia and decided to buy it, though the $240 price took him aback.

That purchase taught him that snow globes are highly collectible even when they do not overlap with another collecting field, and that vintage globes are the rarest and most sought after. After that, Bernsen was hooked.

Newspaper ads, house calls and a warehouse of globes

Bernsen began buying single pieces and whole collections. He even ran an ad in the local paper: “Prominent celebrity looking to buy your vintage snow globes.” Predictably, he was swamped with calls from people who mainly wanted to meet a star.

“People were amazed that I would drive out to their house to see their snow globes, but that’s how dedicated I was, and still am, to building a truly complete collection,” he said. At the time of the interview he owned more than 6,000 globes, perhaps 7,000; he had lost count long before.

Most were boxed in a warehouse while he decided what to do with them. “Next time we move, I’ll consider how we might exhibit them in the house,” he said. “Or, maybe we’ll open a shop, to share them.” A collection that size is a storage problem as much as a pleasure, since glass globes filled with liquid are heavy, fragile and sensitive to heat and sunlight.

German snow globes from 1900 and the Atlas maker

Bernsen usually stayed away from newer globes with Lucite panels inside. Some of his pieces dated to the turn of the 20th century. “They were made in Germany then, mostly as paperweights and Christmas-themed gift items,” he said. A few came from Atlas, which he regarded as the first serious maker of snow globes, working in Germany around 1900.

Snow globes were first manufactured in France and Germany in the 19th century, and many early examples have Christmas themes. Early globes were heavy glass domes, often on ceramic, stone or wooden bases, with a small scene inside and loose white flakes that drifted when the globe was turned over. Collectors look at the base material, the weight and clarity of the glass and the quality of the figures to judge age, and they check for clouded or evaporated liquid and for repairs.

Interest in the field was strong enough to support numerous books, including one by Connie Moore and Harry Rinker.

Advertising snow globes of the 1930s and 1940s

Many of Bernsen’s globes came from the 1930s and 1940s, when snow globes were popular as advertising items and promotional giveaways. The sponsor’s message ran around the base, while the scene inside, with paraffin wax flakes falling on carefully made figures and landscapes, gave the piece its impact. Heinz ketchup, cigarette makers, old tractor companies and moving firms all used snow globes to promote their products.

Advertising globes appeal to two groups at once: snow globe collectors and collectors of brand memorabilia. The same overlap drives interest in other promotional items of the era, such as Dixie Cup lids with famous faces. Disney also saw the popularity of snow globes; one in Bernsen’s collection, titled “Parade of Wooden Soldiers,” has a moving train outside the globe.

One-of-a-kind globes and the KISS globe from a red paper clip

Some of his more unusual pieces included a Batman snow globe from around the time of the 1960s television show (the series remembered in the profile of Batgirl actress Yvonne Craig), one of two known to exist, and several globes made by a Canadian woman whose scenes each told a little story. Bernsen paid $250 apiece for those one-of-a-kind pieces. One item was not really a snow globe at all, but a little girl’s handmade attempt at one. “It was a Pocahontas doll in a jar of water basically,” he said. “I thought it was adorable and offered her $20 for it.”

The oddest story in the collection made the news in the United States and Canada. Kyle MacDonald, a 26-year-old Montreal man tired of renting, wanted a house but had no money. He started with one red paper clip from his desk and set out to trade it online, step by step, until he could trade for a house. It took only 14 trades. The paper clip became a pen shaped like a fish, then a handmade doorknob from a Seattle potter, and some trades later a Bombardier snowmobile from a Montreal radio host. He swapped the snowmobile for an afternoon with rock star Alice Cooper, and that for a snow globe with the KISS logo inside.

By then MacDonald’s trades were in the Canadian papers, and Bernsen heard about the KISS globe. He offered MacDonald a part in his next film, a thriller called Donna on Demand, in exchange. MacDonald accepted, then traded the movie role to the small town of Kipling, Canada, which gave him a farmhouse. Bernsen went to Kipling for an open casting call, where local resident Nolan Hubbard won a part in the film.

Corbin Bernsen from Ryan’s Hope and L.A. Law to Major League

Corbin Bernsen was born in North Hollywood, California, on January 7, 1954, the eldest of three children of Harry Bernsen, a television and film producer, and Jeanne Cooper, the longtime soap opera star of The Young and the Restless. He graduated from Beverly Hills High School in 1972 and went to UCLA intending to study law, but earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in theater arts and a Master of Fine Arts in playwriting instead. His film debut came in one of his father’s pictures, Three the Hard Way (1974). In the lean early years he worked as a carpenter and roofer and modeled on the side.

His first big break was the role of Ken Graham on the daytime soap Ryan’s Hope in 1983, followed in 1986 by L.A. Law, which made him a lawyer after all, if only on television. In 1989 he played a ballplayer and team owner in Major League with Charlie Sheen and Tom Berenger, and two sequels followed. He later had recurring roles on The Young and the Restless, alongside his mother, and General Hospital, and at the time of the interview he starred as a retired police detective on the USA Network series Psych, commuting to Vancouver to film it.

The Bernsens also bought, restored and resold houses, 16 of them in 18 years, with Corbin doing much of the work himself, and they collected art by Martin Kane of Scotland and Gustavo Rosa of Brazil. Amanda Pays sold her own line of upholstered furniture; one client was Nicolas Cage, a serious collector himself, as the story of Cage’s comic book auction shows.