LITH Toy Collector Makes TV Debut, Again

The minute Bear Stidham appeared on the screen, cheers filled the Riverview Restaurant and Tavern's dining room.

“Bear, you look good in HD,” Jeremy Sturges said, watching the big screen TV that flashed on Stidham.

Stidham smiled broadly, enjoying his latest brush with fame.

He was featured in a segment of Toy Hunter, a television show on The Travel Channel. Toy Hunter host Jordan Hembrough visited with Stidham in December, shooting film with him and his collection of space toys. Scenes were shot in the backroom of Sturges's Algonquin Antiques & Uniques where Stidham is a manager, dealer and “Space Toy Expert.” The episode aired Wednesday night.

It’s not the first time he’s been on TV.

“He’s no stranger to being around celebrities and being on camera. He was a natural, cutting up and hamming it up with (host) Jordan Hembrough.”

The retired plumber has been featured on Oprah and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous during episodes featuring celebrity lookalikes.

Stidham was a dead ringer for Luciano Pavarotti back before his beard and moustache started graying. Pavarotti invited him to a performance in 1983, bringing Stidham in a limo to the opera house.

“I got out of the stretch limo and people were looking at me. I said ‘How’s my stand-in doing?’ People bought it. I went back stage and Pavarotti was laughing about it. He said I created a stir,” Stidham said.

Now, he looks more like another famous guy: Santa Claus.

His passion for toys fits in with his role as a Santa Claus lookalike.

He was in his late 40s when he seriously started collecting toys from his youth and became well versed on toys. So he became a Space Toy Expert, which is written on his business cards.

As a kid, he was always sending in a quarter and box top of cereal to get the premiums, usually little toys.  His favorite toys were anything related to space. He now owns 800 toys, including a 1936 Buck RodgersX squirt gun _ one of only five in the world.

Stidham has lived in the Algonquin, Crystal Lake and Lake in the Hills area since the 1950s. He remembers drinking his first Green River at a drug store, complete with a soda jerk, in downtown Algonquin.

“He’s an institution,” Sturges said.

Sturges was contacted by the Discovery Channel for a show about oddities in his shop, located at 303 S. Main St. The shop owner told producers he didn’t have any oddies but he had a guy who has the most amazing collection of space toys. The producers knew the crew at Toy Hunter and passed on the information about Stidham.

Stidham has “amazing, museum quality pieces,” Sturges said.

Hembrough was impressed, too. He even bought one of Stidham’s pieces.