No, it’s not Zivini, zivine, zivni, or any other combination of letters I could come up with while sipping my morning coffee. It’s Zivini (or Zivini Auctions), and they offer a rather unique service: customers pay to send items to celebrities.
These items are then signed (or hugged, kissed—really whatever you want) and sent back to you for a hefty cost. This can be convenient for a number of reasons, as getting ahold of celebrities these days is a tiresome process.
Traditionally, it’s always been a multiple-choice question for fans and collectors:
1): You meet a celebrity at a convention. This can be very effective, but the number of major celebrities willing to make appearances at these conventions is dwindling for a number of reasons. Let alone having to pay for tickets, travel, and then standing in line for hours (yawn).
2): You hunt down a celebrity at their hotel or wait for them outside a restaurant/store. Yeah, I think that’s something we should leave to the paparazzi… and stalkers.
3): You mail an item directly to them or their team. Not always a bad idea. Sometimes smaller celebrities’ teams have photos and small items ready to be mailed back for this exact case.
Just be sure to include a return envelope to make the whole process easy. This technique is almost impossible with A-list celebrities, however, as their day-to-day operations are simply too big to bother managing operations like this.
This is where, hypothetically, companies like Zivini would come in. I say companies because Zivini is hardly a pioneer here. Places like SWAU (coincidentally a Zivini partner) have been doing this for years.
You’ll even notice they share similar, if not identical, graphics throughout their websites. Well, I wanted to see what all the hype was about, so when I got a Zivini press release that mentioned hosting Punisher star Jon Bernthal for a private signing, I knew it was time for me to cough up the whopping $300 to get to the bottom of it.
And that I did. I must say, I was pleasantly surprised.
After navigating their oddly confusing order pages, I found myself not at a checkout screen, but instead sending an email. I had absolutely no idea what to type, so I just sent this:
“Hi, I would like to send in a Shane from The Walking Dead Funko Pop for Jon Bernthal to sign. Preferably in red paint pen. I am ready to pay and send in my item whenever works for you all. Thank you.”
Surprisingly, I had a response within 30 minutes. They needed some very generic info, but notably it consisted of a rather ominous warehouse address (I assume this is where the signing took place, but they hide these details well for security) and a variety of payment options.
I submitted my payment, and the next day my Shane Funko Pop was off via USPS presumably to be seen again in a few weeks (this time signed!).
And so I waited. And waited. You see, Zivini takes the security of these events very seriously. You get a modified send-in address, you don’t get to know where the event is until well after, and you certainly don’t know when the signing is.
But hey, whatever it takes to get more A-listers signing stuff, right?
What you DO see are photos of your celebrity at the event signing your item (or at least similar ones) and all of the signings are witnessed by a notary hired just to watch the celeb sign. Sounds like a good job!
It was only 12 days after my package disappeared into the USPS void that I received my Funko Pop back in the mail, and voilà, it was now beautifully signed in the vibrant red I requested. Included was a beefy Letter of Authenticity (but I’ll spare you the details of that monster document).
Was $300 too much for this? Perhaps. But as a massive Walking Dead fan, I would say it’s worth every penny. It is by far the coolest piece I own, and knowing Jon Bernthal himself signed my Pop makes me happy every time I look at it.
Is Zivini “legit,” however? Absolutely, and I feel that the private celebrity signing industry is in its infancy.
All in all, I’d give the whole experience a 7/10. I deducted points mainly for the old-school website. It would have made me much more comfortable having a checkout screen and some sort of live tracker I could monitor. Points added for speed and efficiency, and the letter of authenticity
I received was also a nice touch. I would recommend the service mainly to high-end collectors specifically, as most of the price ranges are rather expensive. Some of the celebrities they have booked have signed items cheaper elsewhere (just watch out for fakes!)—but I would definitely consider using them again if they had someone I just couldn’t miss out on.