When a blue-chip auction house such as Sotheby’s or Christie’s handles a celebrity estate, it’s often because the estate includes valuable collections of contemporary art, like David Bowie’s, or jewelry, like Wallis Simpson’s. From its start, in 2003, Julien’s, which is based in Los Angeles, has focussed on pop-culture ephemera. In 2014, the company’s co-founder Darren Julien appeared on a short-lived A&E show, “Celebrity Home Raiders,” visiting the homes of third-tier stars—Debbie Gibson, David Cassidy—and appraising their possessions. On the program, Julien, then in his mid-forties, looked fresh-faced and nervous, like a J.V. football coach in his first huddle. When I met him in Nashville, he wore a designer shirt and spoke with relaxed confidence. Julien’s holds the record for selling the most expensive glove (Michael Jackson’s) and the most expensive gown (Marilyn Monroe’s) at auction. Thirteen guitars have sold publicly for more than a million dollars; Julien’s sold five of them. “This is the only specialty auction house in the world that does entertainment at this level, and with such a wide breadth and depth—I mean, anyone from Mary Pickford to Amy Winehouse,” Leila Dunbar, a former director of collectibles at Sotheby’s, told me. “They did the Ringo Starr sale! You don’t get much better than a Beatle.” And yet Julien has a remarkably unfraught relationship to objects. He doesn’t own much memorabilia himself, and the particular excesses of the collector’s mind-set—the pride of the completist, the devouring appetite of the superfan—seem at odds with his cheerful, pragmatic demeanor.