I am totally in agreement with Ralph... as dealer I do indeed hope my for sale stock increases in value, however it is not anywhere near my primary concern which is to actually sell the item. However, like I tell everyone who has ever asked me about investing in collectibles.... only a real pro can do that as there has to be a unique set or circumstances to coalesce in order to achieve that and only a pro can gauge these factors in advance.. Even we are wrong as pros.. so the novice is in real trouble, especially when he has to listen to a dealer who has a conflict of interest (I need to sell this item to buy bread, but HE wants investment.. who cares about him.. "oh yeah, this Jackie Brown poster is a great investment sir")
however there is an investment that is not spoken about.. a spiritual investment.. I doubt any large percentage of you folks got involved in posters for a financial investment. You collect because you want to. This is my philosophy about my own collection. I could care less what the value is if I'm not selling it.
which brings us to the crowing that I see when Heritage or Bruce's big auction gets high prices. It's funny that for 51 weeks of the year I see many MoPo-ites bitch & moan about the prices Bruce gets, only to see the comments become "oh wow man.. great sale" when he does his yearly big auction. Do you listen to yourselves when you do this??? The reality is that your philosophy should be a constant, which is obviously not the case here on MoPo so frequently.
One week a bunch of members complain "how come all dealers don't start their auctions at .99 like Bruce or Heritage??" and then the next week it's "wow, I'm so glad to see you achieve these stratospheric prices.. kudos to you". Now I don't know if the comments come from the same people, but it is a dichotomy that just doesn't jive.
To address the .99 cent issue... If you wish to consign to me any collection of 30's-60's good to medium to great posters that I can start on ebay at 99cents and you'll have to be happy with whatever you get.. Please send them on & I'll be happy to list them and then you can see what you get. But for most of us to just start our auctions at .99 is ridiculous. Bruce for instance doesn't auction his own posters, these are all consignments. So when he sells a Wasp Woman one sheet that sells for $16.27. Bruce has not lost one penny, unless it cost him more to list it. If I do the same, the poster was my property & I just took a major bite out of my a$$. How many of you are willing to do that?? No need to answer, I know the answer ........ZERO.. !!
Myself, I don't care what the auction starts at. I only want to know if I'm willing to pay the ultimate "hammer price" and if a poster starts at .99 or at $99 is meaningless to me.. The only thing I want to know is if I won the item for my bid. But believe me I understand your interest in getting a Day the Earth Stood Still one sheet for $200. I'd like to hammer down at that price too, but I'm a realist & I understand that regardless of what I would like I have to live in reality and not some fantasy.
Poster dealers, like the operator of Wal-Mart, are in business to make money and it just isn't possible for most of us to eat by selling 99 cent posters. Plus the work involved in selling a poster for 99cents is no less than the work involved in selling the same poster for $10,000. Which would you rather do??
This I know: the car dealer does not auction cars starting at 99cents Sav-on doesn't auction drugs starting at 99cents Kaufman-Broad does not auction houses starting at 99cents Calvin Klein does not auction jeans starting at 99cents, or at 2.99 or at 4.99 or at 9.99
so why do you so vehemently feel that poster dealers should??
I was totally insulted a few weeks back when one member stated "all a dealer has to do is pack the poster between 2 pieces of cardboard & ship it". What an ignorant statement!!! The individual who wrote it was a Doctor. Should I therefore take it that if all he did was look in my ears with his light tool & take my temperature that he should ask me for is 99 cents?? It was one of the moronic indications that as dealers we do nothing. I went to "school" just like the doc did and paid my dues to learn my craft. Is my schooling less valuable because I didn't have to go to a brick building school for 12 years or that I actually got to make money while I was being schooled?? Moreover I also put my money where my mouth is day after day as I rarely sell on consignment and therefore invest my own money in my business.
So when I hear things like "everyone should start their auctions at 99 cents so I can get an incredible deal regardless of whether I actually would have paid $2500 for the item and if you don't start at 99 cents I will boycott you" and then I hear from some of the same people "it was so great you got a huge incredible high price and that I also paid 3 times what I would have paid in any auction" I have to wonder where that hypocrite went to school. the statement should not be "why don't you auction your 1939 Stagecoach one sheet at 99 cents".. It should be "wow, a Stagecoach one sheet and I want to bid or I don't", but eBay has made it too easy to spend your money with people who you would otherwise have no access to and you think that just because Joe Blow has found 200 old posters in his garage and sold them for dirt that so should everyone else... Well you're wrong! However, you can choose to bid with whomever you wish, just like you can shop at Albertson's or at Raley's to get the best price on milk. But just because Raley's is asking 10cents more doesn't make Raley's a crook shop, which is one of the indications that the 99 cent complainers seem to have of those who prefer to get something closer to a fair price for their stuff..
I wish I could start a collection of 1930's posters at 99 cents and make a good living AND find another collection like it afterward.. It just isn't realistic. Bruce can do that because he doesn't own the posters & he has a mailing list of almost 25,000 bidders which no-one else other than a few sellers have. To go even further.. even Bruce starts his own items at a set sale price doesn't he?? I haven't seen any complaints about that..
just my 99 cents about the issue
Rich=======================================
At 11:28 AM 3/20/05, Ralph Plumb wrote:
I too have collected various things over the years from antique toys to civil war paper money. Some things have gone way up in value while others have gone down. I never collected based upon whether or not something will go up in value. I collected based up the pleasure derived from them. Any happiness obtained from the increased value in my collections is tempered by the higher prices I will have to pay for obtaining others. My paper money is worth a great deal but I have only bought maybe 25 bills in the last 3 years due to high prices. I had more fun when I would afford to buy maybe 200 bills a year. That is why I am with JR in my amazement at all of the people expressing joy over Heritage auctions getting high prices for their posters. To me it can only mean that the next time I see something to buy that the seller will price it based upon inflated auction prices. I collect posters based upon how they look and how they make me feel when I have them hanging on the wall. Any appreciation in value is a bonus. I would prefer that I could afford to buy some of these posters. I would think that even dealers would cringe when they see some of these prices since I would assume that the cost to them would also rise. Perhaps if I had a closet full of rare old posters worth a fortune then I would think differently. I must be on the low end of the MoPo spectrum. As for the Heritage Auction, I though some of the posters went at fairly reasonable prices. The only poster I bought was the VF linenbacked one sheet of Cornered for $288 which was less than I have seen it on ebay.
Another consideration I have (and this is based upon my advanced age and experience), is that I have found that if you need money in a hurry, it is sometimes tough to get it right away by selling a collectible. They are far far from a liquid asset. If I wanted to sell my paper money collection due a family emergency or some other situation, I would have to consign it to someone like Heritage Auctions and hope they could run it in conjunction with a national convention. This would take probably a year to get my money. With ebay, it would take forever, and you run the risk of not getting what it is worth. Ralph Plumb
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