As always, I'll try and give a (somewhat) dissenting opinion...
eBay didn't just die when they stopped caring about the small auctions and
started courting wholesalers instead... That was only part of it, and the fact
that it just so happened to coincide with the following made it seem like that
was the only explanation. But, it was only part of it. Let me explain...
One of my biggest complaints about the poster collecting hobby is that there is
no wholesaler. There's no one who has everything. There's no one who even has
a good portion of everything in one genre... There's no easy-access to
specific titles. Posters are way too rare. And, the most sought-after posters
are fought over by the collectors tooth and nail. If the hobby had even one
major retailer, it would eat up the entire hobby. Whenever a nice collection
comes on the market, it's gone in a month (well, all the most collectible
posters anyways). If it's an especially great collection, it might last a year
or two. The phenomenal warehouse-finds might last a decade, but those have
been few and far between (and all seem to be long past their best-before date
today). A true wholesaler would need a new warehouse-find of material every
few years. And, those just don't exist... A decade ago or more, I used to
subscribe to MCW, and eagerly anticipated receiving each issue as it was about
the only place to find posters for sale. There was only one problem: I lived
in Canada - so the magazine would come a few days later than in the States.
So, at least 95% of the time I tried to buy an advertised poster, it was
already sold a few days before! Virtually every freakin' time! It was so
ridiculous that I didn't renew my subscription past the first couple years,
just to save me the grief.
If you've purchased posters on the internet for the last 10 years, you'll have
noticed what I call 'poster disease.' A new web site opens up with a great
collection of posters. So you watch it as the site gets worse and worse, year
by year, as all the good posters are sold off, and never replaced, leaving
nothing but the chaff. There's no new source of original posters, so the web
sites/galleries/poster-stores have nowhere to replenish their material. So,
they just wither away and die eventually. The good posters are too rare.
Think of all the best web sites and stores to buy posters 5 or 6 years ago -
are any of them more than a ghost of their former-selves? Not many. I went to
LA a year ago, and took a morning off to go poster buying. So, there I was,
ready to spend a fortune at the few decent (and few not so decent) poster shops
in the area. Virtually all of them were dead or dying. I didn't get to spend
a dollar.
Just to give you an idea of how rare original posters are, here's a little
anecdote (remember, I only collect modern posters [last 40 or 50 years], so
nothing I'm looking for should be that hard to find)... About 10 years ago, I
made a list of the posters I most wanted on a sheet of paper. I filled the
sheet of paper, both sides, in three columns, hand-written. So, approximately
one or two hundred of the rarest one sheet posters I hoped to one day acquire.
You know, the one's where price doesn't really matter. The rarest of the rare.
Your most sought-after pieces. The ones you just have to have (within your
price range, naturally). I made the list in the days before you could search
for long strings on eBay, so I could just pull out the list and search for
everything one by one each week. Every year I would add a couple titles and
cross off whichever ones I managed to purchase. I just moved recently, and
came upon the list, having not looked at it in years. I was actually kind of
giddy, as I figured: hey, it's been years, I'll probably get to cross off a
ton of posters from my list, I must have found tons of them recently. Years
worth, getting crossed off all at once. When I was done, I looked over the
sheet and was saddened to notice that in the decade or more since I first wrote
the list, I'd probably only crossed off about a dozen posters - total. And, it
wasn't like I was outbid on most of them - in all that time, most of them just
never came up for sale (or they only showed up at major auctions and went for
ridiculous prices)! Like 98% of my most desired posters just don't exist in
the marketplace (for all intents and purposes). And, if it's that hard for me
to find more recent posters, I shudder to think how frustrating it must be to
collect silent posters - or 6-sheets - or 40 by 60's - or Universal Horror - or
50's exploitation... Again, there's no wholesaler - there's not even the
little specialty shop that has everything. Posters are too rare to allow those
kind of places to exist. And all the sellers are running out! Heck, they've
pretty much run out already...
The same thing just happened with eBay. A decade ago, eBay was new - and
revolutionary - in the poster hobby. There was finally an easy way to sell
posters. No more trade magazines, buying sight-unseen. Now you had images,
and better yet, cheap auctions. Anybody could sell to anybody. Buyers weren't
constrained any more. Collectors flocked, and all their material went online
at once. As that original mass of posters was sold off, prices started off low
and continued to rise and rise and rise. Then, a few years ago, it all seemed
to stop. The new material stopped coming. eBay ran dry (their policy of
ass-raping their best customers didn't help much, but hey, we're all sheeple,
so thank you, may I please have another). Now, eBay sucks, because every week
it's the same posters being sold. Nothing changes. Ever. Nothing new shows
up. Just the same old crap. The left-overs. The chaff. eBay caught the
poster disease, and she's on her last breaths... The infection just so
happened to coincide with their stupid policy changes, so no one really noticed.
So, yes, eBay dug their own grave, just like the music business, but the poster
hobby was especially hard hit due to other reasons as well (shall we call it
The Great Poster Drought of the Early 21st Century?)...
Cheers,
The other Poster Bob...
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