Hey Sean, et al: I was wondering if anyone was going to catch that! ;o)
Let me give you an example to try and explain... For my money, Pulp Fiction is head and shoulders the greatest film ever made. Luckily, I still have 2 or 3 lucky strikes advances in my collection. If I didn't, that would be, by far and away, my most sought-after poster. Ten years ago, it was a $50-80 poster. Nowadays, it seems to sell in the $750-1,500 range. If major auctions sold that genre of poster, they'd probably get the better part of three grand for it (judging by the usual major-sale-mark-up). Now, if I hadn't saved those posters, and lucky strike advances only showed up at the major auctions - I don't know if I'd even be in the market for one anymore... I don't know if I could justify spending that kind of money on a somewhat widely printed piece of (inherently worthless) paper. I know it's subjective, but those prices are verging on the ridiculous, despite how rare... And, that's for my favourite movie (one that will always be sought-after because of the film itself, not just the artwork). Most of the posters on my list are for really crappy movies with no major stars (and come up for sale far less frequently, so there's even higher mark-ups than that). If you get what I'm trying to say, I have no problems paying the big bucks for old, rare posters, from classic films, with big stars and nice artwork. But, I balk at paying (what I consider) ridiculous prices for pieces that only have one thing going for them (and will only ever have a few people in the market for them)... Oh, and I guess you were wondering just how I consider a price to be 'ridiculous' (as it is entirely subjective)?... Well, for that list in question, I paid world-record prices for many of the ones I did manage to find (and didn't find those prices ridiculous). I just refuse to pay 3 or 4 times world-record prices (for what are, to all but a few collectors, minor or garbage titles they've never even heard of before)... Cheers, Bob ----- Original Message ----- From: Sean Linkenback To: [email protected] Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2009 4:39 PM Subject: Re: [MOPO] When do YOU think was the moment when eBay "jumped the shark"? Hi Bob, I have one question about your hunt for these posters. You spend four paragraphs talking about how rare posters are in general, and then how much rarer these crème-de-la-crème titles on your want list are, and that you have spent ten years searching for them but that they just don't exist. Then you go on to state that, well yes they have turned up but they sold for "ridiculous prices". If you've spent ten years searching for an item and haven't seen it for sale once (and presumably someone else might also be searching for the same item), what exactly is a "ridiculous" price? It's kind of hard to put a ridiculous label on something that shows up once a decade. And while I agree in principle that most of the enormous volume finds of posters are over, eBay and the internet/technology in general has allowed finds of very significant pieces that were though lost/non-existent: Bride of Frankenstein 1-sheet, Outlaw 6-sheets, Black Cat 1-sheet, Lost World 1-sheet, and more discovered all around the globe and may very well have been tossed if not for the ease of information now at people's fingertips. There was a Mad Love WC that was used as backing in a frame on eBay a few months ago that most likely would have thrown out or kept out of collector's hands if not for eBay. eBay has made it so that it doesn't matter that you live in Canada - you don't have to worry about that poster being sold before you can call/write about it from an ad in MCW, now you can watch it on eBay and bid at your leisure and have the same chance everyone else has of landing it. Sean ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: MoPo List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Robert D. Brooks Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2009 3:15 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [MOPO] When do YOU think was the moment when eBay "jumped the shark"? 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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