Jeffery,
I certainly feel the same way you do about the fact that everything I
still want is now priced out of my ability to buy. You're right, it
sucks and it's nowhere near as much fun as it used to be. But you seem
to blame "The Dealers" who are really not the cause of price increases
over the decades. The cause is the increased popularity of movie poster
collecting. I've been at it since 1965, when, if you knew where to dig
around, you could find 1-sheets of titles like EARTH VS. THE FLYING
SAUCERS, BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S, WAR OF THE WORLDS, PSYCHO, THIS ISLAND
EARTH for $10 or $20 bucks... sometimes people would just give them to
you for free! And those were the *popular* titles. Saul Bass window
cards? Most of the few people who had any interest in movie posters back
then would have asked "Who's Saul Bass?"
So, to me if feels like *any* price above $20 for a movie poster is
"artificially high". Does that mean dealers should continue to offer me
great posters for only $20 bucks just because I used to be able to buy
them for that price? You say dealers should "not be in retail"? Why not?
That's what "dealer" means. You seem to be confusing the term with
"auctioneer", but even auctioneers set their minimum bids with
consideration to recent sales results. They are supposed to get the best
price they can for something -- not work to sell it as cheap as possible.
You seem to think that "dealers" are still picking up quality posters
for $25 but instead of selling them for a markup of only $75 they are
now greedily marking them up to $500 or more. Um, look, if you could
just privately e-mail me the address of this wholesale vintage poster
warehouse where the dealers go to pickup great old movie posters at
super-cheap prices, I would really appreciate it...
A markup from $25 to $75 back in the good old days would still have
meant the dealer was making a 200% profit. So, if somehow that same
dealer can find a BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S today for, say, $700 (where?),
then he could mark it up to $2,100 and still only be getting the same
200% markup he used to get back when in the days when you thought he was
being "fair".
Sadly, the world just doesn't stand still for us and inflation is a
killer. All the publicity about movie poster collecting over the past 45
years has resulted in a whole lot more people buying posters -- that and
the fact that, while I always wanted to have old movie posters as a kid,
many of today's well-heeled buyers didn't get interested in them until
much later in life when nostalgia for the days of their youth started to
hit them and they went looking to buy some pieces of it with their fat
wallets. That's how we got from $75 bucks to $thousands of bucks over
the last 30 years.
But it didn't stop there. No, unfortunately, when really desirable
posters started consistently selling for those multi-thousand dollar
price tags (which only began happening on a regular basis, what, maybe
15 years ago?) that's when you attract the notice of people who only
"buy to invest" and who really have very little interest in the poster
as a poster. It's sad when that happens, but there's no way to avoid it
and you really can't blame the dealers for selling posters at the price
that someone is willing to pay.
But, even in today's world, with literally 500 to 1,000 movie poster
auctions starting at 99 cents every week at places like Emovieposter.com
and MoviePosterBid.com you just can't argue that there is no place left
where there are low starting prices. Even Heritage puts fairly
reasonable minimum bids on a lot of their items. It is what happens to
the prices once the bidding starts that you really seem to be upset
about. Me too. But that is, in fact, the "fair market value" you say you
want to get back to. The fair market hasn't gone anywhere, it's just
that people like you and I no longer feel it's "fair" by our personal
pricing standards. There's nothing to be done about that except wait for
the market to crash (but history tells us that isn't likely where
genuine collectibles like vintage posters are concerned. The best we're
likely to see is a slight overall pull back in prices. In fact, I
believe we already saw that at the beginning of this year and it didn't
last long).
Answer this honestly: You suddenly find yourself in serious need of
cash. You have no choice but to sell some of your posters. You pick the
10 best posters you have and put them up for auction. Are you going to
start the bidding at 99 cents and "trust the market" or are you going to
set a minimum bid that is closer to what you think they are worth?
-- JR
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