Peter,
Thanks for putting up a picture of the reverse side of the Reynold Brown
painting for MAN WITHOUT A STAR that allows us to read the notations (I
wish you'd do the same with a closeup of the notations on the front of
WALK THE PROUD LAND as well) The notes indicate that this piece was in
fact the original poster art for the 24-sheet. I am very surprised the
studio would use a such tiny 14x6-inch original for something that big,
but apparently they did. You learn something new every day. Even more
interesting was the indication in the notes that Reynold Brown did not
draw the poster himself, but did the color rendering of Monty Orr's
drawing. And then, someone from the east coast sales office had another
artist come along later and change some of what Reynold Brown had done
to make the Kirk Douglas figure "more menacing". Fascinating stuff to me
as an artist.
My point about the Metropolis offering was not so much that a 300%
markup is unusual... we've all often seen much higher markups. It was
that a 300% markup on a $7,000 poster and a 300% markup on a $700,000
poster are two completely different animals. The first might be
considered a "reasonable expectation" -- the seller invests $7,000 bucks
and 10 years later sells the item for $21,000 and makes $14,000 profit.
But he was selling into a market where there are a *lot* of people
willing and able to pay $21,000 for a poster. But to expect to invest
$700,000 in a poster and in 4 years sell it and make $1.3 million profit
on the deal seems, to me, an "unreasonable expectation." At that price
level you're selling into a very thin market.
If you truly did offer $1.9 million for it, I can only shake my head in
bewilderment at Ken turning you down.
I was also wondering about the whole idea of selling such an item on
ebay instead of consigning it to Christies or some other venue where
multi-million dollar prices are common and buyers with that kind of
purchasing power congregate. That seems to me almost as strange as Ken
being able to buy it just 4 years ago for what everyone is now telling
me was such a bargain basement price of only $690,000 -- private sale or
no. I was told that this private sale was something brokered by an agent
and that the agent shopped the poster around for months to quite a few
people who might be interested in it and that the $690,000 was the most
anyone would (or could) come up with at the time. Whether public auction
or private sale -- if the sale price becomes public knowledge -- then
either gets figured into the price range and either can establish a high
watermark price that others will cite in the future. Of course, as we
all know, there really ain't no such animal as the "real price" of any
movie poster -- just a range that posters (even rare ones) fall into
over time. It is equally well-known that there are always cases of
individual sales where the price paid jumps way out of the "established
range", both to the up and the down side.
I agree with you that as a purely philosophical matter is is impossible
to say what the Metropolis poster "is worth" in terms of
historic/collectible value. But in practical terms, people and
organizations and insurance companies put a dollar value on "priceless"
works of art all the time. In the end I was just saying that in purely
practical terms I thought $2 million was too much to reasonably expect
to get at this time in these economic conditions. But that's my personal
estimate of the current market, nothing more. And I've been wrong on
that topic plenty of times before.
-- JR
peter contarino wrote:
Hi All,
Although I have been enjoying MOPO for years, this is my first post.
Let me preface this post by saying that MOPO is one of the rare
examples of what a forum should be: a place for people with a common
interest to engage in civil discussions and share information with one
another. That said, I would like to make a few comments and clarify a
few things from several recent threads regarding material that I have
listed on ebay.
First, it was suggested by a member that Majestic Posters was another
ebay ID that Ken Schacter sells under.
This is not the case. Majestic Posters is a business that Ken and I
recently formed and co-own. You can visit our site at:
http://www.majesticposters.com/shop/home.php. If anyone is interested
you can register and sign up for our newsletter which is _primarily
used to inform members of inventory updates _ and is sent when new
material is listed on the site. We are adding material weekly and are
presently compiling several thousand stills we recently acquired and
will be adding a Still/Photo Category soon. We currently have some of
these stills running on ebay. We are also in the process of increasing
the size of the item thumbnails on the site. I appreciate the feedback
from several people regarding that.
Secondly, the Metropolis 3 sheet: JR stated that "$700 K was
obviously the high-water price at that point -- the most anyone
interested in that poster was willing to pay a couple of years ago".
This statement implies that the poster was for sale to the public,
presumably by way of an auction house. This was not the case. This was
in fact a private sale in the amount of $690,000. If it had been
auctioned, I suspect it would have fetched far more than the actual
sale amount. In any case, a private sale of an item is no barometer
of what the market will bear. He further stated that the amount
currently being asked was three times what Ken had paid, and for some
reason seemed to feel that this was an unreasonable multiple given the
fact that it was purchased in 2005. I'm not sure I understand the
reasoning here( In 1997 I purchased a set of /You Only Live Twice
/door panels for 175.00 and sold them at Christies one year later for
17,000.00. Nearly 100 times what I paid for them.)The question of what
the Metropolis poster is "worth" is a pointless one. What is the
intrinsic value of any collectable? I don't know. I do know that
common items tend to go within a certain anticipated range. A rare or
unique item, however, can sell for any amount on any given day.
Depends on how many people want it and how badly they want it. Ken has
in fact had a substantial seven figure offer on Metropolis but
declined. This is the other side of the equation: What is a poster
worth to the seller? Evidently it's not worth it to Ken to sell for
less than 2,000,000.00. I myself offered him 1.9 million and the
miser wouldn't budgeJ
Lastly, with regards to the Reynold Brown paintings I just listed on
ebay, I added some additional photos but unfortunately ebay limits the
size of photos that you can upload(short of using enhanced html
templates, etc-didn't have time) so the fine detail is lacking. I have
hi-res images both of the paintings themselves and the studio notes on
our website(The K. Douglas piece does in fact indicate on the reverse
side that it is intended to be used for the 24 sheet).
You can view these at:
http://www.majesticposters.com/shop/product.php?productid=17017&cat=270&page=1
<http://www.majesticposters.com/shop/product.php?productid=17017&cat=270&page=1>
http://www.majesticposters.com/shop/product.php?productid=17018&cat=270&page=1
<http://www.majesticposters.com/shop/product.php?productid=17018&cat=270&page=1>
-Peter Contarino
.
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