No, we are not discounting material from the last two decades, but the
studios and distributors certainly are. Modern movie posters are
produced in staggering quantities compared to the number of posters
which used to be produced for films 20 or 30 years ago. Besides needing
vast quantities to accommodate the new business model of achieving
saturation global release within a few weeks, modern theatrical movie
posters are now also printed and sold directly into the consumer market
as retail items for $9.95 each. And they keep printing up new batches as
long as demand remains steady.
And there are now tens of thousands of movie poster collectors and
dealers picking up multiple copies of modern movie posters in rolled
mint condition for a few bucks each and socking them away against the
time "they come into their own" -- something that didn't happen much
before 1975 or so.
All of this combines to prevent most modern posters from ever becoming
"collectibles" in the classic sense of the word, which is to say that
damn few of them will ever be hard to come by, and will be readily
available in like-new condition 20 or even 40 years from now. Certainly
they are collectible as commercial advertising paper for whatever
artistic appeal they may have, but I can't see them "coming into their
own" as collectibles compared to the limited-quantity posters of earlier
decades. There will be (already are) exceptions, of course, such as the
occasional very limited-quantity special advance-version, etc. And I've
been surprised to see the theatrical posters from the LORD OF THE RINGS
films going for as much as they have recently, a mere 10 years after
their initial release. I mean, they've printed up zillions of those
things. And I think some of them are still being printed to this day.
But your point is well taken: If there is a need for yet another movie
poster discussion group/forum, it would be for one with a dedicated
focus on post-1990 posters.
-- JR
Holiday Russell wrote:
And are we to discount material from the last to decades as
uncollectable? That seems rather closed-minded. There is a new
generation of collectors like me who concentrate on hypermodern
material because the classic material is mostly unatainable but for
the wealthy. Moreover, the posters that you so quickly discount and
insult now will, over the next decades, come into their own. Great
collections are not built upon only classics - they are built upon
individual vision and tastes. Whether or not you like the subject of
the collection, I defy you to find another of its ken.
Btw, you reviewed a collection of 3000 posters in how much time to
allow you to pass judgment on me, sir?
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