It's called a "Discussion Forum". This discussion initiated by David was about a sales pitch, not about whether someone's business is successful or not. As I said in one of the e-mails in this thread, I'm not trying to denigrade Bruce's operation at all. I just don't think that last ad was a good sales pitch because it's trying to appeal to two different audiences, the consignor and consignee, and it is sending mixed signals in the process for all the reasons I along with several others in this forum have outlined. FRANC
-----Original Message----- From: MoPo List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2013 9:13 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [MOPO] Once again, in 2012, over HALF the items we auctioned sold for $14 or less! We are just an all-purpose auction house who can auction ALL the items any consignor has, and we are the only major auction house who can do this with large collections. What Bruce said in this one line says it all. He is running a very successful all-purpose auction house, just like hundreds around the world in big and small towns and online. It's what eBay was before it disappeared up its own bum and wanted to be Amazon. The difference is, he regularly gets results that the majortiy of all-purpose auctions houses would never get for movie posters and memorabilia. I think both Franc and David are being over-analytical about the sales pitch simply because it covers the major appeal points for both sellers and buyers. At the end of the day, what does it matter? Material keeps rolling in and rolling out and there are plenty of people who appreciate the level of service on both sides. Phil -----Original Message----- From: Bruce Hershenson [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2013 08:21 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [MOPO] Once again, in 2012, over HALF the items we auctioned sold for $14 or less! And I can only reiterate that the vast majority of those 57,000 items came from people who got them for nothing, were offered next-to-nothing for them, and didn't want a new job selling them one by one. Very few were from collectors, except for those who simply wanted to get rid of all they had. Most took our advance and looked through their consignments before they sent them and only sent items that truly figured to sell for $15 or more. But we just got in a pallet each from three different consignors and those items will go in bulk lots and only a few in single sale, and a lot of the single sale items will auction for $14 or under. Consigning those items to us made the most sense to those people. Others, like you, would NEVER consign even one sub-$15 item, and that makes sense to you. We are just an all-purpose auction house who can auction ALL the items any consignor has, and we are the only major auction house who can do this with large collections. On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 6:42 PM, Franc <[email protected]> wrote: Because there are many dealers who buy material from Bruce at his under $14 low prices and then resell these same items at a profit on Ebay, their own websites and/or the websites of other dealers that accept consignments, I can only reiterate that a consignor might not find Bruce's results on low-end items to be an incentive to consign. FRANC -----Original Message----- From: MoPo List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of David Kusumoto Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2013 7:30 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [MOPO] Once again, in 2012, over HALF the items we auctioned sold for $14 or less! * That's an interesting way to look at this, Franc, and you're not wrong. But I tend to believe that for consignors, if 57,000 of our items sold for under $14 in 2012, fetching $478,400 - then such items, one could argue - might be so "less desired" - that they might've fetched no more than $14 each anyway, with or without the use any selling platform, even after subtracting commissions. I think the big factor is whether our "below $14 items" are given a solid chance to reach the highest number of potential buyers - before deciding that I'm better off using my paper as kindling. * I've always believed collectors/buyers are creatures of habit, whether they buy from Bruce, Heritage, Rich or from you and Al. If we reflexively check the listings of every sale hosted by the aforementioned names - (as I suspect many hard core collectors do) - we do so at the exclusion or displacement - of time spent browsing your competitors. The other factor has to do with the number of consignment houses that will allow themselves to be used as a dumping ground for items valued at less than $14. From the consignor's side of the equation - using myself as an example - I've used both Bruce and Grey. Both have been terrific. But most of the items I used to own were in the $5 to $100 value range. Bruce has a large factory of employees who can process a high volume of material quickly and efficiently. On the buyer's side of the equation, I don't spend a lot of $$$. How I am treated as a low-end buyer - informs how I might be treated as a consignor of low- (and high-) ticket items. * Yet in my case, as a consignor - I still came out ahead when I consider what I saved by not worrying about reaching the MOST buyers each week - for low-to-mid-range material that many dealers or consignment houses might turn down. Given the value of what I owned, I chose Bruce to liquidate most of my collection and I did well. Hard figures: Since I began paring down my huge collection after the wildfires in our area, my stuff has fetched more than $202,000. And 94% of that came since late 2007. Sure, I had a few choice items like "Gilda" and "It's A Wonderful Life" - but most of my stuff was low-to-mid-range in value - with NO horror pieces, a genre I've never collected. If a schmoe like me can get these kind of results, that's something, because there's NO WAY I could've achieved this without expert help. What mattered to me most was getting my "less valuable" items visible to the highest number of buyers, but not via eBay where things tend to get "lost," but via the most popular sites for collectors of movie paper. -d. _____ Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2013 19:20:45 -0500 From: [email protected] Subject: Re: Once again, in 2012, over HALF the items we auctioned sold for $14 or less! To: [email protected] Whether or not someone would spend $475K to buy 57,000 items is not at all the point. All I'm trying to express to you is that your ad is not a good pitch for a potential consignor of low-end items especially when you deduct your comission from those sales under $15, that's all and you might want to think about sending out a multi-purposed pitch as yours is. FRANC _____ Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2013 17:19:54 -0600 From: [email protected] Subject: Re: Once again, in 2012, over HALF the items we auctioned sold for $14 or less! To: [email protected] Do you think you could find ANYONE in the entire world who would pay $478,400 for those 57,000 items? Or $300,000 or even $200,000? If so, send them to me because I can easily put together a better group of similar material for that price! The people who send us that low end stuff are mostly theater owners who got it for free or people who just want to be rid of it, and they already offered it to as a group and found no takers. But by us selling it item by item, we find specific buyers for each specific item, who value it at those prices. But NO ONE but us will go to that effort on that large a scale. _____ Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2013 17:33:38 -0500 From: [email protected] Subject: Re: Once again, in 2012, over HALF the items we auctioned sold for $14 or less! To: [email protected] I have to disagree with you, David. This pitch has too much contradictory content. If you add up how many items in this ad sold for under $10, you get a total of 268,377. At the benchmark of under $14, the total is a whopping 478,400. That might be very attractive to the buyer of low-end movie ephemera, but if you are a consignor, I should think those statistics are not attractive at all. FRANC _____ Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2013 12:16:37 -0800 From: [email protected] Subject: Re: Once again, in 2012, over HALF the items we auctioned sold for $14 or less! To: [email protected] In my view, this is a creative/iconoclastic/against-the-grain ad. I don't know many businesses that can effectively market in "several directions" at once, e.g., touting good results for premium items and "great buys" for lesser items, the latter a means to reach "shallow pocket" common collectors who might otherwise feel alienated by multi-thousand dollar posters. And then there's the consignment end - whereby dealers know there are few places where their sitting inventory can get greater exposure every week - to thousands of loyal customers - without hassling with grading, photographing, packing and shipping items with high grade materials to buyers. Thus dealers know their only "real" heavy lifting - involves shipping their languishing inventory to a consignment enterprise in one big batch. PR / news guys like me are always intrigued by the different ways creative businesses market "discretionary" items during a sluggish economy. While movie posters aren't necessary like food, creating temptation for buyers to snare a great deal for under $5 plus shipping - up to three times a week - is a good thing. -d. _____ Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2013 07:26:44 -0600 From: [email protected] Subject: Once again, in 2012, over HALF the items we auctioned sold for $14 or less! To: [email protected] Once again, in 2012, over HALF the items we auctioned sold for $14 or less! Our latest ad has the hard, cold facts, showing this (and also showing that we auctioned 6,904 items for exactly ONE DOLLAR each, and 24,600 items for FIVE DOLLARS each or under. So if you are looking for true bargains, look no further than the two to three THOUSAND auctions you will find every week at eMoviePoster.com! http://www.emovieposter.com/unused/ads/20130109_everybodyknowsyoucantgetdeal sanymore.jpg http://i920.photobucket.com/albums/ad49/PRtoday/bhad.jpg -- Bruce Hershenson and the other 29 members of the eMoviePoster.com team P.O. Box 874 West Plains, MO 65775 Phone: 417-256-9616 (hours: Mon-Fri 9 to 5 except from 12 to 1 when we take lunch) our site <http://www.emovieposter.com/> our <http://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/all.html> auctions Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com ___________________________________________________________________ How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List Send a message addressed to: [email protected] In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L The author of this message is solely responsible for its content. Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com ___________________________________________________________________ How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List Send a message addressed to: [email protected] In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L The author of this message is solely responsible for its content. -- Bruce Hershenson and the other 29 members of the eMoviePoster.com team P.O. Box 874 West Plains, MO 65775 Phone: 417-256-9616 (hours: Mon-Fri 9 to 5 except from 12 to 1 when we take lunch) our site <http://www.emovieposter.com/> our <http://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/all.html> auctions <http://www.emovieposter.com/images/announcements/unparalled_customer_servic e.png> <http://www.emovieposter.com/unused/20120625ad_emovieposter_no_buyer_beware_ buyer_warranty.jpg> Complete Buyer Protection - No time limit on our guarantees & NO buyer beware <http://www.emovieposter.com/images/announcements/20120906_mcw_ad_hershenson _help_hotline_forsite.jpg> Hershenson Help Hotline - Direct line to Bruce (our owner!) for urgent problems Also, please read the following three pages of in-depth Customer Reviews of our company - <http://www.emovieposter.com/images/announcements/buyerreviews_page1.jpg> Page 1, <http://www.emovieposter.com/images/announcements/buyerreviews_page2.jpg> Page 2, <http://www.emovieposter.com/images/announcements/buyerreviews_page3.jpg> Page 3, which shows you in our customers' own words exactly what makes our company and our auctions so very different from all others! <http://www.emovieposter.com/images/announcements/bruce01.jpg> Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com ___________________________________________________________________ How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List Send a message addressed to: [email protected] In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L The author of this message is solely responsible for its content. Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com ___________________________________________________________________ How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List Send a message addressed to: [email protected] In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L The author of this message is solely responsible for its content. Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com ___________________________________________________________________ How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List Send a message addressed to: [email protected] In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L The author of this message is solely responsible for its content.
