Been reading this thread with great interest. I knew a guy named Chuck Vergara who had been collecting posters for ages. A mutual pal of ours introduced us and I went to Chuck's coffee shop/restaurant that he owned and was immediately stunned by the gorgeous posters covering almost every wall surface. Chuck's addiction was to those beautiful 20th Century Fox stone lithos. 'They're so damn pretty!" he said over and over again. He was driving around in San Francisco one day when an old, old theater on Market Street was dumping hundreds of pounds of posters ranging from the twenties to the present. He sprinted over to a phone booth and called everyone with a large vehicle that he knew.
I bought many, many posters from Chuck over the years; sadly, financial issues forced me to sell much of my collection in the early 1990s.
He used to joke about my love for horror films. "We can still be friends even though you like that crap", he used to say.
One day, I got a phone call from Chuck. "Hey, Mr. Horror Movie Guy, can you come over here, like RIGHT now?" He would not say why but I jetted over. There, laid out on his living room floor, was the six sheet from "Phantom of the Opera" showing the Phantom at the Masked Ball. It was so gorgeous I got tears in my eyes. The person who was buying the poster from Chuck came over and ranted and raved over the ourrageous price: "TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS!?!?! That's highway robbery, Vergara!" He grumpily paid the 2 Gs and left.
I believe that same poster sold at one of Bruce's early auctions for a gazillion dollars.
I loved Chuck like a father. When he developed prostate cancer, he sold me much of his collection for peanuts. "Come on, Chuck, we both know that poster is worth a lot more." He insisted. Ebay was just getting going so my profits on poster sales were pretty strong.
He was the nicest man I ever met and I miss his company terribly. He wasn't the earliest collector but he'd been doing it for a long, long time. I've met some great people in this hobby and also some unbelievable dicks.
They broke the mold when they made Chuck.
Great thread. I love these stories.
Greg Douglass
PS-I used to go to National Sreen Service on 5th St in San Francisco when I was a kid. I'd either hitch a ride with my older brother or take the bus. I had piles of dead mint early Sixties titles, lots of Corman AIP. The guy who worked there was the first flamboyantly gay person i ever met. He was an absolute riot, constantly bitching about how his "addiction" had turned him into a shipping clerk. "What awful gory things do you want today, young man?" he'd say when I walked in. One sheets were ...I think...50 cents. I paid for many of my treasures using quarters and dimes. Warm up my time machine, please.
Sent: Monday, April 13, 2020 at 5:16 PM
From: "Glenn Taranto" <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [MOPO] Has anyone ever wonder this...?
From: "Glenn Taranto" <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [MOPO] Has anyone ever wonder this...?
Thanks, Sue. What a lucky kid! Hard to believe any poster being mint being over 90 years old.
As we all know many posters were given up for the war effort in the 1940's. I hope I live long enough for that time machine to be invented!
Glenn
On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 5:08 PM Susan Heim <[email protected]> wrote:
Great question Glenn.. I know I have customers who started collecting the the 1950's. I have one customer who's father was good friends with someone who ran a National Screen Service and, on weekends, they would dropby to see the friend and the friend would give my customer, who was about 10 or 11 in those days movie posters and lobby card sets. So, for any given film, and he particularly collected Elizabeth Taylor and Alfred Hitchcock,he owned the one sheet, 40x60, 30x40 and lobby card set for each of their films, all in mint, never used condition. My customer kept up with the friend over the years, and developed other film poster interests all the way back to the 1920's, and collected hundreds of posters. It's really amazing to hold in your hands a mint copy of something that is 60 or 90 years old when you go to frame it......I know Ron Borst started collecting pretty early.....when I first started collecting back in 1973, I knew other collectors that had been collecting since the 1940's finding posters in old bookstores in Hollywood.SueHollywood Poster Frames
From: MoPo List <[email protected]> on behalf of Glenn Taranto <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, April 13, 2020 11:59 PM
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: [MOPO] Has anyone ever wonder this...?Hello All -OK, Admittedly too much time on my hands...Have any of you ever wondered (or know) who is considered the earliest know poster collector? Forry Ackerman, perhaps?I can just imagine some kid standing in front of a Paramount theatre and staring at a Metropolis one sheet wishing they could own it.GT
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