Questions for Bruce-EMP

Bruce · February 2018

Here is how it was in June of 2014, when we had 37,504 customers. Note the differences:

Image: http://www.emovieposter.com/online/20140612_piecart_of_emp_buyers_by_country.gif

Bruce · February 2018

I JUST NOTICED MEL POSTED THE WRONG CHART (the one from 2014).

HERE IS THE ONE FROM FEBRUARY 2018:

Image: http://www.emovieposter.com/images/announcements/dyk/20180207_chart_of_buyers_by_country.png

Bruce · February 2018

Can one of you mods delete Mel's post above (it sure makes this all confusing, since he put the wrong date above it)!

Bruce · February 2018

The current active total (bought within a year) is around 13,000.

These are the 59 countries grouped as "All other countries": Chile   9
Colombia   9
Croatia (Hrvatska)   9
Philippines   9
Malta   9
Peru   7
Iceland   7
Egypt   6
Indonesia   6
Ukraine   6
United Arab Emirates   6
Serbia, Republic of   5
Slovak Republic (Slovakia)   5
Malaysia   5
Iran   5
Romania   5
Pakistan   4
Saudi Arabia   3
Uruguay   3
Andorra   3
Luxembourg   3
Puerto Rico   3
Bulgaria   3
San Marino   3
Georgia   2
Albania   2
Venezuela   2
Costa Rica   2
Kuwait   2
Sri Lanka   2
Azerbaijan   2
England   2
Morocco   2
French Polynesia   1
Nepal   1
Cape Verde   1
Jordan   1
American Samoa   1
Kenya   1
Nicaragua   1
Viet Nam   1
Kiribati   1
Slovenia   1
Zimbabwe   1
Guam   1
Armenia   1
Guatemala   1
Panama   1
Macao   1
Bahrain   1
Ecuador   1
Macedonia   1
Bermuda   1
El Salvador   1
Qatar   1
Tunisia   1
Iraq   1
Monaco   1
Cambodia   1

David · February 2018

England 2?

Monaco 1 - a tax free haven, they must spend all their money on Champagne then!

Got some hard to find places too: Cape Verde and Kirabati.

CSM_2_Point_0 · February 2018

Are these unique buyers or say if I buy items from 10 different auctions (not 10 items but separate auctions) am I counted 10 times?

Bruce · February 2018

David said:

England 2?

Monaco 1 - a tax free haven, they must spend all their money on Champagne then!

Got some hard to find places too: Cape Verde and Kirabati.

The "England" must be ones entered incorrectly (note the rest of England is lumped in with the U.K.)

And yes, we have had some purchases from very exotic locations! When we got the order from Kirabati, I thought it was a made-up country!

Bruce · February 2018

CSM_2_Point_0 said:

Are these unique buyers or say if I buy items from 10 different auctions (not 10 items but separate auctions) am I counted 10 times?

All are unique. There are people who have bought ten thousand items, and they count as one.

110x75 · February 2018

I need to find 37 of my countrymen and kick them in the ass if they bid on the same stuff I do...

David · February 2018

Bruce said:

CSM_2_Point_0 said:

Are these unique buyers or say if I buy items from 10 different auctions (not 10 items but separate auctions) am I counted 10 times?

All are unique. There are people who have bought ten thousand items, and they count as one.

On that basis there are probably 10,000 people who bought one item too. Be far easier and cheaper if you had a dozen or so of the former!

HereComesMongo · February 2018

Bruce said:

I JUST NOTICED MEL POSTED THE WRONG CHART (the one from 2014).

Ha, not sure how that happened(?). Like I inexplicably found a tube here recently with 25 valuable/cool MPs that SOMEHOW survived consignment/destruction/moving/3 years

But as we all know ALL PUBLICITY IS GOOD PUBLICITY!

For example you-know-who went to jail for one night for ... something ... and quadrupled her "famous for being famous" popularity.

Um, not a bad mug shot....

Tob · February 2018

Thanks for sharing, Bruce. Very interesting.

It'd be fascinating to crunch the numbers in detail to try and get an idea of the number of 'active' collectors out there and how that has changed. It'd probably be pretty time consuming to analyze the numbers though...so do you have a gut feel on the state of the hobby, Bruce? Your sales seem to go up year on year, so hopefully that's a positive sign that folk still enjoy collecting posters.

Bruce · February 2018

The number of active collectors on our site absolutely DOES go up quite a bit every year!

As far as "your sales seem to go up year on year", that confuses me. Go here, http://www.emovieposter.com/sales/postersales.php, and look at the yearly sales figures.

We have been on a pretty steady upward march from $1,883,722.71 in yearly sales to $5,596,923.00, with only a few small downturns along the way.

The hobby IS growing, but not evenly in all collecting areas. Some, like westerns and 1950s horror/sci-fi have been leveling off, and others, like many top 1970s and 1980s titles have been steadily rising in interest and price.

David · February 2018

Bruce said:

The number of active collectors on our site absolutely DOES go up quite a bit every year!

As far as "your sales seem to go up year on year", that confuses me. Go here, http://www.emovieposter.com/sales/postersales.php, and look at the yearly sales figures.

We have been on a pretty steady upward march from $1,883,722.71 in yearly sales to $5,596,923.00, with only a few small downturns along the way.

The hobby IS growing, but not evenly in all collecting areas. Some, like westerns and 1950s horror/sci-fi have been leveling off, and others, like many top 1970s and 1980s titles have been steadily rising in interest and price.

Like Tob says it'd be fascinating to crunch the numbers and drill down to find is it increased unit sales or increased average prices; if sales are increasing for the later (younger) titles then is that helping push the numbers along because there is more availability of posters; find what the average title is by decade and genre - eg are silent movie poster value are on the increase, are musical titles declining and so on.

Related image

Tob · February 2018

Bruce said:

As far as "your sales seem to go up year on year", that confuses me. Go here, http://www.emovieposter.com/sales/postersales.php, and look at the yearly sales figures.

We have been on a pretty steady upward march from $1,883,722.71 in yearly sales to $5,596,923.00, with only a few small downturns along the way.

The hobby IS growing, but not evenly in all collecting areas. Some, like westerns and 1950s horror/sci-fi have been leveling off, and others, like many top 1970s and 1980s titles have been steadily rising in interest and price.

Yep, that's what I meant by "your sales seem to go up year on year" - total yearly sales have steadily climbed.

Good stuff, thanks Bruce, sounds like the hobby is in decent shape.

Bruce · February 2018

David said:

Like Tob says it'd be fascinating to crunch the numbers and drill down to find is it increased unit sales or increased average prices; if sales are increasing for the later (younger) titles then is that helping push the numbers along because there is more availability of posters; find what the average title is by decade and genre - eg are silent movie poster value are on the increase, are musical titles declining and so on.

Go to http://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/archive.html and start crunching away! You can do it as well as I can.

David · February 2018

I said it'd be fascinating, I didn't volunteer to be one of your 27 employees - one bazillion sales results to filter...no thanks! But you pay me my hourly rate and I'll see you in 6-12 months...

Bruce · February 2018

David said:

I said it'd be fascinating, I didn't volunteer to be one of your 27 employees - one bazillion sales results to filter...no thanks! But you pay me my hourly rate and I'll see you in 6-12 months...

Bruce · February 2018

What did you experts think of the daybill prices yesterday? Good, bad, meh? Would you rather be a buyer or a consignor at those prices?

HONDO · February 2018

Bruce said:

What did you experts think of the daybill prices yesterday? Good, bad, meh? Would you rather be a buyer or a consignor at those prices?

Speaking only for the Australian posters sales, I think for titles we have seen auctioned many times before, the sales were overall up on previous prices for these titles. Titles like Top Gun and The Ladykillers were lower than previous sales but The Bad And The Beautiful, A Double Life, South Pacific, Jaws 2, In The Heat Of The Night, Halloween ( wow ) and Raiders of The Lost Ark were up in the prices realised over previous prices. Some first timers fared very well. Moon Over And Miami, Valerie, The Vampire and surpisingly a daybill in poor conditioned and not the best designed poster Girl Of The Year ( Petty Girl ) all sold well. A believe the sellers in most cases would have been happy with the results.

jayn_j · February 2018

Bruce said:

What did you experts think of the daybill prices yesterday? Good, bad, meh? Would you rather be a buyer or a consignor at those prices?

Ask me in 5 more auctions. Individual auction results don't mean anything. They certainly don't show movement in value.

Eisenhower · February 2018

jayn_j said:

Bruce said:

What did you experts think of the daybill prices yesterday? Good, bad, meh? Would you rather be a buyer or a consignor at those prices?

Ask me in 5 more auctions. Individual auction results don't mean anything. They certainly don't show movement in value.

I'm not knowledgeable with daybill price history; but the price realized for South Pacific was very high (the last two sales $107 & $218; I paid $24 for mine exactly one year ago; so i agree with Jay.

Sven · February 2018

Nice results Bruce!

I'm also impressed with the Lost in Translation one sheet at $950

@Bruce for lobby cards consigned last year when do you roughly think they will be auctioned by? I understand you have a fair few to auction off!

Bruce · February 2018

Sven said:

Nice results Bruce!

I'm also impressed with the Lost in Translation one sheet at $950

@Bruce for lobby cards consigned last year when do you roughly think they will be auctioned by? I understand you have a fair few to auction off!

We are currently sitting on around 3,000 single lobby cards. We do 999 per auction, and by the time we do another one, we are consigned at least 999 more, so it is hard to ever catch up. But send a private email to my work, and I will make sure yours go in the next one that is not a single owner collection. Or are you talking about sets? Either way, email me and I will get them to auction soon.

Sven · February 2018

Bruce said:

Sven said:

Nice results Bruce!

I'm also impressed with the Lost in Translation one sheet at $950

@Bruce for lobby cards consigned last year when do you roughly think they will be auctioned by? I understand you have a fair few to auction off!

We are currently sitting on around 3,000 single lobby cards. We do 999 per auction, and by the time we do another one, we are consigned at least 999 more, so it is hard to ever catch up. But send a private email to my work, and I will make sure yours go in the next one that is not a single owner collection. Or are you talking about sets? Either way, email me and I will get them to auction soon.

Thanks sir! Droppng an email!

Bruce · February 2018

Got your email. I will locate those last two lobby cards and get them auctioned!

Eisenhower · February 2018

Bruce,

I see that you have "folded One Sheets" beginning on Sunday (2/25). Is this unusual? don't think ive ever seen one sheets begin and end on a sunday?

It seems "lesser demand?" items usually start & end on the sundays. *I mean no slight to those who buy the sunday items.

Bruce · February 2018

Eisenhower said:

Bruce,
I see that you have "folded One Sheets" beginning on Sunday (2/25). Is this unusual? don't think ive ever seen one sheets begin and end on a sunday?

It seems "lesser demand?" items usually start & end on the sundays. *I mean no slight to those who buy the sunday items.

There was an unusual reason for this. The auction contains around 70 English one-sheets, and around 130 "international style" one-sheets (printed for use outside the U.S.). Since these figure to have greater appeal to non-U.S. bidders than "regular" one-sheets, I am having the auction run from Sunday to Sunday, so they can end starting at 3 PM CST, four hours earlier than the Tuesday and Thursday items, which means the English and European bidders don't have to set their alarms to bid at the end times!

And you are not quite right about the Sunday auctions being "lesser". They tend to be about equal to the Thursday auctions. Both of those are usually around 25% under the Tuesday auctions, but that is only because I have always put the best stuff there, since those auctions have been running years longer than the Sunday and Thursday auctions.

But I think there is no longer any fear that people won't remember to bid, if there are items they care for in any of the auctions. That is why I have been starting the major auctions on Sunday, and that has not hurt them any.

Eisenhower · February 2018

Great stuff, Bruce; thanks for responding in detail. Looking forward the Sunday paper!

I can't imagine having to set my alarm for middle of night to bid, but guess I'd have to....

Sven · February 2018

Bruce said:

Got your email. I will locate those last two lobby cards and get them auctioned!

Thanks !

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