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collectahollic said:

It must be just as frustrating for Bruce, already flagging the need to send higher grade consignments. 

A lot of the linenbacked posters in bad condition came from two estates of two very long time collectors who had no connection other than they both had an obsessive desire to linenback everything in their collections, and, as Rick correctly pointed out, much of both collections should never have been backed.

One gentleman compounded his mistake by using a mediocre linenbacker who solely backed the posters with no restoration at all. And often to $25 or $50 posters, where the backing added nothing to the poster. The other gentleman backed the items well, but during his final years the posters were not cared for, and a fair number acquired post-restoration defects.

I had already told all my consignors to stop sending low value restored items, and now I will make this more clear than ever. No more poorly restored or damaged restored items at all, UNLESS the value is high enough to warrant additional restoraton.

And in the case of the two collectors above, BOTH collectors would have been FAR better off financially if they had never backed anything, and the bidders would have been more likely to bid, when the sole issue to whether to restore, and NOT whether to re-restore, usually much more costly.

I am very serious about "upgrading" eMoviePoster.com from a place that auctions ANYTHING regardless of value to one that has a clear minimum standard for each submission, and soon I will solely be returning items that don't qualify.

And I don't think having a "$30 absolute minimum" per item is setting the bar high at all! In 1970, the minimum wage in America was $1.60 an hour, Now, most places pay at least ten times that. If in 1970 I had said all items must be worth a solid $3, no one would have thought THAT was too high, and the same should be true of $30 now!

Bruce has just finished his Sunday auctions where he sold a total of 114 Australian posters. This batch consisted of 91 daybills, 21 one sheets and 2 advertising posters. All of the 114 posters were linen backed.

What I do find odd is why apart from a small minority of top titles were all of the 114 posters linen backed.  87 of the total 114 posters sold for only  well under #100.

 When one considers the cost of linen backing, the shipping costs and Bruce's fees surely the linen backing of known low selling posters was risky.