Questions for Bruce-EMP

Eisenhower

Hello Bruce, 

Yesterday your folded one sheets auction closed. And while I was following quite a few posters, and intended to bid, got distracted by holiday celebrations several times and missed the ones I wanted to try to win. Btw-they of course sold for less than I was willing to bid. 

My questions- (which im sure you've heard before):
1-are your holiday closings less active? Or produce less sales $ (I imagine the $ amts are difficult to calculate with the posters up for auction) but bidding activity can be measured. 
2- have you considered "postponing" the close of an auction due to possible $ loss by you or consignee? (Sp?)

thanks for your time. 

Bruce

Mark

I HAVE paid close attention and I am convinced that the ones that close on holidays overall do BETTER than ones that don't!

I strongly suspect this is because some regular poster collectors are somewhat solitary people who enjoy having "something to do" when their work is closed, and most people are otherwise occupied.

Of course, the Fourth of July is a strictly American holiday, so it only affects a portion of our bidders.

But every auctions has really high results and some really low ones. That is the beauty of honest no reserve auctions that start at $1 with no buyers premiums.

Is it potentially dangerous for consignors? I warn them about this, and if I get the sense they want a retail price or not sell, I recommend they go to eBay or other auctions.

Eisenhower

Very surprising! I would have thought the opposite. But numbers speak the truth. Yes, the beauty of the $1 start is that some end low, some high. 

Thanks!

David

Bruce said:

because some regular poster collectors are somewhat solitary people 

= hermits


note to self: Don't bid during the holidays

HereComesMongo

 ---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: eMoviePoster.com <mail@emovieposter.com>

Date: Tue, Jul 4, 2017 at 10:30 AM

Subject: One half of our 999 folded one-sheets closing in hours are at $1 to $4, lots of rare titles

To: moviepostercollectors@gmail.com

This is Bruce Hershenson. I'm sending you this e-mail because you have purchased one-sheets from us in the past, and if you have looked at our current auctions of 999 folded one-sheets, you might ask yourself "Why are HALF of them closing in hours at ...  still at $1 to $4 with hours to go?"

A far BETTER question to ask yourself is "Why am I not bidding on these super-low priced posters, which include many rarities from all years and genres?"! We don't know WHY so many of these posters are at below wholesale prices (maybe it is because some fool scheduled these auctions to end on the American Independence Day holiday!) but we DO know that many of these prices are SO low that they seem insanely low.

*****

Bruce

At the time I sent the email (around 12 hours before the posters closed) the bid prices at that time WERE shockingly low. I speculated that it COULD be because of the holiday, even though I personally have not found that to be true in the past.

Perhaps it was because I sent that email to ALL of those who have previously bought one-sheets from me in the past (minus those who do not want such emails), but the overall prices nearly TRIPLED over those remaining 12 hours, showing that LOTS of collectors WERE at their computers that night (and apparently not at fireworks displays).

That brings up an interesting point. Ten years ago, the final overall prices would usually increase by around 50% over the final 12 hours of each set of auctions. By five years ago, that had changed to where they usually doubled in those last 12 hours.

Now, in recent months, the prices frequently go up by two and a half times overall over the last 12 hours, and in some cases (like the above 4th of July auctions) they have nearly tripled.

This clearly shows that more and more of the bidders are waiting for the last 12 hours to bid, and that makes perfect sense, because the first 6 and a half days are really just an extended "preview" of all the items, and there is no real reason why anyone should bid during that time. I suspect a lot of those early bidders are people who like seeing their name as the high bidder. even though they know they will be outbid most of the time (and I guess they must win some items at great prices through early bidding or they wouldn't keep doing it).

You might say, "Why does serious bidding on the last day start with 12 hours to go rather than one hour to go?". I feel sure there are two answers. One is that (because of time zones) many bidders in other parts of the world are going to bed before the auctions end, so they get in their bids far earlier than U.S. bidders. The other is that, for dedicated collectors or dealers looking to re-sell, it takes a LONG time to review 999 auctions, so those people do it over those last 12 hours rather than trying to review them all in one time-crunched hour.

What will the future hold in this regard? I haven't a clue!

110x75

Bruce said:

I suspect a lot of those early bidders are people who like seeing their name as the high bidder. even though they know they will be outbid most of the time

I'm always tempted to do that in big ticket items and joke about it.
Last time I thought in doing it was with Lang's "M" german teaser...

Charlie

I bid to win.  If you ever see my id just don't bid.

jayn_j

I never consider prices 12 hours before close to be indicative of anything.  All the real players wait until the last hour

HereComesMongo

I used to bid at last minute but now drop bid bombs 2-3 hours early.

And BH, I only posted that email for one word you used to describe yourself:

jayn_j

I generally drop a couple of hours early as well.  That way I don't get sucked into last minute bidding wars.  Key is to enter your no regrets max.

David

jayn_j said:

 Key is to enter your no regrets max.

Me as the auctions are ending

Bruce

HereComesMongo said:

I used to bid at last minute but now drop bid bombs 2-3 hours early.

And BH, I only posted that email for one word you used to describe yourself:

I can't count how many times I have been a fool, but most are not poster-related!

HereComesMongo

So let me say something complimentary about EMP/BH.

It's Loony Tunes easy to consign to EMP.

*****

In Round 1 I dementedly bought 1900 MPs.

I tried reselling a few on eBay but freaking hated what it entailed.

I actually had to take one minute to snap and post a few mediocre pics of the actual poster for sale instead of stealing a similar image off the Internetz as I preferred.

I had bought boatloads of posters off eBay and had sent boatloads of nasty emails to the sellers about subpar shipping and undisclosed defects. I anticipated - and received - similar dorky emails from buyers.


Every time I sold a poster I had to open my closet and be immediately pummeled by 500 collapsing poster tubes. I spent an hour cleaning up the fiasco and picked out one decent tube for shipping. I had to spend forever wrapping the poster, taping the caps, and addressing it to the poster nerd buyer. Finally, I had to drive my ultra-cool Mustang GT convertible to the local PO and deal withe usually-friendly but sometimes incompetent/hostile postal clerks.



*****

I started consigning posters to EMP from which I had bought a bazillion posters.

For a milli-second I considered also consigning to EMP's main competitor, from which I had bought a cornucopia of posters. But it wanted me to sign a 10,000 word consignment contract and pre-approve all consigned posters with pics. Forget that.

So I went with EMP. I simply rounded up 50+ MPs I was tired of and half-*ss packed them up in one of EMP's gorilla-proof tubes.

I was far too lazy to include a letter discussing/itemizing the posters I was consigning. I just wrote "Consignor:AlphaMel1968" on the tube and shipped it off.

33% of my consigned posters were mediocre/terrible, 33% pretty good, 33% rock star stellar. EMP never once commented on the quality of my consignments.

*****

Now that said, I would get the occasional odd email from EMP along the lines of "we have measured your 1S and it is .0001" short ru sure it is original?" I would usually ignore that email and EMP would sell it anyway.

*****

I ended up consigning 1823 MPs to EMP. Some sold for next-to-nothing, some sold well. But overall EMP resold them for the EXACT amount I had spent on the MPs, shipping, and lbacking them.

EMP did charge me an overall 30% consign fee, which mildly irritated me. But I recognized that EMP had saved me a gazillion hours reselling them on Ebay etc. so the fee was really more than fair. 



*****

"Nuff said. Consider consigning to them....

HereComesMongo

Bruce, thanks for sharing your rare press books in your weekly EMP bulletin.

No doubt you've answered this many times, but what is the siren's call of pressbooks for you? Less competition? 

I enjoyed researching some rare pbs at the Library of Congress but they're not really my thing I guess but more power to you....

Bruce

I was a major comic book collector/dealer/publisher from 1968 to 1976 and so I always liked "magazine" type collectibles.

I feel that the best pressbooks have a great cover that is like a poster (and could be framed and enjoyed) and you get so much more besides, and yet, when I first started collecting them a pressbook usually cost much less than a good scene lobby card from the same movie, and that is not very changed today.

I know I will never have one-sheets on thousands of 1920s and 1930s movies, but I CAN have pressbooks on them.

Eisenhower

I like browsing through your images of the old '30s PB's and seeing all the different one sheets, 22x28's, etc. and then seeing the inexpensive "rental" prices for them. ....where's Marty's De Lorean....

Eisenhower

This question is for Bruce or for anyone who can answer as well-I was browsing this Thurs EMP auction results and saw two separate LC sets that sold for North by Northwest-one original release, one for '66 rerelease. 

My question-If they rerelease a movie & LC set, are the rerelease LC images exactly the same? Or can/sometimes the LC images different? 

Thanks.

David

Yes.

Bruce

Eisenhower said:

This question is for Bruce or for anyone who can answer as well-I was browsing this Thurs EMP auction results and saw two separate LC sets that sold for North by Northwest-one original release, one for '66 rerelease. 

My question-If they rerelease a movie & LC set, are the rerelease LC images exactly the same? Or can/sometimes the LC images different? 

Thanks.

There are three main kinds of re-release lobby sets:
1) The set is pretty much the same as the original in every way. Sometimes there is a "Back Again" or "A re-release" added, and of course the NSS changes. Sometimes they were apparently trying to fool people into thinking they were seeing a new movie, and there is no mention of a re-release (an example is some of the Warner Bros re-releases from 1944 and 1945 when their top stars were off at war, and they re=released their top films from 1935 to 1939 with no indication of being re-releases, except that they switched the kind of paper used).

2) The set is pretty much the same as the original, EXCEPT the re-release is duotone or one color where the original was full color. This was done to save money. It usually means the film was not expected to make a lot of money (or it was on its third or fourth re-release, so they felt a lot of "selling" wasn't necessary).

3) The set has a different title card (if there is a title card) and/or the scenes are somewhat to quite a bit different. This normally means this is a good movie that took in a lot on its re-release, so it paid to have all new material designed. Sometimes a star who was not major when the movie was first released has become major in the interim, so their billing and size of them images changes on the re-release (examples are Marilyn Monroe, Alan Ladd and many others). Also, the person who picked the scenes for the first release lobbies often did not know what the best scenes were, so those are sometimes not pictured. On a re-release where new scenes were picked, they often made sure to include the most memorable scenes, so often the re-release set can have better overall scenes than the original.

There are no hard and fast rules to this, so there are many exceptions to all of the above!

If you want to see what originals vs re-releases look like (or, in the case of specific cards, to tell if they are originals or re-releases, because it can be tricky in many cases), then please go to http://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/archive.html where you will find the results of198,249 lobby card auctions, and start looking.

But please, if you find ANY mistakes, no matter how trivial, please email us to let us know what you found, and we promise to correct it! If you solely post here (or on any other forum), we may not see it, and miss it.

Thanks very much for any help you provide!

Eisenhower

Thanks for the detailed answer Bruce. When looking at the original release cards for North, they had 2 during the same movie "scene" which seemed to it make sense. 

Of the rerelease set a few seemed different, but better scenes. 

think I will look to see if Pressbooks were released for rereleases-if so, they may show the different LC's. 

jayn_j

Most of the Duotone ones I've seen were for early '60s re-releases.  MGM seemed to re-release their entire musical catalog in 1962 and cards were various colors of duotone.

So here is a question for Bruce.  Not all the duotones are for musicals, but I think all the ones I've seen are MGM/UA releases.  Do you know of duotones from other studios?

I also have a few sets where they simply crossed out the original NSS number and penciled in the new R number.  Apparently they had a lot of original stock left over in the warehouses.

Bruce

Eisenhower said:

Thanks for the detailed answer Bruce. When looking at the original release cards for North, they had 2 during the same movie "scene" which seemed to it make sense. 

Of the rerelease set a few seemed different, but better scenes. 

think I will look to see if Pressbooks were released for rereleases-if so, they may show the different LC's. 

Mark

The studios DID make pressbooks for most or all re-releases. For major movies, they can be quite nice. For lesser ones, usually four pages, one color.

Bruce

jayn_j said:

Most of the Duotone ones I've seen were for early '60s re-releases.  MGM seemed to re-release their entire musical catalog in 1962 and cards were various colors of duotone.

So here is a question for Bruce.  Not all the duotones are for musicals, but I think all the ones I've seen are MGM/UA releases.  Do you know of duotones from other studios?

I also have a few sets where they simply crossed out the original NSS number and penciled in the new R number.  Apparently they had a lot of original stock left over in the warehouses.

Lots of duotone cards for B-Western re-releases. Columbia did it on even good titles.

Yes, the NSS warehouses reused first release stuff for re-releases. That is why first release paper is so rare on many titles that had major re-releases.

Eisenhower

Bruce said:

Eisenhower said:

Thanks for the detailed answer Bruce. When looking at the original release cards for North, they had 2 during the same movie "scene" which seemed to it make sense. 

Of the rerelease set a few seemed different, but better scenes. 

think I will look to see if Pressbooks were released for rereleases-if so, they may show the different LC's. 

Mark

The studios DID make pressbooks for most or all re-releases. For major movies, they can be quite nice. For lesser ones, usually four pages, one color.

Thanks, Bruce! Wouldn't have thought they'd have released a PB for a rerelease. Will have to be on the lookout....

HONDO

Anyway with your U.S.A. lobby cards listings you can separate the Jumbo lobby cards from the normal size ?

Bruce

HONDO said:

Anyway with your U.S.A. lobby cards listings you can separate the Jumbo lobby cards from the normal size ?

The only time they ever are in the same auction is in a major auction. Or are you referring to something else?

HONDO

Bruce said:

HONDO said:

Anyway with your U.S.A. lobby cards listings you can separate the Jumbo lobby cards from the normal size ?

The only time they ever are in the same auction is in a major auction. Or are you referring to something else?

You have 19,832 U.S. lobby cards in your auction history section. To find the Jumbo lobby cards images would I have to check out all the 19,832 images or is there a way for you to separate them from the others? I will say no, but I needed to ask anyway. 

Eisenhower

I searched "Jumbo", then selected Jumbo Lobby Card from the "poster type". I found 714? results. Not sure if there's more or if Bruce has a more accurate way. 

HONDO

Eisenhower said:

I searched "Jumbo", then selected Jumbo Lobby Card from the "poster type". I found 714? results. Not sure if there's more or if Bruce has a more accurate way. 

Thanks Mark, that will do for starters.