When the time comes ... how will you sell your collection?
I recently purchased yet another large collection of movie posters and lobby cards. When it was all packaged up, the collection weighed over 250kg and there were a lot of oversize items (3 sheets, Linen backed posters, etc etc). The owner of the collection had considered many options for selling the collection including:
1. Selling the better items on eBay individually - he tried that but realized that it was too much work.
2. Sending multiple items to the US for auction.
3 Offering the collection to dealers in Australia.
Like many people who find themselves in this situation, he preferred to sell the complete collection in one hit although he had sold some of the better items privately. In every collection, there is always a large amount of low value items and selling those posters can take years for little return and a lot of work, so the value is usually in the better items.
In the end, the collector decided that he couldn't possibly package and ship 250kg of posters including a lot of linen backed one sheets safely or economically to the US, so he decided to offer it to dealers in Australia. Ultimately, I was the only one who was prepared to pay his asking price. The carrot for me was that there were some posters, press books and lobby cards that I could use for my Hitchcock collection, so I purchased the lot.
It was a mission to get everything back to Qld and it will take months to photograph, list and sell. Much of the collection included posters in poor condition so they will just get boxed up along with the low value items and probably be left in storage or destroyed.
In the last 20 years, I have purchased over 150 collections, including a few that had to be sent by the truckload. It has taken me around Australia and has been a lot of fun. However, recently, I have started to ease up on buying and will be far more selective in the future.
So, for those of you who have large collections of posters in Australia, my question is when age catches up with you, how will you sell your collection? Will your kids take it on? Will you send chunks of your collection to auctions in the US or UK bearing in mind the increasing cost and issues with postage? Will you donate your collection to a museum or archive?
1. Selling the better items on eBay individually - he tried that but realized that it was too much work.
2. Sending multiple items to the US for auction.
3 Offering the collection to dealers in Australia.
Like many people who find themselves in this situation, he preferred to sell the complete collection in one hit although he had sold some of the better items privately. In every collection, there is always a large amount of low value items and selling those posters can take years for little return and a lot of work, so the value is usually in the better items.
In the end, the collector decided that he couldn't possibly package and ship 250kg of posters including a lot of linen backed one sheets safely or economically to the US, so he decided to offer it to dealers in Australia. Ultimately, I was the only one who was prepared to pay his asking price. The carrot for me was that there were some posters, press books and lobby cards that I could use for my Hitchcock collection, so I purchased the lot.
It was a mission to get everything back to Qld and it will take months to photograph, list and sell. Much of the collection included posters in poor condition so they will just get boxed up along with the low value items and probably be left in storage or destroyed.
In the last 20 years, I have purchased over 150 collections, including a few that had to be sent by the truckload. It has taken me around Australia and has been a lot of fun. However, recently, I have started to ease up on buying and will be far more selective in the future.
So, for those of you who have large collections of posters in Australia, my question is when age catches up with you, how will you sell your collection? Will your kids take it on? Will you send chunks of your collection to auctions in the US or UK bearing in mind the increasing cost and issues with postage? Will you donate your collection to a museum or archive?
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Referring to your final question you must then have a plan for yourself and for your huge amount of posters you must have for when the time comes for you to dispose of them.
Are any of your family members likely to continue with your business, which would certainly solve the problem?
I do have a plan for the future and I have been gradually disposing of low value items.
,
This poster would have been one of the last W.E. Smith Columbia printed daybills before Robert Burton took over the printing of Columbia daybills in the later part of the 1950's.
The following second printing or possible re-release daybill has appeared in the marketplace for many years
Like you, I've also scaled back on purchasing every collection offered my way and unless it has some early/silent content for keeps, I tend to pass these days. Including a couple of pallets worth I've been toying with committing to these last few weeks. Sadly at least 75% would end up being dumped (tat titles or nice but trashed and not worth the time/effort trying to shift).
My recent house move to the far South prompted me to take a far more brutal approach to overflow storage, in terms of continually moving boxes from A to B that I never had the heart to dump. So multiple car loads and wheelie bins later, I ended up reducing my move load by 47 boxes. A time consuming task (everything was torn up then sealed in old file boxes), however it was certainly long overdue.
Hopefully, if all goes to plan, within 2 to 3 years I will be retired for good. So aside from continuing my 1910s to 40s and early British war film collecting (which will hopefully go to a museum when I'm 6ft under), my selling days will be over.
As you're aware from our last chat, I now have a number of physical stores (antique/collectables etc) selling some of my mass duplicated daybills on my behalf. On average they keep no more than 20% for themselves which is certainly fine by me. Especially as they tend to inflate what I'd consider a fair 'retail' value. I know you said that there weren't that many local to you, so perhaps reach out to other cities? I have satellite stock in both Islands and it works pretty well, just so long as you ship them a good supply every quarter.
It certainly saves scanning hundreds, if not thousands of lobby cards!
I've also donated a number of pieces to a few arthouse cinemas in both Islands, so could well see a few more instances of that happening in the future as I downscale home poster display space and finally let my wife put up some non-movie themed artwork 😀.
My silent/talkie collection exhibition starts it's tour in Arrowtown late 2027, with the hope to see it carried on by a number of the larger national museums. So hopefully it gains sufficient momentum to keep going for some time, which will give me more incentive to keep adding to it in my retirement.
A sample of some of my currently backed 3 & 6 sheets below, with a hell of a lot more to have backed this coming year.
As with the rest. Well a portion will go to the usual US auction houses (I certainly prefer them over the UK offerings) and my remaining store stock, well with Bruce (understandably so) no longer accepting truck loads of complete collections/dealer stock some years ago, it will likely get palmed out to my physical store 3rd parties or wholesaled locally.
Peter
I spent a couple of weeks recently disposing of literally thousands of low value posters. It freed up quite a lot of space in my warehouse but there is much more to do and it is a very time consuming process. I have a huge quantity of rolled one sheets that I will also dump but its hard to find the time to allocate to that task.
I think you are fortunate to be able to send stock to antique stores in NZ. Over the years, I have had quite a lot of outlets in Brisbane and the Gold Coast selling my posters but they have mostly closed down. Collectibles and Antique markets are few and far between these days in Queensland so I continue to sell online and also send to auctions in the US but they understandably only want higher value items these days.
It will soon be a lot more difficult for people to send packages to the US or Europe. A crackdown has started on anyone who wrongly declares a package as a gift. By the middle of next year, you won't be able to select "gift" as a reason for export using the online portals of Australia Post. European countries have also jumped on the Tariff bandwagon and an additional €3 customs charge on low value items is coming soon. That is separate to any other customs charges.
Thankfully New Zealand is in many ways years behind the rest of the world (even our Aussie neighbors), so hopefully I can get a couple more years out of my collectables stores before they all inevitably go the way of the dodo.
It's already counterproductive to send overseas from NZ. Unless the order is substantial, I often advise the customer to cancel or screenshot a reality check shipping quote.
It cost me $174NZ to ship a tube to the States the other day (without Tariffs added), for what only cost $62 a week prior. Some days (depending on the Trump Tariff rules for that week) NZ Post refuse all US shipping.
Folded is no better. Shipping some folded three Sheets the Jaime the other week was more than 3 times what it cost in June.
So it's not just US & UK sales or auction consignments suffering, getting quality (somewhat lacking down here) restoration carried out in California is also rapidly adding up $$$.
In the late 90s I used to spend a lot of time in NZ and acquired some huge collections. It got to the point where I had to take a large storage unit in Auckland to store it all until I decided how to get it back to Australia. There were always lots of antique and collectibles shops in NZ and its a pity that so many have shut down here.
Postage to the US from Australia is still reasonable but I don't know how long that will last. The tariff issues are not a problem for me, thankfully, and I have been sending lots of orders to the USA.
Thankfully you left a significant amount for me to harvest
Looks like I did leave lots of treasures for you in NZ!
One wonders if the poster image was yours or not.
Included above in the wonderful selection of extremely rare silent films poster three sheets and six sheets that Wil had kindly included earlier. Amongst the images is the 1933 sound film poster of The Vampire Bat.
I really like the artwork on this poster and as the image is very small I have included below another very rare larger poster image of the same designed poster courtesy of Bruce for all to admire.
Hopefully posters of inferior films and condition, but where they may be the only copies are spared, and that only titles of multiple copies of inferior artwork end up this way.
I was expecting this response (why I didn't post the really brutal kull photos).
Unfortunately storage of scrap comes at a cost Lawrence and no, I'm obviously not scrapping rarities.
However, when I literally have hundreds of titles with trebble figures of unused copies (which itself poses its own storage hurdles), keeping damaged/used examples of the same titles is absolutely pointless.
Are in good condition multiple copies of now unsellable posters that do have great graphics, e.g. RKO Simmons and Paramount Richardson well known and little known titles scrapped? Some examples of possible titles appear below. Your comments welcomed. I will comment further once hearing back from you both.
Lawrence, don't you think that John and I are knowledgeable enough to know what is worth keeping and what isn't? I can assure you that neither of us are disposing of Richardson's or RKO's. The sheer volume of posters that we have stored away are in many cases tat that we have had to take on in take all or nothing so called 'warehouse finds'. These are worthless in many ways, not merely monetary or condition, but also in appeal. So much that you couldn't even give them away if you had the considerable amount of spare to time to do so (believe me I've tried that before!).
Many archives and museums no longer want them and even the ones that I once donated to the NZ film archive have since been returned as they themselves know the time and financial implications of storage.
As I said in my original response to John. Over the years I have donated endless posters/lobby cards to independent cinemas, a trend that I intend to continue. Aside from that at great cost I have spent years compiling a substantial collection of silent and early talkie material and with ever dwindling interest and value in that era, much of this would have been lost years ago. This growing collection will do the rounds as a public exhibition for as long as there is interest, no money will be made from this (in fact all staging/display is my cost to bare) and any entrance fees will go to the museums as a donation. Then, once it has run its course, it will ultimately end up with a national museum.
Anyway, John's thread is about what members future plans are when the time comes to move their collections on, with ever dwindling auction houses willing to waste the time selling low value tat and shipping nicer items comes at an ever-increasing postage hit, if you have any posters of your own to let go of what were your plans?