Condition- When collecting, why you should wait for the best condition

[Test1]

if a poster does not look good for framing as-is, it's a no-go with a singular exception: the poster is rare enough, that you are willing to accept it as a filler until you can replace it.

I mean it's really rare, not just something you don't see often. rare=nearly impossible to find over a long period of time, not a couple years.
of course I recognize if you are 30 and been collecting for 2 years, anything can look like it is rare, but it's not. rarity is easily researched

there is material I've been looking for for 30 years.. and material I may never find......

Interesting thoughts there.

I've only got a small collection of posters at the moment, but, I'm pretty happy to say that all the ones I've bought up till now look from good to excellent when framed.

I probably have not got any poster that you would class as "rare" but, I feel I've got some good ones that would be hard to find in better condition which "to me" is just as important.

[jayn_j]

if a poster does not look good for framing as-is, it's a no-go with a singular exception: the poster is rare enough, that you are willing to accept it as a filler until you can replace it.

I mean it's really rare, not just something you don't see often. rare=nearly impossible to find over a long period of time, not a couple years.
of course I recognize if you are 30 and been collecting for 2 years, anything can look like it is rare, but it's not. rarity is easily researched

there is material I've been looking for for 30 years.. and material I may never find......

Yeah, but even that is hard to classify.  Most edge damage disappears when framed.  A lot of repair work goes away at 5 feet, so the poster is fine if mounted behind furniture or up high.

IMO, the worst offenders are the 80's full bleed with bold backgrounds that have been folded.  Titles like the National Lampoon Vacation series, Back to the Future, Adventures in Babysitting, Nightmare on Elm Street, etc.  These used a glossy stock and folding causes the printing to break up and you have very obvious fold lines.  A poster in VG condition can look terriblewhen hung in the wrong light.

[erik1925]

A good folded copy beats a backed copy in my opinion. However, you could be waiting years for that good folded copy so I have bought the posters I want regardless of being folded or backed. This is down to the fact that some of the posters I have bought haven't surfaced very often.

I have 8 Gene T 1sheets left to get, 3 I could but tomorrow (prices are way too high) the other 5 I haven't seen for a number of years so if they turn up backed I'll try and buy them.

I think I have about 6 Gene T backed posters.

Hey Marc, what are the 6 Gene Tierney titles that you own that are backed? Are they all one sheets?

[okiehawker]

Factors for me: 
--image affects me enough that I will be haunted with the thought of not seeing it again
--is rare to have a chance to acquire
--price is right
Then, whether the poster has well done linen backing/restoration or is in nice original condition does not matter that much to me.  I would want the poster.
Okie

[Neo]

Someone posted this on a Facebook post today, about a Once Upon a Time in Hollywood poster for sale.  Hopefully he/y'all don't mind me sharing it here.  It's an interesting, and very thorough description of handling posters, to prevent damage often caused by rolling them, etc.:

"The edge ding on the right near the Hullabaloo dancers - and the ding on the far lower left corner doesn't bother me - but I see minor discoloration / smudging in the upper right corner that shades differently than the rest of the borders. Dimpling cannot be seen except under angled light but it's usually present and it happens AFTER sellers roll and re-insert a poster into a narrow shipping tube.
Posters arrive at theaters in bunches and always in narrow tubes. They aren't meant to be collected and they get bumped a lot - and some arrive with edge dings which makes perfection / "mint condition" impossible.
When posters gets into a re-seller's hands - once he or she removes them from the original studio shipping tube - it's near impossible to roll back into the same tube - without causing additional damage, usually dimpling caused by fingers.
This happens because part-time sellers typically hand roll a poster while standing up, taking up "slack" many times - to get the poster to fit back into a narrow tube or plastic sleeve, leaving finger dimples, esp. in the top or bottom middle center of a poster during rolling.
Professional sellers like eMoviePoster - never hand roll while standing up. It uses a large clean flat surface with a large sheet of brown / kraft type paper to roll WITH the poster. Others use a "2-inch-wide helper / guide tube" (usually an existing poster shipping tube, not fancy) - which serves as a temporary guide that allows a seller to re-roll a poster in a uniform way, in a straight line. This "guide" tube then slides out and the result is a rolled poster that easily fits into a three-inch wide shipping tube without hugging the interior - reducing ding transfers by blows to the outside of the tube.
There are professional sellers like Dale Dilts who specialize in contemporary posters (current releases to about 20 years old) - who has a nifty system of tools which enables him to use two-inch wide shipping tubes - and nearly all of his posters arrive in stone mint condition. But he's the only one I know who consistently grades and ships in ways which allow him him to even use 1-inch plastic sleeves in 2-inch wide tubes - AFTER he has taken pics of what he's selling. Very few sellers know how to do this unless they've done it a million times.
-----
Nobody cares about a ding here or there on a new release - but on collectible pieces, this always matters - even though condition grading isn't as strict as it is for comic books or even Funko Pop boxes. 27x40 one-sheets are almost always sent in tubes unless they're vintage folded (pre 1980). Vintage 14x22 window card posters are shipped flat.
In the past - for truly pristine condition posters I've chased / paid market value, e.g., the double-sided Lost in Translation one-sheet with the Scarlett Johansson image - I sometimes - after condition standards are met - (no one roots for a transaction to fail and everyone hates returns) - send an empty three-inch wide shipping tube to the seller to help things along. The seller gets the empty tube, tears off the labels and uses that tube to ship the poster back to me. Shipping posters are expensive and subject to big surcharges when the tube is wider than 22 or so inches.
----
At any rate, you can tell I'm a serious / demanding buyer not only about product condition - but also how things are shipped and how much experience a seller has handling these large format items which are delicate. I've been spoiled by eMoviePoster's grading and shipping standards - and have NEVER returned anything to them - after more than 25 years as a buyer.
More than you could ever possibly want to know about this - but you still have a great poster in mostly solid condition. Do not get low-balled.
In the eMoviePoster database, since late 2021 - the last 24 examples of the July advance for Once Upon A Time in Hollywood have sold from $65 to $269. It depends upon condition and variation. You can go further back when prices were higher (prices peaked about 1 1/2 to 2 years after the movie's summer 2019 release) - but the market has since stabilized into a nice affordable spot, 4 years later. At that website, I consider "very good to fine" to be close to "near mint" - because that company has a strict / conservative grading scale."