Friday, October 29th, 1999 was a historic day for eMoviePoster.com! On that day, we added our very first eBay auction (we only added ONE auction, to make sure it worked). It was a window card for The Birds, and it sold for $196.50 on Friday, November 5th.
One month later, we added 28 items to eBay, and each week day after that for the rest of December, we added around 25 to 50 items, so we had items closing every Monday through Friday for the rest of December.
We continued in that fashion until Thursday, March 16, 2000, when I had an inspiration!
It occurred to me that we could have auctions just one day a week instead of all five, so that our bidders would only have to sit at their computer ONE night a week instead of five.
So on that day, we had our first test auction with 212 items that began on Thursday, March 16th and closed a week later.
We continued with our daily auctions, but we assembled 439 items in addition, and we began those in our second test on Monday, April 3rd, and those items closed on Monday, April 10th.
We did the same until Monday, April 24th, when we had our third test set of auctions with 365 items. All through this time, we were still having our daily items, with around 10 to 50 per day.
Finally, on Tuesday, May 23rd, I took the plunge and eliminated the daily items, and went to solely once a week auctions.
After having tried Thursday and Monday, I settled on Tuesday, figuring that Monday was bad because of Monday Night Football, and Tuesday was the best night, because it meant that we would have three days after the auctions closed to get the orders shipped before the weekend.
Our customers quickly told us they much preferred the once a week auctions, and we switched to that format for the remainder of the year, auctioning mostly between 400 and 700 items per Tuesday.
But back to that first Tuesday auction that ended May 30, 2000. There were 139 buyers of those first 351 items we auctioned that day.
Of those 139 buyers,there are still some of them are still active buyers (some have bought in the last auctions!). Talk about customer loyalty!
Of course, all of you know that we continued with our Tuesday auctions over the next many years, and during that time, we steadily increased the number of items we auctioned each Tuesday, with many auctions of 999 items, and almost all auctions were between 500 and 999 items.
On April 19, 2007, nearly 7 years after our first Tuesday auction, we added THURSDAY auctions which were the same format as our Tuesday auctions, but they were clearly a "secondary" set of auctions, with "only" around 300 items each Thursday.
But by June of 2009, our Thursday auctions had grown to be the equal of the Tuesday auctions, with 500 to 999 items in each set each week.
So on Sunday, June 21, 2009, we added SUNDAY auctions which were the same format as our Tuesday and Thursday auctions, but they were clearly a "lesser" set of auctions, with "only" around 300 items each Sunday.
Our Sunday auctions continued to grow, and they became mostly equal to the Tuesday and Thursday auctions, Then, in 2020, after two decades, and over 1,7 million auctions, we decided to "slow down"!
At the very start of the year, we shifted from thrice-weekly eMoviePoster.com auctions, to three sets of eMoviePoster.com auctions every OTHER week and we expected our total annual sales to drop in half, but instead they INCREASED!
This required more drastic action! Halfway through 2021, we shifted from three sets of eMoviePoster.com auctions every OTHER week to three sets every FOUR weeks and instead of total annual sales going much lower, they again INCREASED to a new record
Now, in 2023, we have added a strict $30 minimum realistic retail value for individual items at auction. We want to drastically lower the number of auctions we hold, where every item is of interest to many collectors, and sub-$30 items are solely in bulk lots.
Our new motto is "FEWER AUCTIONS, BETTER AUCTIONS"!
