Chris, the reserve being one half of the LOW estimate has been a Heritage policy or "operation" for a number of years. As mentioned, all but approximately 120 lots will open at one half of the low estimate in the auction and most will indeed sell.
ALL of the BERWICK material in UNRESERVED as I have previously said. The estimate on the Dracula one sheet is $150K-250K. It has opened at $75K and will indeed sell. When an item is called unreserved, that means No Reserve will be posted. Why was it valued like that? Because the goal is to sell the material, not to have beautiful items in auction that pass or do not sell.
When material is given to me for a Signature auction one of my jobs is to try and help the consignor set a value with which to offer the material. Very, very few consignors wish to offer quality material for Signature auction that will open at $1, though there are lots in this auction that do! I do my very best to help the consignor determine a rate we can offer the material in which it will sell and yet they will not have the risk of selling the item for pennies on the dollar. Usually that is by offering the item at an opeining bid of 50% of the low estimate, which I often believe is a totally reasonable, if not incredibly low price but we know with many active bidders the item has a strong likelihood of selling for more than that opening bid. Certainly not always and great deals are often had!
We usually sell 90% of our MP auctions, if not a good bit more, and that is because the buyers will participate to acquire the items. We receive the best material as our consignors know we will offer them a venue in which the most people will see the material and those buyers will participate. We offer a full color catalog which consignors, collectors and bidders love to see and we offer them visibility on a site which is one of the top 3000 websites in the world! Last month alone we received 725,000 unique visitors. Our nearest competition, Christie's received about 225,000 unique visitors for the same time frame. In each auction we get far, far less than 1% return as our buyers have learned that we estimate where they have an opportunity to add to their collection and we describe and grade accurately.
Someone asked if the previous copy of Dracula we sold would be more valuable due to the fact that it was completely intact and yet this copy was missing a bottom border. This copy has more vibrant colors throughout! So the trade off for the missing bottom border is the brighter colors and is really a pretty close trade off for the poster being completely intact, in my opinion.