all this craptalk about fees and BP ignores a very pertinent issue regarding sales points:
the issue that all things are not equal.
it is rare that both of the big houses sell material for the same price. So all things are not equal.
for instance, we do not know, nor can we know in absence of the sale of a Casablanca insert on eMovie whether they could match the $191,000 sale that Heritage had in November.
Not too long before Heritage sold that poster, a copy at the Cinevent auction only sold in the 20s.
by the math alone, Heritage is King Kong on the price result. They're offering a 6 sheet now.. what will that get?
It's true that there are lots of other factors to consider when consigning material for auction apart from a BP. All you can do is hope that your poster will do well but it is a lottery. With Heritage you can set a reserve but there is no guarantee that the item will sell. If it doesnt sell then you have the added cost of getting it returned to you (which can be significant for international consignors). Some auction houses make you use a third party for return shipping and that can cost a small fortune so you have to factor in what might happen if your poster doesnt sell.
The fact is that is unlikely that anyone, including Heritage, is going to replicate that result with the Casablanca insert. I think all of the major auction houses get the occasional exceptional result but if someone with a US insert for Casablanca thinks that they are going to get $191,000 for it next time it goes to auction they are probably dreaming.
That's one of the drawbacks of consigning posters for auction, irrespective of who you consign them to, particularly with mid value items. Sometimes you can get a great result but many other times you can be disappointed.
A collector here in Australia has a few posters that are in the $5000-10,000 range and he considered consigning them to one of the major auctions. However, by the time he factored in the cost of getting them to the US or England with insurance, etc and took into account the low US dollar plus the fact that there was no certainty that they would get the result he wanted, he just decided that he was better off trying to sell them on eBay.
