Hi there!! I am so excited to have FINALLY found this site (and to finally get the green light to be a member. Jeepers! What took so long?). Oh my stars! To imagine that there are OTHER movie poster obsessed individuals out there... Well, I KNEW you were out there (who else has been buying all of the posters I've been trying to buy, after all?) but not WHERE you all were.NO ONE else I know (aside from some guy who lives on the opposite coast who tracked me down on eBay several years ago when I outbid him on a poster he wanted) collects movie posters...nor have I actually met anyone in real life who does. I've been alone with my poster obsession for years---not that I've ever really cared, but it's a super duper thrill-a-rama to FINALLY have a place where I can go-go and talk posters (without anyone rolling their eyes. Ha!).
My name is Shawn. I live in Central California (the not-so-glamorous part of the state. Ho-hum... Well,SOMEONE has to live here,right?). Like many of you,I have been enamored with movie posters since birth...or soon after. Digging movies went with it, of course,but I remember spending hours staring at the movie ads in the newspaper and at the posters of coming attractions in the lobby of the local theaters.
I remember when I was a kid I discovered you could actually (WHAT!?! NO WAY!!!)
buy movie posters at a few of the local comic book stores. That's where my first taste of collecting came from. My first poster was for "Logan's Run" (a movie that had great sentimental meaning for me. One day during a matinee, the projectionist invited my friend and I up into the projection booth of this beautiful old movie house--long since gone dark and ruined--and I got to watch part of the film from there.Wow!). Back then, posters were so cheap--but to me, they seemed expensive. I remember seeing the original "Star Wars" for sale for the whopping price of $25. I didn't get that one (ARGH!). I just wasn't that into the film. But I DID get others: "Carrie","Alien","The Rocky Horror Picture Show"...whatever I could get my hands on. Most back then were only $5 or $10. I'd (gasp!) put them on my walls or ceiling with thumb tacks (ouch) and just stare at them lovingly. When the comic book stores disappeared,my poster source dried up. I had to supplement with cut out ads from the newspapers,carefully trimmed and taped to my bedroom walls (junior high school years).
Once I was an adult,I discovered eBay and it's wonders...and I started buying again. It wasn't until the 2000s that I finally started framing/hanging my posters in the house again. They were everywhere--living room, bedrooms, hallway, kitchen, etc...even the bathroom that didn't have a shower in it.
In late 2010, my walls were bare once again as I moved out of my house (with all of my crap) and into a tiny mother-in-law apartment behind the garage of a rental house my mother owns. I went back to school (an accelerated nursing program---career # 3 after being a teacher and a newspaper writer). I'm still in the tiny (yet jam-packed place) with NO posters on the walls---but I still keep BUYING~~~!!!!
I've been a nurse for a year now, but think for financial reasons I'll stay in my shack-a-rama for another year. I anticipate moving back into my home (which has been rented out) around February 2016...so just a little more than a year to go. I can't wait to get back in there so my posters can return to the walls.
I have THOUSANDS of posters. I had about 200 framed when I realized the folly of trying to do that---there was NO WHERE to store them all!
Back when I first discovered YouTube (2008) I made a (crappy) video trying to share my framed posters (It's here if you really need to see it:
http://youtu.be/TDCf3DYtxOU ).A few years later,I discovered a website called Fanbolt (a website for all things fan-ish about movies/tv). I started a thread there about movie posters--hoping to find someone else who was interested in them like I was/am. I think I was about the only visitor to the thread, but I'd update it with photos of my latest acquisitions,some nothing to write home about and others that were just OMG exciting (to me). In an attempt to re-attract an audience, Fanbolt just tried to relaunch (obliterating all of their old content) and my poster thread is GONE. I did start a new one on the new site, but my enthusiasm is not what it was (why put effort into something that may be wiped clean on a whim?). Here's the link to that if you are curious:
http://forums.fanbolt.com/topic/61/movie-poster-collectors-thread/And,like I said,i have literally THOUSANDS of posters.I mostly collect horror, but I have some of almost all genres. My most valuable poster is probably the original "Night of the Living Dead", but value is secondary to what the poster looks like. The first poster I ever hung on the wall as an adult was for "Revenge of the Shogun Women", a cheesy 3D martial arts film from the 70s (80s?) that no one saw or remembers. The poster is easily available and still cheap today, but I love it. The color and cheesy drawing all trying to convey a 3D movie experience really works for me. Where as something like the one sheet for "The Godfather"--worth probably 10 times as much -- is a boring poster, just black with a crudely drawn hand holding marionette strings.
And blah, blah, blah, blah! I know I'm rambling on. I'm just excited to finally be here and to finally find others interested in movie posters. Yahoo! Thanks for letting me come aboard.
Cha-cha-cha!
CHEERS!
