The History of the Hobby

[guest4955]

Great article, Sundance. My own experiences with NSS was, when I first started collecting in the mid 70's, it was always rejection - "No, no, we ONLY sell to theatres! Sorry." Which, out of frustration lead to late night dumpster dives in Paramus then later in Englewood. Sometimes a somewhat sympathetic theatre manager would give me a pressbook, but no posters. 

As I mentioned, at the NSS Paramus location in the mid 70's they would routinely destroy everything tossed out but when they moved from Camden to Englewood they would just toss everything out intact. Their yearly clean-outs was when you could just drive up at night and quietly grab whatever you wanted. They made no attempt to destroy anything. Sealed boxes of 1-sheets were there for the taking; ED WOOD, AMERICAN HISTORY X, SONATINE, PULP FICTION, sometimes a good Disney title would slip through like advance 1-sheets for BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. Throughout the rest of the year NSS would also toss out UPS returns from various theatres. If UPS attempted to deliver a tube of 4 or 5 1-sheets to a theatre and couldn't get a signature for it, it was returned to NSS where they would just toss it out. Sometimes the posters would be a little damaged, but if it was a larger order a couple of posters could be salvaged. Once a week they would junk the returned 35mm trailers. The boxes would be opened, the trailers for upcoming films taken out and the rest discarded. When a major movie like TERMINATOR 2 or INDEPENDENCE DAY opened, you could be sure the trailers would get tossed within a month of it's release.

Also, unless you were a collector or were savvy enough to figure it out, the general public had no clue where the posters came from. NSS stopped printing their stupid "warning" on the posters by that time. Only the "NSS" in small print on the bottom of the poster. Conversely whenever I dealt with Consolidated Posters or Donald Velde, there was never a problem and I always got what I wanted with no questions asked.

But how would you sell pre-eBay? Flea markets?

And why did you think there would be wide general demand for these pre-eBay? Almost all video posters are worthless, by comparison.

[guest4955]

Worth reading and viewing links to see "lost" MPs, although pervasively water-marked  :

Did You Know... that we have added nearly 2,400 poster images from pressbooks to our Auction History?

In 2011, we started our Cool Item of the Week archive where I would share one item with you each week (mostly from my collection of tens of thousands of pressbooks!), the type of items you almost surely have never seen before, and which might not come up for sale for DECADES!

We know (and you likely know) that lots and lots of these pressbooks often contain images of posters we've never auctioned before (and a LOT of them are surely ones where NO example exists)! In our Cool item feature, we show one or more pages of images of posters, but they are usually very tiny, and hard to see details. We heard from a number of collectors, practically begging us to show larger images of these ultra-rare posters!

So a while ago, we started adding those images to our Auction History in a section called our "Hershenson Pressbook Collection", but we soon got so busy that the project got put on the back burner. But now we have some extra time, so we have started going through all the old "Cool Items" and adding larger images of many of those items to the Auction History, and it now contains more than 2,400 images of these incredibly rare posters we've NEVER auctioned!

We will continue to get caught up on any old "Cool Items" that were missed, and every week when we post a new Cool Item, we then add the poster images from it to this archive as well! You can browse these 2,400+ images at the following link:
http://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/publication/Hershenson%2520Pressbook%2520Collection/sort/7/archive.html

[okiehawker]

Hi Sundance, Did you go to conventions pre-internet and see all the posters for sale?  Just about every convention I went to as far back as I can remember into the early 1970s had at least some movie posters for sale.  Also, pictures and stories of conventions going back to the early science fiction conventions had movie paper now and then.  Okie

[cabmangray]

Back in ye olde ancient times, before eBay became the powerhouse it is, there were conventions almost every month, and mail order catalogs. Someone with a stock of posters would cull the addresses and phone numbers of dealers through Movie Collectors World or the back pages of John Kisch's Movie Poster Price Database, print up a bunch of catalogs or a list of what you had to sell, and mail it out. Flea market's were usually a waste of time. It's all much easier and faster today.

The general public at that time couldn't care less about them. High school or college kids who wanted something cool to tape up on the wall maybe. But if you were a dealer who's business was selling posters, this is exactly the sort of arrangement you would want. As an ex-dealer I can tell you I got a couple of strange requests. One time a lady wanted to get her husband a western poster for their anniversary. She said "I don't care who the star is, as long as he's riding a horse and holding a gun. And I would like it in a long thin sized poster". I ended up getting her an insert from a 50's B western and she loved it. And each year she would want another poster  for their anniversary.

The shot of the guy in the dumpster is pretty close to what it was like. It wasn't foul at all, just a lot of cardboard and paper inside. Back then, this is what you sometimes needed to do to get what you wanted. Besides, you just can't argue about the price! Whatever you found and could sell was gravy.

[guest4955]

1) But how much did they sell for? What % vs. today's prices? (Considering inflation) Was it really profitable considering time, travel, etc.?

2) I'm only 49yo! In my teen years - early 80s - I DID order a few original MPs from one dealer's snail-mail catalog - which had few pics - but I didn't understand or appreciate "originality"! I gave all those away pre-95.

As I've said b4, in March 2009 in Denver CO I randomly discovered and walked into one of the very few physical MP stores left in the US. Otherwise I would have never collected MPs.

[okiehawker]

1) But how much did they sell for? What % vs. today's prices? (Considering inflation) Was it really profitable considering time, travel, etc.?

2) I'm only 49yo! In my teen years - early 80s - I DID order a few original MPs from one dealer's snail-mail catalog - which had few pics - but I didn't understand or appreciate "originality"! I gave all those away pre-95.

As I've said b4, in March 2009 in Denver CO I randomly discovered and walked into one of the very few physical MP stores left in the US. Otherwise I would have never collected MPs.

 
The store in Denver was great, Sundance! I bought a one sheet for Apocalypse Now there signed by Bob Peak and Copolla.  Cool that you made it there.  That was John Caruso's store. https://www.denverpost.com/2015/02/26/hollywood-posters-a-colfax-avenue-fixture-is-closing-after-35-years/

I think the most surprising change in prices by percentage to me is on the really nice posters from countries other than U.S.  Also, many of the Western cowboy posters are a better price now compared to their popularity among the older collectors back then.  I personally could have saved and bought some of the more expensive posters then, but not now.  Also, imagine some stacks of posters for $2 or less some of which sell for low thousands today.  1950s weren't that long ago back then.  Okie

[cabmangray]

What the posters sold for depended on what the poster was and how much the dealer paid wholesale to get it. Back then, the general rule of thumb was $4. - $6. for a new poster wholesale, which meant you had to sell it for $10 - $12. retail to make a decent profit on it. Of course the major films like any Star Wars, Bond, or a good Eastwood poster would wholesale for more, so the dealer in turn had to sell it for more. That's why any dealer with a good connection into NSS was coveted; whatever NSS had, that dealer could get and usually in quantity.

A long time ago, the Cleveland Comic Book Company had direct entre with Continental Lithograph, which printed the posters for NSS. They had giant amounts of everything - 1-sheets, lobby sets, inserts, 22x28's everything. They used to have package deals like 100 different 1-sheets for $250, 50 different inserts for $75, etc. Several times I would order 50 or 100 different inserts, take out the better titles and hold them for the Christmas season. The rest I would put on backings and bags from Bags Unlimited and blow them out at $6.00 or $7.00 each. Of course, the guys at Cleveland weren't stupid. You never got any Star Wars, Clint, or OO7 at that price, but you did get a nice amount of sellable, mainstream titles and always in mint condition.

[erik1925]

Thanks for all this great poster history, cabmangray and Okie. You are true boatloads of awesome information, as well as relaying it from firsthand experience and being there in the pre-ebay/pre-internet days. 

[okiehawker]

Thanks for all this great poster history, cabmangray and Okie. You are true boatloads of awesome information, as well as relaying it from firsthand experience and being there in the pre-ebay/pre-internet days. 

Thanks, Jeff!  I was fortunate in that a few older collectors took me under their wings in the early 1970s and set me on a good path.  I was a young guy with lawn mowing money burning a hole in his pocket. Those gentlemen kept me away from the sharks and steered me to the good guys and gals.  Okie

[erik1925]

Thanks, Jeff!  I was fortunate in that a few older collectors took me under their wings in the early 1970s and set me on a good path.  I was a young guy with lawn mowing money burning a hole in his pocket. Those gentlemen kept me away from the sharks and steered me to the good guys and gals.  Okie

Sort of like getting in on one of the more ground floors. Sounds like some good guys steered you in the right direction, too. And that shows to this day, with the posters youve gotten and collected along the way.