Hello friends, Romans, and fellow poster nerds! After a three year near-total break from the hobby, I’ve decided to launch Collecting Round 2.0, rejoin the forums, and start collecting again.
Let me re-introduce myself. I randomly walked into a movie poster store in Denver in March 2009 and immediately became obsessed with the hobby. Over the next five-and-a-half years – until Nov. 2014 - I spent most of my discretionary income on movie posters, prints, frames, linen-backing, and internet hosting fees for my two websites posternirvana.com (personal collection) and moviepostercollectors.com (educational site). Here's a pic from April 2014:
With all this crazy spending I was stone-cold broke often. I’ll never forget one time I was on a date with my new girlfriend in 2011 and both my debit and credit cards were declined. I rather stupidly confessed my poster mania and she told me “it’s me or the posters!” We broke up soon afterward and the poster craze continued unabated. (See
this recent WP article about dating while broke!)
I bought 1900 movie posters and prints and 100 frames from 2009-2014, spending countless hours – sometimes several hours daily – poring through the endless auctions on eBay and the independent auction sites. Meanwhile, I probably posted five times a day on MPF and APF as Dread_Pirate_Mel, generally enjoying myself – and personally meeting several APF members - but garnering several enemies, including the infamous Tom Loce. He even filed a bar complaint against me! But it went nowhere.
I left APF in June 2014 after a blow-up over “outing” a rare ET poster auction. (In Round 2, I’ll follow the current APF rule about “outing” of course.) I didn’t glance at any of the forums again for almost three years until last month.
After a six-year fight with Adam I’ve decided I owe him an apology. It all started in 2011 when on a Bond forum I questioned whether he actually owned a Bond print he was selling. That was thoughtless and inexcusable. I was just being a F-ing poster nerd! He ultimately sold it for 1000+ pounds but he claimed – and claims – I ruined his reputation. I don’t agree but still owe him an apology.
Making a very long and complex tale as short as possible, in Dec 2014 I suffered a brain injury. My walking/motion, speech, and sleep have severely degraded. I had to drop out of the practice of law in Jan. 2016 and go on disability and move from DC to Charlotte NC to be closer to family.
To help pay my medical expenses I consigned 99% of my collection to EMP. They sold all my posters for $137K – equalling what I’d paid for them (inc. shipping costs and linenbacking 20+ posters) - and I netted $94K after EMP commissions. I have nothing but praise for EMP. They sold my posters for significantly more than I could have gotten on eBay. They saved me countless hours as well. They even flew an EMP employee in May 2015 to DC in June 2015 to pack/ship my final 500 posters. The overall commission rate was a very fair 30%. These were my top $ sellers:
I’m telling all this not to elicit pity but as a warning to preserve and enjoy your health and not to obsess too much about this hobby! The only path forward for me is to hang in there and tough it out and enjoy my “Life 2.0” as much as possible. I’ve decided to spend some of my remaining net to build a relatively small “3-Star” collection, ha-ha!
By the end of 2015 I was down to 19 posters out of 1900 bought in Round 1. These were the “survivors”:
I didn’t buy any other posters until April 2017. I checked out T’s site to peruse the new 2015-17 posters. So far I’ve rounded up these:
My new frame collection – I gave away most of my frames when I moved from DC - is posted here:
https://www.facebook.com/pg/MoviePosterCollectors/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1938634233087177Here are my faves:
800 pictures of my 2009-2014 DC frame collection are here:
https://www.facebook.com/pg/MoviePosterCollectors/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1936000636683870I’ve rebuilt moviepostercollectors.com as moviepostercollectors.guide to help the hobby. More on that later.
‘Nuff said! Thanks for reading through the longest intro in APF history. I look forward to reconnecting with my old APF pals and meeting new pals here!
