Film Art Gallery

[eatbrie]

Has anyone ever bought from these people? 

I mean, their pricing is x10 what it should be.  I know thieves when I see them, but this shop is definitely above the fray.  One example but I feel like every single posters of theirs could be an example, I bought this Blow Up poster a few weeks ago for $700, which I believe was already a stretch but it was folded so I had to go for it), and they are selling the exact same poster (linenbacked though... Yeah!!!) for $8k ( ). 



I mean really?

T

[Tob]

I check the site when new arrivals go up as I like the owner's taste in posters, but yeah, I only window shop because of the dealer prices. Fair play if they can sell at those prices! I suppose if you have regular customers that trust you, shopping at emovieposter and then re-selling for a nice profit seems like a no brainer.

[eatbrie]

Yeah, I actually think that dealers like this are detrimental to the hobby.  Cool website, but they give potential buyers a wrong idea of value, of what is fair and what is not.  If I was just starting in this hobby and bought my first poster at Film Art, only to realize that I paid 10x what it is worth later, I'd be pretty pissed and would probably never want to collect again.  Now I'm stuck with something I cannot even dream of reselling for anything close to the purchase price.  I understand people need to make money, but even greed has its limits.

T

[Tob]

Yeah, those are fair points. There is a dealer I follow on social media who is a bit loose with the truth in terms of his sales patter regarding scarcity and value and it annoys me. It's almost a rite of passage to get burnt by overpaying for a poster or two in the early days of collecting (or maybe it's just me that did it!), but it would be a great shame if that experience turned new collectors away.

[BwanaDik]

Same here, I follow new arrivals in retailer and find most of them having ridiculous prices.  And I know that a few are even getting them from emovieposter 
Tob, since you usually check FilmArtGallery, you can tell if he buys from there or not 

Totally agree, I won't be happy neither to know I paid x10 the price market... but most markets online are fuck*d up. Lot of ebay users posting stuff at ridiculous prices; some resellers will set their retail prices based on ebay and use indeed some dubious sale pitch.

There is thin line between "reselling" and "scalping".   "Reselling" means resell with a fair markup, based on market price.  "Scalping" means to make a huge markup on product by controlling its market price and scarcity and often done for event tickets, fine art and electronic (graphic card, PS, etc.) (this definition is different from the stock auctions definition which means to make huge profit on small prices changes by buying/selling large stock).

Definition of "scalping" can't be applied to movie posters as there are plenty of availability in the market. But still, some guys are doing it, hoping for a fool to buy it.
What annoys me much is that these guys are indeed bidding on almost everything, just to increase estimated/market value, this is part of their marketing strategy.  And if it is a registered business, even better, they can scalp/stock their posters as business assets for many years and continue to sell them at crazy prices.... until they close their business with a poor exit strategy, that is to sell their assets at low price/cost or insurance value (which is definitely lower than advertised prices) to another retailers.