Good morning!
So how do the "flippers" gain possession so quickly that they can immediately re-offer them? Do they live within driving distance? Is there any way to acquire these without going through the site?
Bruce
As far as I know, flippers who offer a poster immediately after an online drop do so without the poster in hand. And most of those sellers include a caveat about not actually possessing the poster at the time of their auction. I've been told this sort of thing is common with other types of flippers, (vinyl toys, etc.) - and not just Mondo releases.
Can posters be bought outside of the site? Yes, occasionally at screenings - which can be a week or longer before an online sale (sometimes months in the case of Olly's Rolling Roadshow posters). And occasionally at the store - we had the SXSW posters (Source Code, Moon, Paul, Hesher, Hobo) available in the store everyday during SXSW, and released the remaining copies the following week.
And if a poster comes back damaged, why would you sell it at a higher cost?
Well, honestly, I guess because we can. And we don't always. But if it originally sold for $30, and a month later it's selling for $200 by collectors, I'm not sure if I see the harm in raising the price on the last two or three copies that we have available to sell..I know what the next question will be, and no - we don't hold back posters so we can sell them in this manner. We DO have an archive of posters, but posters that are sold in the way I'm describing here are returns/slightly damaged copies. And we only offer these in our store so that a customer can see any minor damage first hand and evaluate if they think our price is fair or not.
Again though, this is a really rare occurrence. Shipping returns aren't terribly frequent, but when they happen it's either something that is unsellable (a completely mangled poster) or something with barely noticeable damage (a bent corner or minor scuff).
Does that help?