All Poster Forum
Common Poster Subjects => Valuation => Topic started by: Charlie on November 01, 2013, 04:32:12 PM
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Tommy, the situation is very obvious. You have fleaBay with every dealer in the world offering the same posters over & over again all at the same time. Some of these dealers are smarter than others and see a diminishing value on material that does not sell, and they lower their prices again and again and again and again in an attempt to sell them. But it is a two-edged sword because buyers see this and as the listed prices go down down down, the collectors look at this and say to themselves "this poster was listed at $200 and I was thinking of buying it. Then it was relisted at $125 and I was still thinking. Then it was relisted again at $75 and I was still thinking, but I was wondering what was happening. Then it was relisted at $25 and though I knew it had to be a great price, I asled myself "why would I want a poster that it seems nobody wants and probably has no investment value? I guess I'm not interested anymore"
that is one factor.
Another factor is that one seller is selling approximately 3000 items per week, where 60% of his sales the week of October 27-31 went for
$14.00 or less (that's about 1800 posters of 2844 listed) and less than 10% sold at $100 or more. These numbers are fairly consistent from week to week. Even worse, sometimes the same poster is listed (not the same copy) so often in a compressed period of time (for instance, Fire Trap from 1935. sold 8 times from 4/5/2012 to
2/17/2013) and rides the price down from $100.00 on 4/5/12 to $24.00 on 2/17/13. This shows collectors how there aren't enough buyers at a certain price level to support the Wal Marting of sub-$100 posters, if there would be any support for even valuable posters sold in such a compressed period of time.
seriously, if a Forbidden Planet or DTESS one sheet came to market starting at $1.00 12 times a year and selling with no reserve, even those titles would see price deterioration, although it wouldn't be as serious as a sub-$200 poster.
Facts are that the movie poster hobby is small and the known population of serious collectors (with serious being a word of subjective meaning) may be 10,000 people, or if you mean "truly serious collector" it could be just a couple thousand or even less.
How many people out of 10,000 would have any interest in a Fire Trap poster, no matter how cool it is? (there aren't even 10 apparently, as the Fire Trap posters came from a small deal I found with a friend and we split them, with he sending his to be sold on consignment to the other auction. I've sold 3 copies and between both sales records (mine and his) I can tell you there were not 10 buyers as one person bought multiple copies from both myself and the other guy. Some posters will have greater interest and some will have lesser interest, but the ready supply outstrips the number of people wanting them, so the prices go down-down-down to reflect this simple fact
There are other factors of course - for instance, older films have a deteriorating interest as the people who know them are dying off or as they age, need less and less or just stop buying in anticipation of selling in their Autumn days. So you'll have lessening interest and greater supply.
Would prices go up on a large selection of material if so many posters were not offered so frequently? Well of course they would because the perception of availability or lack of availability would increase the ability of people to sell them for a better price.
A $20,000 poster may sell for $25,000 at auction on a certain day, and that is $5000 and people say "wow, the buyer paid $5000 extra for that poster. That's alot of money!" but it is only a 25% increase over it's perceived value
But when a $20.00 poster sells for $40.00, it's only $20.00 so it doesn't bear the same remark, even though it's a 100% increase.
some of these are complicated issues, others are very obvious
can you imagine how a collector feels when someone keeps offering the same poster over and over too frequently and it drives down his investment? How would anyone feel?
When people see a decrease of a few percentage points in their stock portfolio it is often like getting hit by a bulldozer. What about when you lose 76% at the same venue that you spent your money to begin with?? How low would the 11th copy have gone for if the other seller had more? (there were only 20 copies of Fire Trap. My remaining 7 copies are essentially warehoused, while the other 1/2 are gone)
some of it is poor stewardship by sellers. We ARE gatekeepers of a sort, guarding the investment of our consignors, our buyers and ourselves. Some people don't care however, so you have declining values.. and there is your answer Tommy
Rich
in response to:
I have noticed a trend in prices realised at online auctions recently,
and that is quite a substantial number of posters in the usual $20 -
$100 range selling at prices way below the average of the last couple
of years. Is this a sign of a falling market or a temporary aberration?
This was posted earlier on MOPO I think it is an excellent analysis of the current state of our hobby. I know that there were some jabs in here towards Bruce, but I would have to agree being victim to some of these redundant sales - being the 'first buyer'. I can recall three titles right off hand and many more that pop up over and over some that have never been auctioned before... But does it truly have a correlation on statistics would prove it on a hobby-wide basis and only dealers would have the data...
I would love to see a comparison of poster prices by frequency of offerings/year in binned amounts and determine the statistical correlation between offering and price standard deviation... Then I would like to look even farther at price change over years since last auctioned... So what was the increase if a poster had not been offered in 10 years versus one that hasn't come up in 20...
Maybe if I get bored I'll try to pull 20 or 30 posters and figure it out... Maybe not...
Anyway, I though Rich made a lot of sense here and warranted a bump on APF...
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This is mostly just more dealer in-fighting.
It's Economics 101 that in a perfectly-competitive market - like the airline industry - it's virtually impossible to make a profit.
Emovie selling 3,000 posters a week? Does that really matter when there are 220,000 ORIGINAL (excluding reproduction) US and international movie posters listed on US Ebay alone, with 10,000+ current auctions? You can probably double those figures if the other international Ebays are included.
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So the competitiveness in your example is availability of supply? Did you mean the supply-demand curves?
(http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/theory-and-applications-of-microeconomics/section_11/a048397b1c10195db8a620a2f8038e34.jpg)
So with Bruce's auctions we are seeing a shift in the supply curve, curtailing demand, and falling below the current equilibrium price points. I would assume that if it continues the supply curve will remain shifted and a new equilibrium price achieved... However dealer's will then concentrate on areas where the supply is low like 50s lady posters... (Great timing Mel!) Or quit all together/ go out of business... (Not a terrible strategy Bruce) Or will spend less time trying to sell those posters below the equilibrium price point, resulting in another shift back to the left... (Bruce will be King in the short term)
So, if you really see this temporary shift; buy some posters for tomorrow... But I would think dealer's would want to attempt to maintain the equilibrium price point for highest profitability.
In the end, the only ones getting screwed are the consignors...
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Man...hands up if like me you got sucked in by the subject title and thought this was a thread about Spandau Ballet...
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Man...hands up if like me you got sucked in by the subject title and thought this was a thread about Spandau Ballet...
"Head over heels when toe to toe. This is the sound of my soul....I know this much is True....." ;D
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Any consignor not happy with the prices quits consigning, so the number of unhappy consignors shrinks in no time at all. Yet we are constantly consigned MORE AND MORE with every passing month, and our existing consignors keep sending us more and more, and we keep getting more and more brand new consignors, so this is all very curious. Especially since the vast majority of the backers of this theory are solely those who run competing auctions (or who used to run competing auctions).
Are there many posters that sell for less now than they did a few years ago? Yes, of course, and many of the most obvious are the ones sold by Heritage and Christies during their boom years. Didn't THOSE buyers get "screwed" a lot more than the people who bought a poster from us for $50 a while ago and it now has auctioned for $15?
I have had this argument with dealers for over 45 years, starting in 1968 when I was a major comic book dealer. The only "collectors" who moan and groan about some prices falling are "investor types". Those who collect for the love of the items are thrilled when prices go down, because their money goes so much further.
And they know as I know that over time prices will have ups and downs, and if you buy more during dips you will end up with your money having gone far further than if you buy mostly when items are "hot".
Of course, dealers always want prices to go endlessly higher. If the government would just start a "QE4" for movie posters, we would see that happen!
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Bruce, you started those weekly auctions of modern stuff about 6 months ago, am I right? I mean, you use to have them, but not every week. And I already see falling prices on many items. It won't surprise me to see Pulp Fiction, Dark Knight advance, Back to the Future, and 100s of others sell for $70 within the next year. Take a title like The Goonies... This year alone, it went from $303, to $171, to $158, to $80, to $76 yesterday. In 6 months!!!
By auctioning the same titles over and over and over again, the market will soon be saturated. It will be interesting to see when/if sellers stop sending you modern stuff when they realize that the market has been killed.
T
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Any consignor not happy with the prices quits consigning, so the number of unhappy consignors shrinks in no time at all. Yet we are constantly consigned MORE AND MORE with every passing month, and our existing consignors keep sending us more and more, and we keep getting more and more brand new consignors, so this is all very curious. Especially since the vast majority of the backers of this theory are solely those who run competing auctions (or who used to run competing auctions).
Are there many posters that sell for less now than they did a few years ago? Yes, of course, and many of the most obvious are the ones sold by Heritage and Christies during their boom years. Didn't THOSE buyers get "screwed" a lot more than the people who bought a poster from us for $50 a while ago and it now has auctioned for $15?
I have had this argument with dealers for over 45 years, starting in 1968 when I was a major comic book dealer. The only "collectors" who moan and groan about some prices falling are "investor types". Those who collect for the love of the items are thrilled when prices go down, because their money goes so much further.
And they know as I know that over time prices will have ups and downs, and if you buy more during dips you will end up with your money having gone far further than if you buy mostly when items are "hot".
Of course, dealers always want prices to go endlessly higher. If the government would just start a "QE4" for movie posters, we would see that happen!
Bruce my analysis was a quantitative one... Not an emotional one. If there is such a thing as an equilibrium price point for posters and consignor % stay constant then any dip below the price equilibrium results in less money for the consignor regardless of time. Once the curve shifts back to the equilibrium then the consignor returns come back to equilibrium. However because the dip is driven by an increase in supply more posters will be sold at a lower price point and return than at equilibrium...
You are affected as well, however based on a graduated consigning fee, you will not see it as much as the consignor. I am not try to offend you Bruce or attack you - I am simply speaking basic economics. And these economics are based on previous equilibrium price point trends. Think about before the internet - with the internet the supply curve shifted and we saw a drop in prices. If you were to leave the market (hope not), the prices would rise due to loss in available supply. The tough part is determining the equilibrium price point and when to hold and sell... No real answer for that one.
I also don't think dealer's should want their prices to go endlessly higher because it would reduce the buyer surplus - shrinking the pool of collectors in the market. A simple example is the Frankenstein Insert, no availability, reduced pool of competing buyers, super high price... Maybe a bad example because every poster has different economics when it comes to title so we should not be talking titles but perhaps bins of titles. But a great example of reduced buyer surplus... It's difficult to compare title to title but poster to poster can be done...
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When those Pulp Fictions are going for $70 (etc) I advise all of you to buy as many as you can, because that can't last long, and before long the price will rise again, and you will either have a great poster for your collection or you will be able to trade it for something you do want.
Prices go up and down. When the prices are low, the sellers will stop selling (and consigning).
It is interesting how you guys are solely focusing on items that are going DOWN in price. Anyone notice any going up?
It is also interesting how not one of you is consigning any of these posters. Are you suggesting the people who do should not be allowed to do so?
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Let's not forget that what is being suggested - coordinated agreements to start posters at higher auction prices and limiting the number of posters being auctioned - probably are antitrust violations in any event.
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The bottom line is... never buy posters to invest. It is a bad, bad investment. Collect because you like them, not because of their resell value. There are so many better ways to make money.
T
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When those Pulp Fictions are going for $70 (etc) I advise all of you to buy as many as you can, because that can't last long, and before long the price will rise again, and you will either have a great poster for your collection or you will be able to trade it for something you do want.
Prices go up and down. When the prices are low, the sellers will stop selling (and consigning).
It is interesting how you guys are solely focusing on items that are going DOWN in price. Anyone notice any going up?
It is also interesting how not one of you is consigning any of these posters. Are you suggesting the people who do should not be allowed to do so?
Will do on the Pulp Fiction...
As far as prices going up this is very true. One of the reasons I wanted to plot 'years since last sold' to 'price change'. We are also forgetting the introduction of new collectors, which then shifts the demand curve. There appears to be a very new Audrey collector of late or I could be crazy... So more demand, equals higher prices... So we have new collectors in areas of equilibrium demand, increasing the prices.. But if we assume that we are adding collectors faster than loosing, which appears to be the trend in modern paper, then what would explain the decrease but the rightward shift in supply is outpacing the leftward shift in demand; which is even worse! Because once the new collectors have the posters they want, the demand will fall and the supply will remain the same, driving the prices even farther down... Which is where we may be.
I didn't consign any modern stuff because you told me to go sell them on eBay instead of send them to you, remember. I still have 300 moderns packed up in the corner that I was going to send you. But said what the hell, am I a collector or not? They are paid for, all packed up nicely and out of the way. I'll just sit on em, they weren't an investment to begin with. What other people want to do is up to them. I am at a point now where I don't care if I sell them or not - I was just going to buy more posters with the money anyway.
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That is what I do with everything I sell. Purchase more paper.
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If you want to send the 300 modern one-sheets, that's fine AS LONG AS we can lot up the really lesser ones. There is no way I will auction them all one at a time (especially since then there would be even MORE bitching and moaning about how LOW prices are getting to be)!
If our December Audrey Hepburn special auction sees higher than normal prices (as our special Clint Eastwood and James Bond auctions did) then will lots of you be moaning and groaning how unfair it is that you can't buy THOSE posters at "fair" prices? Who decides what is "too high" and "too low" anyway?
And you know, the only reason you can find posters that auction a lot and have falling prices is because we have a really superb Auction History database that lets you do so. Try doing the same with eBay or any of the individual auction sites, sorting by title, then size, and then price. It can't be done anywhere else (some hide their past results, perhaps out of embarrassment).
If you are so sure prices are falling like a rock on some titles, quit bidding on them and then wait to get them later at much lower prices. People try to do that all the time in the real estate and stock markets, and it rarely works there, but maybe you will have more luck here.
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If you are so sure prices are falling like a rock on some titles, quit bidding on them and then wait to get them later at much lower prices. People try to do that all the time in the real estate and stock markets, and it rarely works there, but maybe you will have more luck here.
As you know, I don't sell, and I already own 70-80% of the modern posters (70s on) you put up for sale. So I don't really care either way. I'm just observing.
But as far as real estate and stock markets are concerned, it does work. The last 2 years (and especially the last 6 months) have been exceptional!!!
T
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If you want to send the 300 modern one-sheets, that's fine AS LONG AS we can lot up the really lesser ones. There is no way I will auction them all one at a time (especially since then there would be even MORE bitching and moaning about how LOW prices are getting to be)!
If our December Audrey Hepburn special auction sees higher than normal prices (as our special Clint Eastwood and James Bond auctions did) then will lots of you be moaning and groaning how unfair it is that you can't buy THOSE posters at "fair" prices? Who decides what is "too high" and "too low" anyway?
And you know, the only reason you can find posters that auction a lot and have falling prices is because we have a really superb Auction History database that lets you do so. Try doing the same with eBay or any of the individual auction sites, sorting by title, then size, and then price. It can't be done anywhere else (some hide their past results, perhaps out of embarrassment).
If you are so sure prices are falling like a rock on some titles, quit bidding on them and then wait to get them later at much lower prices. People try to do that all the time in the real estate and stock markets, and it rarely works there, but maybe you will have more luck here.
Oh man... Don't be so defensive. I decided a while back not to worry about them. In fact, the wife figured out that after postage the return would be minimal anyways. I had told about your offer to come visit and we thought that if we ever did I would take them then... But it does annoy me how you discount a consignor lot before you ever set eyes on them...
Actually the Audrey auction is well timed. Look forward to seeing what you've got.
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Does that really matter when there are 220,000 ORIGINAL (excluding reproduction) US and international movie posters listed on US Ebay alone, with 10,000+ current auctions? You can probably double those figures if the other international Ebays are included.
I think this is a good point that I missed. One of the reason Bruce is a target is because of the availability of his auction history... I know I tried to list a few Eastwoods and a Fargo a while back (6 or 8 months ago) at exactly Bruce's auction results and got no bids... The difference I would say, is Bruce's reputation and customer service. We are forgetting to give him kudos there. But all in all I always assume I will find better prices on eBay than EMP in an auction format. Even further evidence of the supply-demand relationship.
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The bottom line is... never buy posters to invest. It is a bad, bad investment. Collect because you like them, not because of their resell value. There are so many better ways to make money.
T
Exactly - there is a huge difference between "collector" and "investor". Although it's also true that a lot of hobbyists are an amalgam of both.
And it has been alluded to in the past that dealers/auctioneers/sellers should hold back the supply on a certain title(s) and let copies come to market in a trickle to artificially maintain a certain price point. This is an illusory reflection of the true supply and an overt manipulation of the market. Sure it may work in the seller's favour for a while...but if you have 1,000 copies of something (not even factoring in if there are 1,000 people interested in the poster) just how much time would you have to allow between sales to maintain the price point? Likely you'd die before getting through half of them. Buyers should be much more astute before divesting themselves of their $$$.
It's only in the dealer/auctioneers/seller's best interest to be the arbitrary "gatekeeper" of the supply open to the demand market...
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It's only in the dealer/auctioneers/seller's best interest to be the arbitrary "gatekeeper" of the supply open to the demand market...
As with any other business entity, a poster dealer/auctioneer should have one and only one goal: MAXIMIZE PROFITABILITY. For Cinemasterpieces, that means selling common posters for 10 times their typical auction price to naive (or rich) buyers For Emovie, that means hiring 30 employees and pumping out 2,000+ posters a week. For Heritage, it means focusing on quarterly "signature" auctions and - presumably - having a not-very-profitable weekly auction ongoing as a filler between major auctions.
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The bottom line is... never buy posters to invest. It is a bad, bad investment. Collect because you like them, not because of their resell value. There are so many better ways to make money.
T
+1
I would not have bought a single poster if I thought about them as investments. Not one.
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ALLS I know is, I hope a OS a want badly in Part 1 of Bruce's auction goes for a record low, and the 3 pieces I consigned that are in Part 3 go for a record high. :P
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As with any other business entity, a poster dealer/auctioneer should have one and only one goal: MAXIMIZE PROFITABILITY. For Cinemasterpieces, that means selling common posters for 10 times their typical auction price to naive (or rich) buyers For Emovie, that means hiring 30 employees and pumping out 2,000+ posters a week. For Heritage, it means focusing on quarterly "signature" auctions and - presumably - hold a not-very-profitable weekly auction going as a filler between major auctions.
And for King Rich?
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And for King Rich?
He says he wants very large collections consigned to him. Let him explain.
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Man...hands up if like me you got sucked in by the subject title and thought this was a thread about Spandau Ballet...
I rented The Krays when it first came out on VHS. :-\ 8)
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I rented The Krays when it first came out on VHS. :-\ 8)
Same here.
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I rented The Krays when it first came out on VHS. :-\ 8)
Wow, congrats Z - best example of a tangent in action. :P
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Bruce, you started those weekly auctions of modern stuff about 6 months ago, am I right? I mean, you use to have them, but not every week. And I already see falling prices on many items. It won't surprise me to see Pulp Fiction, Dark Knight advance, Back to the Future, and 100s of others sell for $70 within the next year. Take a title like The Goonies... This year alone, it went from $303, to $171, to $158, to $80, to $76 yesterday. In 6 months!!!
By auctioning the same titles over and over and over again, the market will soon be saturated. It will be interesting to see when/if sellers stop sending you modern stuff when they realize that the market has been killed.
T
Agree, but didn't you say last week or so how if you had modern posters to sell you would definitely be sending them to Bruce because of the crazy amounts he get for them?
I sure would.
I agree that it seems like a weekly dose of Pulp Fiction, Dark Knight, etc etc...but they keep selling for high amounts. Bruce gets a high sale, the buyer gets a bonafide original with great packaging and no stress. Seems like a win-win.
Also, keep in mind that I bet a lot of people who buy modern posters aren't even really collectors...they just like The Dark Knight. I bet a bunch of these buyers have a bigger collection of Hot Topic tshirts than movie posters.
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Wow, congrats Z - best example of a tangent in action. :P
What can I say?, I love Formula One!
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Agree, but didn't you say last week or so how if you had modern posters to sell you would definitely be sending them to Bruce because of the crazy amounts he get for them?
I would, but it doesn't mean it's good for the hobby.
T
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Agree, but didn't you say last week or so how if you had modern posters to sell you would definitely be sending them to Bruce because of the crazy amounts he get for them?
I sure would.
sm1
Amen! When people want to talk about people paying too much, they use US for an example ALL the time, citing specific posters. And when they want to talk about people not paying "enough" they use us as well!
Look at this set of recently closed Tuesday auctions:
http://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/date/2013-10-29/sort/4/archive.html (http://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/date/2013-10-29/sort/4/archive.html)
Sorted high to low, the prices look pretty insanely high, with 20 items over $500, some of which don't look like anywhere close to $500+ posters and that includes a lot of three-sheets and Italian posters.
But now look at the very SAME set of auctions sorted low to high:
http://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/date/2013-10-29/sort/3/archive.html (http://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/date/2013-10-29/sort/3/archive.html)
Now the prices look insanely LOW!
There are 41 items that sold for $1, and ONE HUNDRED AND FIVE that sold for $4 or under and that includes a lot of three-sheets and Italian posters!
So off of this one set of auctions, one could both argue that the prices of a lot of three-sheets and Italian posters are going through the roof, and someone else could argue that the prices of a lot of three-sheets and Italian posters are tanking because they are being auctioned "too often"!
The bottom line is, if there are not enough collectors in the entire world to justify the auctioning of a Pulp Fiction every too weeks, then the hobby is incredibly tiny right now, and posters like those should be bought when they sell for low amounts. But of course, posters like that tend to do just fine over and over, defying the naysayers. It is mostly posters that are not very good from movies that are not very good that do terribly when they are auctioned over and over!
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cheers
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What can I say?, I love Formula One!
That makes two of us :)
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Much of what this article says about comic books applies to movie posters:
Especially this: “There are two markets for comic books,” Salkowitz says. “There’s the market for gold-plated issues with megawatt cultural significance, which sell for hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of dollars. But that’s a very, very, very limited market. If a Saudi sheik decides he needs Action Comics No. 1, there are only a few people out there who have a copy.” And then there’s the other market, where most comics change hands for pennies and nobody is getting rich or even breaking even. “The entire back-issues market is essentially a Ponzi scheme,” Salkowitz says. “It’s been managed and run that way for 35 years.”
But it is not NEARLY as bad in movie posters as in comics, because there are FAR fewer "Investor types" in this hobby.
Buy what you like, collect because you enjoy the posters, and the day you sell out, you may break even or you may win or lose depending on a lot of factors, but if that is a major part of why you are in this hobby, get out now!
As all of you know, I have sold more collections for old-time collectors than anyone else, and quite a few of them made a lot of money on their collections, and I would say it was mostly those who were NOT thinking of it as investing (because investors tend to buy the "hottest" items, which are usually the ones to fall the most when they cool off).
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-30/those-comics-in-your-basement-probably-worthless (http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-30/those-comics-in-your-basement-probably-worthless)
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Bruce, I have a question for you.
When you are consigned large groups of moderns, I know that it must be a losing money proposition for you (even at the scaled commission percentage) if so many of them sell for $5 or less.
How do you decide which ones you will bulk offer and which ones make the cut to sell for those $2, $3 or so?
I just can't imagine spending the time to sort through them all
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Actually either I or a trusted employee (one of the ones who have been here ten years plus, and we have several of those) DO sort through every single rolled poster, splitting them into single sale or bulk. That is yet more cost in auctioning cheap items, and one more reason I charge 75% for $1 to $7 single items and 60% for $8 to $11 single items, and why I have said over and over that we lose money on such items (and would even if we took a roughly 95% commission, like some auctions do).
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And incidentally, as I have said repeatedly, but which seems to get lost in this thread, better quality items ARE doing really well, as long as the prices were not driven up artificially by one wacky sale.
THIS GUN FOR HIRE seems to now be a solid $10,000 to $15,000 poster (depending on condition). That is much better than what it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago. But it is much worse than the nearly $50,000 one wacky buyer apparently paid one time.
The market is also promising for new collectors on anything under that top tier. Most posters (especially horror/sci-fi) are under where they were five to ten years ago, and I will be amazed if that lasts much longer (of course, I am not talking about posters that were dipped in paint or Haggardized). Getting unrestored nice condition posters for 2005 prices or under seems like an outright steal to me (again, as long as we are not talking about one time abberations).
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Actually either I or a trusted employee (one of the ones who have been here ten years plus, and we have several of those) DO sort through every single rolled poster, splitting them into single sale or bulk. That is yet more cost in auctioning cheap items, and one more reason I charge 75% for $1 to $7 single items and 60% for $8 to $11 single items, and why I have said over and over that we lose money on such items (and would even if we took a roughly 95% commission, like some auctions do).
Hey Bruce, I've been meaning to ask, are any of your employees collectors or it is "just a job" for most of them. In other words, do they have any real interest in posters or would they be just as happy (or unhappy, as may be) at another job?
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The only one who collected was Phil Wages, but he sold his entire collection for a down payment on his house, and I am sure that was a wise move, as he loves where he lives more than he loved the posters.
I would say that there are quite a few of those who have been here a long time who have gained a considerable knowledge of posters, but I think they are satisfied with just looking at digital images, as they have neither the collecting gene or the finances to do more.
There are a few people here who have massive knowledge about the specific areas of posters that they work with, more than any of you or I possess! One person, knows 99% of what is known about poster artists (and more specifically the Italian and French ones), including their full names, and he can recognize their signatures when no one else can!