I just bought 2,000+ posters for $200!!!

[MoviePosterBid.com]

until someone is left holding the world's most undesirable poster -- a very crinkled copy of Travolta's finest hour, Battlefield Earth. 

I don't know why anyone would wish this on even your worst enemy.
I guess owning the poster isn't as bad as watching the film anyway...

 

[eatbrie]

Alright, well, what I had first envisioned to be a fun experience really turned out to be a nightmare.  Mainly because trashing posters is not fun to any collector.  I will not recoup my $200, and in retrospect, I should have sent it to the Red Cross.  Another problem is that I am extremely anal and expect modern posters (post 1990) to be in extra mint condition.  I mean, not a flaw.  Well, 99% of these posters did not pass the test.  Plus, I already owned a lot of these titles, and the rest of them were lame, lame movies (Ice Cube, anyone?)  So out the door they go.

This is the outside of my garage, an hour ago.  Did I mention it's about to rain?

Oh well, live and learn, right?  Someone, somewhere, is laughing at me...



T

[linder1]

Thanks Thierry.   Seriously LOL.  With you not at you.

I like how 'Waterworld' is atop the pile.

[Harry Caul]

And here I thought I would become hero of the day... I guess apologies are in order!

So, do you think they were picked over before you got them?  With so many posters there would have had to be some better titles otherwise...

[Dr Hackenbush]

You could always use them for kindling on a cold day     Sorry to hear about your buying experience turning out so poorly.  I know that with comics you get this type of thing happen more often than not.  The seller will say they have comics in mint condition from the 60's, 70's & 80's blah, blah, blah, and most of it turns out to be over graded drek from the 90's.  Craigslist is a black hole that way - it'll suck the life out of a person's existence after going to see enough of these collections .

[CSM]

Those are photos that will live on in my mind for posterity.

Thanks for the amazing imagery Thierry.

You made my day!

[eatbrie]

I've just been rolling them in gigantic rolls (because know I have to trash them), and it's the best workout I've had in months.  Beats a gym membership.  I'm going to be SO strong, I might just fly to England and beat Andy's ass.

See, there's always good in bad.

 

[ddilts399]

Lets hear the 1% keeper list.

[eatbrie]

All right, ALL GONE!!!

It filled up my blue recycle bin, and 5 of my neighbors!!! 

The good thing is that it rained last night, so it was very easy to stack them up.  I'm keeping about 45 of them, no titles that I would go after, just random stuff.  I have a bunch of other posters I might be able to get credit for at a local poster store.  It will be a stretch, but in the long run, I'll break even.

T

[kauaitx]

That deep, gut-wrenching, knife-in-my-spleen feeling I have is from Thierry trashing 1,950 posters. 

30, 50, 75 years ago, a Thierry of that generation also decided these pieces of paper were worthless and threw a Metropolis, A Gone With the Wind, a Lawrence of Arabia, a La Belle et La Bete, a Breakfast at Tiffany's, a Star Wars, a Jaws, a Bladerunner into the trash bin. 

Oh, the humanity......

I must go take a Pepcid and aspirin now.


Jeannie

[Harry Caul]

That is priceless Jeanie! 

[CSM]

That deep, gut-wrenching, knife-in-my-spleen feeling I have is from Thierry trashing 1,950 posters. 

30, 50, 75 years ago, a Thierry of that generation also decided these pieces of paper were worthless and threw a Metropolis, A Gone With the Wind, a Lawrence of Arabia, a La Belle et La Bete, a Breakfast at Tiffany's, a Star Wars, a Jaws, a Bladerunner into the trash bin. 

Oh, the humanity......

I must go take a Pepcid and aspirin now.


Jeannie

Don't worry too much Jeannie - these modern posters he has so viciously disposed of are mass-produced shlock and cannot, on any level, be compared with posters of yesteryear...

[Hotdog]

Maybe so, but we'll still have to wait till tomorrowyear to find out, I'm still kicking myself for alot of that 70's and 80's "schlock" that I trashed back then. I used Back To The Future 1 sheets to wrap my Christmas presents in one year.

[Harry Caul]

Yup.  Today's schlock could be tomorrows Attack of the 50ft Woman or Plan 9 From Outer Space!

[CSM]

Roland, a 1985 Back to the Future is quite different from the comparatively huge print run of a complete trash (I mean trash in the literal sense) 2004 Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2

[erik1925]

Hey, got one of these in the haul? Lieberman has a birthday coming up.

Wow. This is one god-awful, poster, imo.  

[eatbrie]

Where did you find this thread?  I completely forgot about it. 

And I love the above picture...  It looks like my garage pucked posters.

Good times!

T

[Bruce]

At least once a month I get a call from some former theater employee who has between a few thousand and ten thousand posters from the past 20 to 30 years, and they think they have a gold mine. Sometimes they have already listed everything, and even worse, a few have even taken pictures of everything.

They have seen the posters on websites for $10 and $20 each, and they want their tens of thousands of dollars, and I have to break it to them that the effort of selling them one at a time is greater than what they will take in, and that AT BEST they might end up making minimum wage for their efforts. I advise them to do one of two things:

1) Pick out the 1% to 5% that are worth selling and trash the rest
OR

2) Look for some sucker investor to sell them ALL to for something like $1 each (if they can find such a person)

[TheAnswerMVP2001]

Well I'll find out how my Italian bulk lot investment turns out, no where near 2,000 posters but it's a large enough lot that Bruce could devote an entire auction to it.  Supposedly they were going to be mailed out today (they should have been mailed out a week ago...   ).  I'm curious as to how I'm going to receive these, I did a rough estimate on weight and I don't know how this guy is going to do it and still make money, (he's covering the shipping).  We'll see. At least buying posters from another country I won't have the issue market overflow as I would if I bought a bunch of US posters.  Anyhow my main purpose for buying them wasn't resell, it's my favorite country of poster and I should be able to get some pretty decent posters that I would never buy individually because shipping would cost more than the poster itself.  But I should have a pretty good chance of making a nice return if the titles I was told is any reflection of the rest of the lot.  As always it's a risk, but I like my chances a lot more than a pile of US posters from the 90's and later, you'd have to pay me more than $200 to want to take them.

[eatbrie]

Italian posters are the best.  If it wasn't for the horrific paper they are printed on, I'd be collecting more of them.  If I was going to focus my collecting on one country, it would be Italy, then France and US.  I could easily do without the rest.

How many posters are you getting?

T

[TheAnswerMVP2001]

It's somewhere between 500-800. I'll have a more accurate count when I get them.  No clue what sizes either, but from the photo I was given of the stack it looks like 2F's & 4F's, though I'd imagine there has to be some smaller ones in there.  Or there's another stack.

I haven't had much issues with paper quality, I guess it depends who you're buying from. And I think most issues are more the fault of how they've been taken care of than the paper itself.  Condition doesn't seem to be a big concern to a lot of Italian sellers so I don't think a lot of them take much care so I would fault them more than the paper.  I don't expect these to be in as good of shape as what I typically buy, but if they're the quality Bruce typically gets consigned then I should be alright.

[eatbrie]

Well, I have a very tiny collection of Italian paper, so I am by no means an expert, but I do know that the paper quality is much lower than French posters, which is already not great.  Even the few Italian posters I got from Bruce are not great.  This said, I'm kind of super anal about condition, so it might have something to do with it.

T

[TheAnswerMVP2001]

No disrespect to Bruce, as it's not his fault, but most of the Italian stuff consigned to eMovie (with the exception of a couple weeks ago which was nice condition) is in the lower quality condition of stuff I've seen, and the few Italian posters I've bought from him are for the most part no where near as nice as what I've bought directly out of Italy.  I figure he's getting consigned lower quality overflow from vendors which is what I figure I'm getting with this bulk lot I bought.  Above average Italian paper is out there, it just might seem a little harder to find because they weren't printed in as large of qualities to begin with, compared to US 1-sheets of the same time period.  It makes the hunt and discovery that much more enjoyable in my opinion.

[Bruce]

No disrespect to Bruce, as it's not his fault, but most of the Italian stuff consigned to eMovie (with the exception of a couple weeks ago which was nice condition) is in the lower quality condition of stuff I've seen, and the few Italian posters I've bought from him are for the most part no where near as nice as what I've bought directly out of Italy.  I figure he's getting consigned lower quality overflow from vendors which is what I figure I'm getting with this bulk lot I bought.  Above average Italian paper is out there, it just might seem a little harder to find because they weren't printed in as large of qualities to begin with, compared to US 1-sheets of the same time period.  It makes the hunt and discovery that much more enjoyable in my opinion.

We certainly never in any way mislead anyone on the quality! We have lots of "fair", "fair to good", and even some "poor", but for Italians I need to invent a new category below "poor" (maybe "bird cage liner"?). But some of those are awful rare (or can be super cheap) and some people don't mind terrible condition.

Actually, last week's Italians were mostly in GREAT shape, because they came from two good collectors. 173 of the 317 Italians were graded "very good to fine", which is "as good as it gets". See those closed ones at

Now we have a lot of them starting tonight, and those are more "conditioned challenged", so you probably won't find any there, you condition freak you!

[eatbrie]

I can't remember that sale, Bruce, I don't even know if I bid on it and if I won anything...  I'm never home when your auctions go on, so I usually bid from my phone, which makes it difficult. 

I'm mainly talking about 50s and 60s Italian paper, of course.  70s on is usually great.  It's the early ones I have trouble with.  I usually don't with French and US, so I know it has to do with Italy paper more than the age of the posters.

T