Hey Bruce and Tom,
I often say in many of my posts to the
group that there are poster collectors out there that most of us don't know
exist. Because I offer the framing on ebay, I ship about a thousand frames a
month, a large majority of them to collectors that are new or relatively
new to the hobby. I send them information in their boxes about Bruce's
auctions and www.learnaboutmovieposterscom.
Many of them call to thank me for the tip as they have never heard any of that
information before. I have tons of collector's here in L.A. that have never bid
on an auction and didn't even know they existed until they came into my shop and
saw the Heritage auction catalogs on the counter. I am amazed when someone tells
me they have been a movie poster collector for over 10-20 years and have never
heard of Bruce's auctions. I figure they don't get out much! I have many people
who order frames that use to collect 15 or so years ago and are now just getting
back into it and often have posters that are now worth quite a bit, especially
the Star Wars collectors. So, I couldn't even put a number on how many
collectors are out there, but one thing for sure, as Bruce said, the hobby is in
it's infancy.
Sue
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2005 2:24
PM
Subject: [MOPO] How many poster
collectors are there?
I have seen a lot of wild guesses as to how many poster
collectors
there are, on this forum and elsewhere. Some people cite
the
circulation of Movie Collectors World, others the number of
MoPo
members. I don't think either number is very helpful. Major
auction
houses claim to have hundreds of thousands of bidders, but
that
includes people who bought ANYTHING from them, not just
movie
posters, and once you ever register you are never dropped off,
so
those numbers are pretty meaningless.
My e-mail club has 3,257
members, but likely there are quite a few
members who have lost interest
but have been too lazy to
"un-subscribe", lots of others who stay members
solely to have a
chance at the many free book giveaways, etc. I have
sold to 23,000+
eBay members the past 5 years, but a goodly number of those
people
bought a single poster and are likely to never buy
another.
But consider my current auction, Vintage Hollywood Posters IX,
now on
eBay and ending the 17th. All bidders need to register for
this
auction, even if they have bought from me before, and even if
they
were registered in my past major auctions. So I think the number
of
registrants in THIS auction is very reflective of the overall size
of
the hobby.
After all, I KNOW that just about every serious
collector and dealer
has registered for this auction, and rightfully so,
since it
absolutely contains items to appeal to EVERY collector (no
matter
what genre or decades they collect from), and when some of the
672
items inevitably sell for bargain prices because these posters
and
lobby cards TRULY have no reserves, and there are NO
outrageous
"buyers premiums" and NO U.S. shipping charges to contend
with
(non-U.S. buyers pay the ACTUAL cost of shipping with NO
"handling
charges"), there are sure to be lots of dealers and
value-minded
collectors poised to snap up those bargains.
Of course
there are SOME of the registered bidders who are NOT
serious collectors,
but only want an item or two, but that might
account for a couple of
hundred bidders at most. Are there serious
collectors and dealers who
are NOT registered? Surely so! Most
prominent are the couple of
dozen "Hershenson haters" who keep
repeating the "he runs private auctions,
so that must mean he cheats
people" mantra they live by, even though they
have no proof of any
kind. Plus I imagine there are a couple of hundred
collectors who
just don't like buying items through the mail because they
can't see
them before they buy. Of course there are likely also some
other
collectors and dealers who don't like my "restrictive
payment
policies" (apparently, asking buyers to pay for their purchases
after
they make them is "restrictive", even though they can put them
on
credit cards and have endless time to pay for them).
So since
there are now just under 1,600 registered bidders for this
auction (the
most I have ever registered for any of my 19 major
auctions), I would guess
there are somewhere around 2,000 "serious"
collectors in the world. I
would further guess that there are around
3,000 "casual" collectors, and
tens of thousands of people who own at
least one vintage poster, but don't
consider themselves "collectors".
If I am right, then this hobby is
surely in its
infancy!
Bruce
eMoviePoster.com
Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com
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