I've almost quit buying anything relatively new or double sided on ebay because they always seem to start in NM condition and arrive with massive edge wear. I've become so paranoid about it that I question the seller extensively about shipping before I bid. Of course, I'm sure most think I'm a nut case but there is nothing more frustrating to me than buying a perfectly good poster that is ruined in shipping.
I bought a NM Breakfast at Tiffanys last year. I mean it was gorgeous, on linen, with no restoration. I came shipped in a weak tube that was slightly dented. As you would expect, the dent left a 1 inch crinkle every 6 inches down the poster. Fortunately, the crinkle was able to be rolled out with no long-term impact but wow it makes me mad. Shipping may stop me from buying from anyone I don't know. On the travel poster side, I've loved them for years. All an art deco nut and most of my furniture is art deco from France or England. Because travel posters were almost always made in art deco style, they've always appealed to me. DBT |-----Original Message----- |From: MoPo List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bruce |Hershenson |Sent: Sunday, March 11, 2007 10:37 AM |To: MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU |Subject: [MOPO] Why I hate to buy on eBay from sellers I don't know well! | |Recently I discovered Airline travel posters of the 1950s and 1960s. These were |made by the airlines and displayed in travel agencies. They make for a perfect |collectible, because, like movies posters, they were NEVER available to the general |public (only people in the travel business got them) and 99.9% of them were |displayed as intended, so they were taped to walls and likely almost all were thrown |away after usage. | |The best collectibles are items that were not at all valued when they were created, |and the WORST collectibles are items (like limited edition books or prints or coins or |dolls) that were highly priced when they were created, for those items almost |NEVER appreciate in value (and the vast majority of those items sell for a fraction of |their original price). | |So I decided to buy 200 or more of these travel posters, and then either keep them |as a collection (they look really cool framed together in a group on one wall!) or re- |sell them somewhere down the line. Over the past three months or so I have |purchased around 200 or so of these travel posters, mostly from three distinct types |of sellers: | |1) Former travel agents (or their children) who have lots of these posters |2) Individuals who have stumbled on one or two of these |3) Isoldit type stores who received one or two of these from the #2 type above | |I purchased from around 75 different sellers. THEIR PACKING RANGED FROM |BARELY OK TO DREADFUL! There was not one who packed really well. LOTS of |them simply rolled the poster and put it loose in a triangular free priority tube, and in |lots of cases the ends of the posters became crinkled and/or the triangular tube |became slightly bent down the center, thus putting a crease down the middle of the |posters. | |There is no point in my putting in insurance claims, as the Post Office would declare |them poorly packed, and anyway I would feel guilty collecting insurance when it |WAS the fault of poor packaging. | |I also won't leave negatives, for I would surely get many retaliatory negatives. But |once feedback 2.0 is in place, these types of sellers will surely get low grades from |me (most of the posters were purely described, and many had undisclosed defects). | |I used to buy lots of posters on eBay (around 50 different purchases a week, and I |am sure many MoPo sellers remember that because I used to buy from them |regularly!) but I quit cold around 3 years ago, SPECIFICALLY over the crappy |packing and describing issues. | |I thought I would give buying another try, hoping things had improved over the past 3 |years, but they do not seem to have improved at all, at least not among sellers of |travel posters. | |I will suspend my buying until feedback 2.0 is in place and then I will only buy from |sellers who get good ratings (and who seem to sell enough that they should have |some idea of what they are doing). I KNOW that unknown sellers often have the very |best deals, but the risk of bad packaging and/or condition description is just more |than I enjoy dealing with (although I can well understand others not minding the risk). | |Thoughts? | |Bruce | | Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com | |___________________________________________________________________ | How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List | | Send a message addressed to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L | | The author of this message is solely responsible for its content. Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com ___________________________________________________________________ How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List Send a message addressed to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L The author of this message is solely responsible for its content.
