I have no clue how the economy is affecting the hobby, but I feel certain
there are three trends that have a larger effect on sales of poster dealers
and auctions:
1) There is such a HUGE amount of material being offered on a daily basis
that collectors very reasonably view all that is being offered and have far
less reason to buy "lesser" items (either "lesser" in terms of desirability,
condition, or both), since they can just save their money for the next day's
(or next week's) items, whether from the same seller or a different seller.
I can't believe anyone would argue that the prices of "lesser" items have
declined precipitously in the last few years.
2) The "changing tastes" that began 20 or so years ago has strongly
escalated. In the late 1980s, the only expensive items were from the 1920s
and 1930s, with a very few from the 1940s and 1950s. In the 1990s, posters
from the 1940s and 1950s came on very strong, and we saw a clear
"flattening" of prices of many 1920s and 1930s items. Now, in the 2000's we
are seeing the 1960s and 1970s coming on very strong, much of the 1940s and
1950s 'flattening" and a clear decline in all but the most popular (or rare
or beautiful) 1920s and 1930s items.
Richard Allen (the foremost poster collector ever) called this the
"rule of 30", meaning that people buy items for good money when they can
afford them, which is usually when they are in their forties, and they
almost always are most drawn to items from movies that came out when they
were a kid, which was often roughly 30 years before, so Richard was saying
that it took 30 years after they were first made for most posters to really
begin to appreciate in value.
I think the above "changing tastes" accounts for a lot of the
perception of whether prices are "up" or "down" (it depends on what genres
and decades you are looking at as to how you perceive it).
3) There are some dealers and auction houses who took advantage of the
strong market for movie posters in the early 1990s (when I first started the
Christie's auctions), and again in the early 2000s (when eBay really took
off) who sold posters in a deceptive manner (going for big profits in the
short term), and back then there was such a constant flow of new buyers that
sellers could get away with that kind of behavior, but now the number of new
collectors coming into the hobby has slowed quite a bit, and now many
collectors who were once "burned" by a seller refuse to deal with them
again, and those sellers may well find that THEIR business has slowed now
considerably for that reason.
I think all three of the above reasons have a far greater effect on dealer's
sales than the slow economy. Conversely, I think there has never been a
better time to be a new poster collector, as there is far more items for
sale than ever before, and, if one dodges the "hot items" that sell for
skyhigh prices, there are tons of items selling for bargain prices on a
daily basis.
Of course, if this recession (which the media refuses to recognize as
such) becomes any deeper, then maybe it WILL have a huge downward effect
on prices.
Bruce
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