yes Bruce, BLB's are also part of the historical lexicon of
collecting. As a matter of fact, BLB's and Pulps have the same
problem: only comic book collectors have an interest in them due to
the tie between the 3 hobbies.
But pulps are in worse shape than BLBs by virtue of % of issues
collected. There are something like 40,000 different pulp issues from
1895-1955 (not including most digest sized titles of the 1950s). Only
about 2000 of them are collected today and titles like Argosy, Blue
Book, Detective Fiction Weekly etc are hardly noticed except for
those trying to acquire specific authors. Most pulp collecting is
confined to Shadow, Doc Savage, Spider, Weird Tales, Black Mask,
Terror Tales etc. Even 95% of all Sci-Fi titles are dogs and things
like westerns are better used to keep your fireplace going
at least in BLBs there are very many with characters from comics.
But yes. all o fthese hobbies are on the way out. For younger
collectors, the most popular things will be video games in the
original boxes, and box art because like us, who collected comics &
posters etc because we had lots of fun with them as youngsters, their
generation is all about video.
At 02:09 PM 11/30/2008, Bruce Hershenson wrote:
Boy, you really are a ray of sunshine today! In your complete
dissing of all paper hobbies, and their inevitable doom (insert
maniacal laughter) you left out the deadest of all collectibles, the
Big Little Books. Find me a collector of those who is under 75 or so.
Bruce
P.S. I didn't much care for "My Side of the Mountain", but I loved
"The Other Side of the Mountain" and posters on both of these can be
had for a buck or two each, which is what makes this a fun hobby.
You can buy 30-40 year old posters from movies you liked for little
money, and what's wrong with that?
On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 3:50 PM, Richard Halegua Comic Art
<<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I've been saying for the past 3-4 years.. maybe longer .. that
digital displays are the direction theatres will be headed
first of all, printing, shipping and storing posters are an expense
that studio owners would love to eliminate. Not to mention the
employees needed for such a distribution network.
these employees need to inventory, request out of stock posters from
other warehouses, have to take those rolls of 50 and pull 1-5
posters to send out to individual theaters etc.
shipping by truck after printing and then individually to theaters
is a greater expense than printing them
also, if a poster has a mistake, it has to be reprinted etc.
a digital display can be controlled by one central location by the
studio - out of the hands of theatre owners - to maintain a
consistent promotion from the theatres in Westwood to those in
Montauk and all the way to Japan, India and Australia with great
ease. A simple program can be set up to change the language fonts
When the studio wants to change the campaign, all they have to do is
create it in the central computer & feed it - simultaneously all over the world
But then you go further. Digital displays can show trailers
intermingled with posters and can draw people who were just walking
past the theatre better than a static poster. Plus you can "gang
them up" creating ever larger displays with multiple digital panels.
How about driving into a mall & seeing 20 digital panels fitted
together to create an 8 foot by 20 foot display showing trailers
that can be seen across the parking lot. Literally an outdoor cinema
The benefits of digital displays for theatres are endless. You have
a single upfront cost and then you never ship anything to the
theatre again and the same system that is used to feed the displays
can also be used to feed the film itself for digital theatres. another savings
where does the hobby go?
well, it would be hard to say that it doesn't drop some, and
certainly newer collectors would be less likely
Look at the comics hobby. Marvel & DC publish fewer comics today
than they did during the 1940s. As a matter of fact, if you total up
all the comic books published and distributed for any month of 2008,
it is fewer issues than a single issue of Captain Marvel sold during
WW2. (during WW2, Captain Marvel sold 2 million copies @ month.
Current publishing by all companies is less than 1.5 million @month.
Another comic, Walt Disney's Comics & Stories had a print run as
high as 4 million for years from the 40s-50s) As a result of fewer
comic book readers (due to social changes- less people reading
anything), the comic book hobby is decreasing in size and has been
doing so for about 15 years.
The result is not the elimination of these hobbies, but serious
compression is indeed in the future. At some point Marvel & DC will
cease paper publication as will all newspapers and magazine. The
likely future is a mini-disc for a "reader" that you take wherever
you go, in addition to just reading online of course. When this
happens, millions of comics will devalue in a short period of time
(a few years). Fewer collectors means more unsold titles and
downsizing to just the most popular material for hardcore collectors
and historians. Superman comics will always be collected at some
level. the 1940s title Mystery Men will be a tiny niche for
historically oriented collectors only. The same will be for posters.
Younger people will stop buying posters. THat generation will have
digital displays so they can change whatever they want to show
Posters for the obvious titles will always sell. A poster after all
is the same as an "art print". so Frankenstein, Casablanca, Snow
White will always sell. Getting Gerties Garter however, or My Side
of the Mountain.. well they are hardly requested anyway. So the
hobby will compress as our generations die off, much like that
nearly forgotten hobby - pulp magazines
Rich
Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at
<http://www.filmfan.com/>www.filmfan.com
___________________________________________________________________
How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List
Send a message addressed to:
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[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.
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.
