I just read the string of posts since I posted mine two days ago. Thanks for
the public comments from Jeff Potokar and Phillipp Kainbacher - (and from Bruce
H. via Jeff) - and from others who privately wrote me about this.
And Phillipp, congratulations for getting a happy resolution from Grey. He's a
good man. -d.
P.S. - As for the rolled Third Man poster being offered at Bidll - what stands
out in Bruce H.'s comments - is his opinion that a rolled (vs. folded) 1949
international one-sheet - seems unusual. I will say the colors and detail in
the Bidll poster are more vivid than the re-issue 1950s poster I bought in 2003
that was mistakenly represented as original. I think if a buyer likes the
image and can live with everything else about it, it's still a fine poster from
a great movie. (See web-hosted images again below to compare.)
The Third Man 1950s international re-issue one-sheet, Heritage, November 2003:
The Third Man (?) international one-sheet, Bidll, June 2015:
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2015 10:39:11 PST
From: 00000015e579331a-dmarc-requ...@listserv.american.edu
Subject: Re: My history of bad luck chasing an original "Third Man (1949)."
To: MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU
Yes Jeff from today's conversation.
Sent from my iPhone
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2015 21:56:35 -0700
From: jpotok...@ca.rr.com
Subject: Re: My history of bad luck chasing an original "Third Man (1949)."
To: MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU
Was that offered refund a result of this 2015 conversation, Phillipp?
Good for you, if so. That's what discussion and collecting is all about.
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2015 20:41:38 -0700
From: 00000015e579331a-dmarc-requ...@listserv.american.edu
Subject: Re: My history of bad luck chasing an original "Third Man (1949)."
To: MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU
I would like to inform that Grey has immediately offered to refund the money
for the Third Man poster. I have been dealing with Grey since day one of his
auctions buying and selling posters.
Philipp
Sent from my iPhone
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2015 12:45:54 -0700
From: jpotok...@ca.rr.com
Subject: Re: [FA] ULTRA Rare English One Sheet - The Third Man (1949)
To: MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU
I wrote to Bruce to ask his thoughts on this poster and discussion. He wrote me
back and also said I could post his reply to MOPO:
Jeff
"I personally think it is very likely that it is from 1955 or so.
Here is why:
IMDb
only lists a handful of films from Lion International. But because we
have auctioned a zillion English one-sheets, WE know that there are at
least 92 from 1955 on. There is not ONE that is from before 1955 other
than the disputed Third Man poster. 36 of the 92 are from exactly 1955
to 1959. When you combine this with the stuff MoPo members found online,
I think that is pretty definitive.
In
addition, there is the issue of the poster being unfolded. Again, I
have sold a zillion English one-sheets, and the ONLY other one that was
unfolded was the African Queen re-release, which is surprisingly similar
to the Third Man re-release, because it has a very similar image to the
English original, except it is not as finely detailed, and it has been
found unfolded, but it has no printer information on it (unlike the
Third Man poster in question).
I
think I would have an even more definite opinion if I saw this poster
in person. I know that studios used the same type paper for a number of
years, and when they changed, they changed for all their printing. That
is how you can pinpoint a poster to a specific handful of years, or a
decade. The English one-sheets I have handled have remarkably similar
paper. If this poster had paper that was at all different, that would be
even more reason to be sure it was not from the same year.
Put
it all together, and I think you certainly have far more than a
reasonable doubt, and I would certainly auction this poster as "undated,
likely a mid-1950s re-release, likely for the international
distribution". There is also re-release one-sheet which is very similar
to the African Queen one (no printing on the bottom), and I would think
both that and the African Queen are from the late 1950s or early 1960s.
The
reason the poster was entered incorrectly in our database was that we
never auctioned it. It is one of the tens of thousands of posters that
Richard Allen owned and photographed when amassing his archive. When
those were put online, some mistakes crept in, and this is one of them. I
have corrected it to match what I wrote above.
Finally,
as David Kusumoto noted, we DID incorrectly auction a late 1950s
re-release as original in one of our Christie's auctions. It does NOT
appear in our database at all. WHY? Because the buyer contacted us ten
years later and complained that we made a mistake, and we fully refunded
him, so it can't be in our database, because it was not original, and
we do not want to mislead people into thinking a reissue sold for that
price. We took a huge loss on that, but that is just part of our
"lifetime guarantee".
Feel free to post this on MoPo.
Thanks,Bruce"
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2015 11:48:53 -0700
From: jpotok...@ca.rr.com
Subject: Re: My history of bad luck chasing an original "Third Man (1949)."
To: MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU
So when there has been this kind of listing error, and something has sold
because it was said to be an original release and later turns out to be a RR,
has HA never done anything/reached out to winning
bidders who were misinformed? (More so on "big ticket" items, especially, but
also important when anything is not what it was presented to be).
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2015 11:37:59 AM PST
From: 00000015e579331a-dmarc-requ...@listserv.american.edu
Subject: Re: My history of bad luck chasing an original "Third Man (1949)."
To: MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU
by the way I was one highest bidder below of the Third Man original release
poster from Heritage in 2006....
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2015 11:33:44 AM PST
From: 00000015e579331a-dmarc-requ...@listserv.american.edu
Subject: Re: My history of bad luck chasing an original "Third Man (1949)."
To: MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU
David....I was the person winning the Third Man from Heritage in November
2004...my good the times does go fast....I paid the price thinking that I get a
low price based on the "original" Third Man poster David was winning a year
earlier....Nobody told me that Davids copy was a re-release poster....certainly
a bad day with Heritage....really bad considering everything...I would have
never bid so high knowing that the poster is a re-release poster....I believe
that David and myself are on the same boat....we both love the film but got
really mis-informed of the poster....this was a domino effect....really
bad...bad bad....Philipp
Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2015 09:49:49 -0700
From: jpotok...@ca.rr.com
Subject: Re: My history of bad luck chasing an original "Third Man (1949)."
To: MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU
A Great write up, David... as always.
Kudos!
Jeff
Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2015 16:07:13 -0700
From: davidmkusum...@hotmail.com
Subject: My history of bad luck chasing an original "Third Man (1949)."
To: MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU
* After reading mostly dealer posts for five straight days, here are my
observations for consumers. Unless indicated, the following are OPINIONS, not
facts. They shed no additional information other than to provide my own
history - then vs. now - about this title. (Again, it's too bad Bruce
Hershenson quit MOPO - as his views would have been invaluable as NO ONE has
handled more movie paper - nor owns a titanic collection of press books from
around the world than he.)
1. My "opinion" is Bidll's "The Third Man" is an international one-sheet of
"some kind" - that was never intended for display in the U.K. Anything else is
possible, but that's where I fall if I were interested in buying it.
Parenthetically, among the many points and markers debated as to first issue or
re-issue and international vs. domestic, I find it intriguing that the seller -
who strikes me as being very conscientious - resides in New Zealand yet has
little provenance information about how and where this apparently rolled poster
was acquired as well as other details such as paper texture, etc. This may not
be "empirically" relevant to this poster compared to printed markers, but in my
view, its geographic location and "how it feels" is circumstantially relevant
to the debate of national vs. international, original or re-issue.
2. As some know, I used to collect only COUNTRY-OF-ORIGIN DOMESTIC ISSUE
posters, a common practice among collectors of country-of-origin first edition
books. A country of origin "The Third Man" poster was once at the top of my
list of wants.
3. Today, if I stuck to my old narrow (minded) preferences, I'd only buy a
first issue BQ of "Third Man." While I love VINTAGE international one-sheets or
daybills - for "The Third Man," I won't them. To put it bluntly, I was burned
by a major auction house (Heritage) - by its mis-representation of this title
way back in 2003. Heritage's actions were NOT intentional - and to be fair - I
was frankly ignorant about what Helmut rightly says about the general "rule" -
but NOT the "law" - that British one-sheets were predominantly targeted for
international markets. And for some hare-brained reason (at the time) - I
thought the U.K. one-sheet format was "common" enough to be displayed
sporadically domestically, though not favored compared to the more popular quad.
* On 20 November
2003, I bought a British RE-ISSUE one-sheet from Heritage to "The Third Man"
for
$1725 - that Heritage mis-represented as a 1949 first U.K. issue. The original
2003 description has not changed hence you can still see its mistake at the
link below. Note how there is no information about it being a "reissue" of any
kind; Heritage simply declares it as "original" and labels its date to 1949:
http://comics.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=808&lotNo=1119
Image 1 of 5 (Heritage, November 2003, $1725):
* I did NOT learn until one year later - November 2004 - that Heritage
misrepresented the poster I bought for $1725 as a 1949 "original" when it was
in fact a 1950s re-issue. Sure, I
could have raised hell but did not, out of deference to my friendship with Grey
- but just as important - I did not because of the intimidating legal wording
in Heritage's terms and conditions about its responsibility for errors - which
implied no returns accepted - or - at the very least, an unwritten
"statute of limitations" to resolve disputes.
* So in November 2004 - when Heritage sold ANOTHER 1950s re-issue - but this
time, correctly identified it as a re-issue, it fetched $1150. This was the
date of my discovery - that what I bought the year before - had been
misrepresented by Heritage. Frankly, "Buyer Beware" didn't enter my mind in
2003 with Heritage, even though it was new to the movie poster auction scene.
http://movieposters.ha.com/itm/film-noir/the-third-man-british-lion-film-1949-/a/607-19401.s
Image 2 of 5 (Heritage, November 2004, $1150):
* I grumbled but didn't want to cause a scene because I like Grey. I kept the
re-issue poster I bought in November 2003 for four years.
* By March 2006, Heritage "apparently" got it right. I say
"apparently" because there have been legitimate questions in the debate about
originals vs. re-issues in
recent days on MoPo. The example below was represented as a genuine U.K. 1949
original and it sold for $5750:
http://movieposters.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=633&lotNo=28253
Image 3 of 5 (Heritage, March 2006, $5750):
* In 2007, after I decided to leave hard core poster collecting, I consigned my
bogus $1725 "original issue Third Man" poster that I bought from Heritage in
November 2003 - seen in image 1 of 5 above - with a batch of posters to
eMoviePoster on 11 December 2007 - properly identifying "The Third Man" poster
I bought in 2003 as a re-issue. (See eMoviePoster's image of my Heritage
poster below - the colors display more accurately - but this is the EXACT
poster I bought in image 1 of 5 above, as noted by a one-of-a-kind collector's
defect - a white spot on the top right margin above the "L" in Selznick.)
Properly identified, this EXACT poster - mis-represented as "original" in 2003
- but properly identified by eMoviePoster in 2007 - fetched $362.
http://www.emovieposter.com/gallery/inc/archive_image.php?id=10744885
Image 4 of 5 (eMoviePoster, December 2007, $362):
* Then, to make things humorous - just three months later - Bruce's December
2007 buyer of the re-issue poster I bought from Heritage in 2003 - flipped it
BACK to Heritage! On 11 March 2008 - Heritage
took the same $1725 poster it mis-represented as "original" in 2003 - this time
correctly identifying it as a re-issue - and it sold to another buyer for $478.
See Heritage's image below, noting the same distinctive collector's defect on
the top right margin above the "L" in Selznick.
http://movieposters.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=693&lotNo=64326
Image 5 of 5 (Heritage, March 2008, $478):
* Now, some of you high-roller dealers might argue that the $1725 I paid back
in 2003 for this mis-represented poster - is not a big deal in relation to my
net take after I sold it with proper identifiers via eMoviePoster for $362 in
December 2007 - or even had I chosen Heritage to sell it for $478 three months
later in March 2008. But this was not small change to me. Some might also say
I should have immediately brought this to Heritage's attention - even 12 months
after November 2003. But the correct info about what I bought from Heritage
was hardly "immediate" and felt unfair to grouse about. Heritage does not
offer a lifetime guarantee - though it does offer a reasonable window to
correct its own mistakes.
* However, what follows may underscore the limits of Grey's power back in 2003
when movie posters were a new division at Heritage - and when one of the
chiefs, Jim Halperin told me in New York that he envisioned posters to be a fun
"niche" and not a profit leader. NO ONE from Dallas EVER "came back" to me -
neither proactive nor reactive to correct its mistake - nor did Heritage
personally acknowledge what happened to me, despite obviously learning its own
mistake a year later when it listed a second "The Third Man" poster correctly.
Again, look at Heritage's written description and image of what I bought for
$1725 in November 2003...
http://comics.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=808&lotNo=1119
...vs. Heritage's written description and image of what a second buyer bought -
armed with a corrected information - for $1150 in November 2004:
http://movieposters.ha.com/itm/film-noir/the-third-man-british-lion-film-1949-/a/607-19401.s
* People make mistakes and admit them, no foul there. But what happened places
a high relief
on when a firm PROACTIVELY corrects
mistakes, however rare - no matter how much time has passed
since they were made. Years later, when I told Bruce Hershenson about this in
the context of selling my "re-issue," he noted that he himself had made the
same mistake about 15 years ago, that it wasn't discovered until years later -
but that he contacted his buyer and took about a $1,000+ loss, refunding the
money on the basis that while people make mistakes, the buyer did nothing wrong
and would have taken a loss for ignorance - and might lose confidence in
eMoviePoster as a future buyer basing choices on improperly represented goods.
* So I think Jeff P. brings up a salient point, that is, if average consumers
have a say about buying collectibles whose origin is unclear. Such things
should, in my view, be PROACTIVELY disclosed. Whether you are a dealer in a
buyer's role or an end user - it IS significant when anyone offers you a
"lifetime guarantee." But it's only as good as
the merchant who offers it, your trust in that merchant - and your perception
of how long that merchant will be in business to honor it. Naturally, such
guarantees are too risky for most retailers, accounting for wear and tear and
the potential for abuse. And indeed, lifetime guarantees feel non-existent in
the collectibles "industry."
* Years ago, when I asked Bruce Hershenson about this - he said among the
obvious reasons for offering lifetime guarantees - besides boosting buyer
confidence ENORMOUSLY - is this: Despite his prominence in collectibles, if
his company makes a mistake, he doesn't have the resources of a Sotheby's or
Christie's or Bonham's or Heritage - to be battered with monthly lawsuits from
disgruntled
customers. A check of Google of claims against the major houses bears this
out. Thus for him and perhaps for him only - this is a good business policy to
embrace - and feels compatible with a high-volume, Amazon-like, "customer
first" ideology - that goes further in that it is marketed as having no statute
of limitations nor expiration date. Anything discovered to be misrepresented,
no matter how long after a sale, is proactively corrected. If you're a
consumer or a dealer buying from him - whether you disagree with methods or
personality or other intangibles, this is supremely comforting.
* In sum, specific to Bidll's "The Third Man," I'm glad we're all talking about
what it may or may not be - because no lifetime guarantee is being offered for
a high-ticket item. I'm sorry I can't add anything more to reveal its origin,
hence I wish Bruce would proffer an opinion even though my story illustrates my
troubled history with this title and why I won't buy it unless it's a BQ. And
while the wisdom of offering lifetime returns for posters is a discussion for
another day, I think the seller has been wise making adjustments accordingly.
Bruce himself uses BLUNT English that works when doubt exists, e.g., he'll
write, "please don't bid unless you're satisfied with our uncertainty about
this poster's origins" - and/or - "please don't bid unless you can live with
our condition grade and all defects as described." That's more than fair, amid
a guarantee he offers that few can afford offering without tacking on an
expiration date. And to be fair, I know if I was a dealer, I could never offer
a lifetime guarantee. Retailers frown but all customers applaud. More power
to him and to people like him. -d.
Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2015 06:39:18 +1000
From: shadow....@gmail.com
Subject: Re: [FA] ULTRA Rare English One Sheet - The Third Man (1949)
To: MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU
Really? Is this about what EMP does when they discover they've made
another mistake with the dating a poster they've sold or is it about
dating a poster being offered for sale?
What does HA do? What if the buyer on EMP has moved? What if the
buyer on eBay is not a collector, they're just a buyer of something
they like and never again hangs round the darkened hallways of movie
poster collector clubs? What if this poster never made the public
forum and therefore the miss-dated posters sold by EMP & HA and
others are never discovered? Does that make those purchases less
fortunate?
It really doesn't matter, the point is, despite your remarks the
seller is a genuine collector who did make every reasonable
attempt to correctly identify the poster and based on that he has
listed the poster on BIDLL here. I
have been keeping him abreast of the some expert thoughts from here
about the poster. However based on all the comments thus far, it
does appear to be an original print that was bound for the overseas
markets; I have also had this comment from a old time, some would
say, expert UK collector (who cannot post to MoPo) but has been
following the conversations and has this to say [some edit].
Helmut had it about
right, but the problem is not all copies were printed at the
same printers, quite often posters were subbed out. So it's
likely the overseas ones were printed at a different depot... I
think Stafford's had 3. and If they were very busy, a complete
other outfit would do the work.
The poster on {BIDLL} is
a first release 1sht for overseas. These were sometimes printed
in the UK, and sometimes abroad. 1shts were used in the UK, but
95% of the time were for the colonies. there was also different
artworks for the same artwork, so you can see sometimes slight
differences. This was due to the unions to keep British artists
working. They even copied US artwork for use in the UK. it gets
a bit complicated, but this is why there is sometimes slight
differences.
David
Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2015 09:49:24 -0700
From: jpotok...@ca.rr.com
Subject: Re: [FA] ULTRA Rare English One Sheet - The Third Man (1949)
To: MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU
The other idea, too, is this.
What if this poster is sold as a first release and is later found to be a later
RR? This seller is asking for a good amount of coinage for it, as a BIN. Would
this seller refund the winning bidder or buyer, if it was worth much less than
he sold it for, because it was found (some time down the road) to be a later
RR?
EMP would offer that option, by contacting the new owner and offering his/her
$$ back; ebay has buyer protection, where a buyer/winning bidder could get a
full refund if an item isn't as described.
At the end of the day, it's more about protecting both seller and buyer,
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