Did you know that large theaters in big cities in the 1920s and 1930s almost never used the studio issued posters on their theater fronts (or in their lobbies)?
When I (Bruce) purchased my first movie posters and lobby cards WAY back in 1969 (from Tannar Miles, a legendary early Texas dealer of movie memorabilia, who is still alive and well!), I naturally assumed that those movie posters and lobby cards could have been displayed in ANY movie theater in the U.S., since it seemed only logical that they all used the same posters (after all, why set up a huge nationwide distribution system if all the theaters didn't use it?).
Of course, once I started to think about it, I remembered that the two movie theaters in my home town of Great Neck, New York only seemed to display one-sheets when I went there from the late 1950s through the early 1970s, but that might have only meant that some theaters only used some of the posters available, but that they all worked with the same group of posters made by the nationwide poster exchanges.
It wasn't until the very early 1980s, when I started collecting "exhibitor magazines" (special magazines only sent to theater owners) that I began to realize this just wasn't true! The leading exhibitor magazine was MOVING PICTURE WORLD and almost every issue from the late 1910s to the early 1930s (at least) has a great section called "Selling the Picture to the Public", which shows lots of images of theater fronts and theater lobbies (almost all from big theaters in big cities), and I quickly saw that they all only had displays they made themselves!
Now in some cases those home made displays incorporated studio issued posters into those displays, but usually they were mostly cut up and used in pieces. And LOTS of those home made displays were INCREDIBLY elaborate! For example, when it was a jungle picture, they might have lots of real plants and vines all over to create a 3D faux jungle, and they also made "deserts", "tropical islands", "jail cells", etc.
And they would often have mannequins incorporated in their displays, and sometimes the outdoor displays would be positively MASSIVE, sometimes covering the entire side of a multi-story building! But let me stress that I only saw this on good sized theaters, usually in big cities. When I would see images of smaller theaters (or ones that did not show movies on their first run), then those WOULD almost always have the studio issued posters and lobby cards on display.
What likely accounted for this? I have been lucky enough to have had several consignors who ran movie theaters in the 1940s, and they told me that labor (and materials) was incredibly cheap in the 1930s (especially during the Great Depression), and that movie theaters were very profitable at that time (just about everyone went to theaters almost every day, in those pre-TV days, especially because most theaters were air conditioned and most homes were not!).
So a theater owner could well afford the extra expense of really going the extra mile to make their theater front look super cool, and there was lots of reason to do so, since there was usually other theaters within a few block in a big city, and that great advertising might make people choose your theater over another one.
In the past few months we were lucky enough to have auctioned hundreds of candid photos of theater fronts and theater lobbies from the late 1930s and early 1940s. These came from an amazing scrapbook that was discovered, and sadly they are just about all sold now. But you can see these candid theater front photos (and a few others we had previously auctioned) by going to http://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/search/theater%2520front/tag/xtype%253A8x10%2520still/archive.html
And if anyone reading this has ANY candid photos showing theater fronts or theater lobbies, we would love to auction them (and as you can see from the above link, some have auctioned for over $100 each!). Go HERE to learn about consigning.
And I do have a Q: Why didn't theater owners collect/sell MPs yesteryear? As you point out, movies were a HUGE HUGE deal back then. You would assume everybody would have religiously saved/collected posters from the BIG movies like GWTW. But only a tiny fraction survived.
Unfortunately, books have non-adaptable font sizes and control of lighting is external. Add to that rapidly aging eyes as I approach 70. I could go large print editions, but many titles don't come that way, especially in paperback. The answer for me is a Kindle app on an 8" tablet. I can change fonts, backlight, background color quickly based on how tired my eyes are. I can store my whole library on a tablet, so I can go back and reference stuff or choose the book that suits me this minute.
What bothers me the most is that ebooks are not static. The copy you own may change, even after you download it. I've seen it happen. The other weak point is magazines. I have yet to see a magazine subscription that is well adapted to an ebook. Most simply take a page image and display it as a picture. Impossible to do any sort of search or text capture. Worse, it is near impossible to get any sort of zoom that allows you to easily read the page. Either the font is way too small or you are constantly panning back and forth on the page.
i know I've read this before; in your auctions you have the "house" icon next to listings that indicate a "featured" poster on your Main page.
What criteria determines which posters are chosen as "featured"?
How many do you normally rotate in an auction of something typical of a count of over 900?
Thanks.
Actually, you have NEVER read this before!
I am the one who "features" the items. Here is how I generally do it:
1) After the items have been live for two days, I feature the top 12 most expensive items to that point 2) After two more days, I add 8 more items, and remove ones from the first 12 that are no longer among the highest, so it is now the top 20 items 3) The morning the auctions end, I add everything that is not in the top 20 that is over $100
So some auctions have 20 featured items going into the close, and others have 50 or more items, depending on how many expensive items there are. And sometimes I forget to do one or more steps!
But given that you are the VERY FIRST person who has ever asked about this makes me wonder if ANYONE pays attention to an item being "featured"!
HAS lifetime guarantees on every item - IS eMoviePoster.com HAS unrestored and unenhanced images - IS eMoviePoster.com HAS 100% honest condition descriptions - IS eMoviePoster.com HAS auctions where the winner is the higher of two real bidders - IS eMoviePoster.com HAS up to SIXTEEN weeks of "Pay and Hold" to save a fortune on shipping - IS eMoviePoster.com HAS real customer service before, during and after EVERY auction, and answers all questions - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS 25% or 26% "buyers premiums" of any kind (but especially the dreadful "$29 or $49 minimum" ones) - NOT eMoviePoster.com HAS "reserves or starts over $1 - NOT eMoviePoster.com HAS hidden bidder IDs - NOT eMoviePoster.com HAS "nosebleed" shipping charges - NOT eMoviePoster.com HAS inadequate packaging - NOT eMoviePoster.com HAS no customer service to speak of, before, during and after any auction, and answers almost no questions - NOT eMoviePoster.com
Bruce HA have an option in their searches where you can see your entire bidding history. Just curious if that is something you could incorporate into your "My Bids" section. It would be interesting to see how much we have bid in total dollar amounts over the years.
As far as I know, being on that page (which almost no one goes to) and having the house icon is all that being "featured" means.
HAS lifetime guarantees on every item - IS eMoviePoster.com HAS unrestored and unenhanced images - IS eMoviePoster.com HAS 100% honest condition descriptions - IS eMoviePoster.com HAS auctions where the winner is the higher of two real bidders - IS eMoviePoster.com HAS up to SIXTEEN weeks of "Pay and Hold" to save a fortune on shipping - IS eMoviePoster.com HAS real customer service before, during and after EVERY auction, and answers all questions - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS 25% or 26% "buyers premiums" of any kind (but especially the dreadful "$29 or $49 minimum" ones) - NOT eMoviePoster.com HAS "reserves or starts over $1 - NOT eMoviePoster.com HAS hidden bidder IDs - NOT eMoviePoster.com HAS "nosebleed" shipping charges - NOT eMoviePoster.com HAS inadequate packaging - NOT eMoviePoster.com HAS no customer service to speak of, before, during and after any auction, and answers almost no questions - NOT eMoviePoster.com
Bruce HA have an option in their searches where you can see your entire bidding history. Just curious if that is something you could incorporate into your "My Bids" section. It would be interesting to see how much we have bid in total dollar amounts over the years.
That is part of the host site (not our site). We don't have control over their settings.
Having it this way, we can't see your bids, which we feel is of extreme value to bidders, who have often seen items they bid on magically zoom to their maximum "hidden" bid over and over on other sites.
HAS lifetime guarantees on every item - IS eMoviePoster.com HAS unrestored and unenhanced images - IS eMoviePoster.com HAS 100% honest condition descriptions - IS eMoviePoster.com HAS auctions where the winner is the higher of two real bidders - IS eMoviePoster.com HAS up to SIXTEEN weeks of "Pay and Hold" to save a fortune on shipping - IS eMoviePoster.com HAS real customer service before, during and after EVERY auction, and answers all questions - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS 25% or 26% "buyers premiums" of any kind (but especially the dreadful "$29 or $49 minimum" ones) - NOT eMoviePoster.com HAS "reserves or starts over $1 - NOT eMoviePoster.com HAS hidden bidder IDs - NOT eMoviePoster.com HAS "nosebleed" shipping charges - NOT eMoviePoster.com HAS inadequate packaging - NOT eMoviePoster.com HAS no customer service to speak of, before, during and after any auction, and answers almost no questions - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS lifetime guarantees on every item - IS eMoviePoster.com HAS unrestored and unenhanced images - IS eMoviePoster.com HAS 100% honest condition descriptions - IS eMoviePoster.com HAS auctions where the winner is the higher of two real bidders - IS eMoviePoster.com HAS up to SIXTEEN weeks of "Pay and Hold" to save a fortune on shipping - IS eMoviePoster.com HAS real customer service before, during and after EVERY auction, and answers all questions - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS 25% or 26% "buyers premiums" of any kind (but especially the dreadful "$29 or $49 minimum" ones) - NOT eMoviePoster.com HAS "reserves or starts over $1 - NOT eMoviePoster.com HAS hidden bidder IDs - NOT eMoviePoster.com HAS "nosebleed" shipping charges - NOT eMoviePoster.com HAS inadequate packaging - NOT eMoviePoster.com HAS no customer service to speak of, before, during and after any auction, and answers almost no questions - NOT eMoviePoster.com
I'm guessing if folks fail to pay they get hit with the ban hammer pretty quickly?
I still don't get this. WTF bid if you have no intention of paying.
Not saying it happens on EMP Ves, but surely some folks get caught up in the moment and bid away. Years ago when I sold things on local NZ auction sites, in the dying stages of the auction I'd get asked to remove the leading bid seconds before the end.
Bruce has said there have been a lot of people that haven't paid. I remember being outbid on a banner a while back then a couple of months later the same banner up for sale on EMP. It happens...that's life.
While bidders sometimes don't pay, it happens FAR less often than on other sites.
Why?
1) Most importantly, we ban the PERSON, not just the ID. On eBay and every other site I know of, a bad bidder has their ID blocked, and they simply open a new account using a different email address, and they are back in business. On our site, we track them every way possible, and we ban that PERSON from ever re-registering.
2) By getting banned, the bad bidder is cutting themselves off from a huge percentage of all the real auctions held on a yearly basis. Most come to regret their decision. If they are civil about it, I will look up how much we lost when we re-auctioned the items they did not pay for, and then we sometimes offer to let them back on if they pay what we lost when we re-auctioned the items.
3) Having "prank" bidders is incredibly unfair the the real bidders. We don't want ANYONE who will not honor every single bid they placed. When they say they "lost their head", we tell them they have to live with it, or not bid anymore. We want bidders to know the person bidding against them is "real" and that their bid will be honored or they will be banned.
4) We don't have the truly dreadful eBay mechanism where you can cancel your bid. People use that to cheat people. You enter a sky high bid, see what the other bidder's top bid was, and then cancel it, and then later bid just under the high bidder, to make them pay their max.
You can easily tell the auctions that have lots of bad bidders because lots of their items come back to auction over and over.
The bottom line is I do everything I can to protect honest bidders. And I used to be more lenient about letting bad bidders back on, but I found that a lot of them end up doing the exact same thing a second (or third time), so now I take a much harder line, and I know that our bad bidders account for well under 1% of the total bidders, and I have heard that many auctions have 10% to 25% bad bidders, which seems quite possible, given the massive number of repeat relisted items.
HAS lifetime guarantees on every item - IS eMoviePoster.com HAS unrestored and unenhanced images - IS eMoviePoster.com HAS 100% honest condition descriptions - IS eMoviePoster.com HAS auctions where the winner is the higher of two real bidders - IS eMoviePoster.com HAS up to SIXTEEN weeks of "Pay and Hold" to save a fortune on shipping - IS eMoviePoster.com HAS real customer service before, during and after EVERY auction, and answers all questions - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS 25% or 26% "buyers premiums" of any kind (but especially the dreadful "$29 or $49 minimum" ones) - NOT eMoviePoster.com HAS "reserves or starts over $1 - NOT eMoviePoster.com HAS hidden bidder IDs - NOT eMoviePoster.com HAS "nosebleed" shipping charges - NOT eMoviePoster.com HAS inadequate packaging - NOT eMoviePoster.com HAS no customer service to speak of, before, during and after any auction, and answers almost no questions - NOT eMoviePoster.com
Comments
It's not Nigel. I know him from somewhere.
Did you know that large theaters in big cities in the 1920s and 1930s almost never used the studio issued posters on their theater fronts (or in their lobbies)?
When I (Bruce) purchased my first movie posters and lobby cards WAY back in 1969 (from Tannar Miles, a legendary early Texas dealer of movie memorabilia, who is still alive and well!), I naturally assumed that those movie posters and lobby cards could have been displayed in ANY movie theater in the U.S., since it seemed only logical that they all used the same posters (after all, why set up a huge nationwide distribution system if all the theaters didn't use it?).Of course, once I started to think about it, I remembered that the two movie theaters in my home town of Great Neck, New York only seemed to display one-sheets when I went there from the late 1950s through the early 1970s, but that might have only meant that some theaters only used some of the posters available, but that they all worked with the same group of posters made by the nationwide poster exchanges.
It wasn't until the very early 1980s, when I started collecting "exhibitor magazines" (special magazines only sent to theater owners) that I began to realize this just wasn't true! The leading exhibitor magazine was MOVING PICTURE WORLD and almost every issue from the late 1910s to the early 1930s (at least) has a great section called "Selling the Picture to the Public", which shows lots of images of theater fronts and theater lobbies (almost all from big theaters in big cities), and I quickly saw that they all only had displays they made themselves!
Now in some cases those home made displays incorporated studio issued posters into those displays, but usually they were mostly cut up and used in pieces. And LOTS of those home made displays were INCREDIBLY elaborate! For example, when it was a jungle picture, they might have lots of real plants and vines all over to create a 3D faux jungle, and they also made "deserts", "tropical islands", "jail cells", etc.
And they would often have mannequins incorporated in their displays, and sometimes the outdoor displays would be positively MASSIVE, sometimes covering the entire side of a multi-story building! But let me stress that I only saw this on good sized theaters, usually in big cities. When I would see images of smaller theaters (or ones that did not show movies on their first run), then those WOULD almost always have the studio issued posters and lobby cards on display.
What likely accounted for this? I have been lucky enough to have had several consignors who ran movie theaters in the 1940s, and they told me that labor (and materials) was incredibly cheap in the 1930s (especially during the Great Depression), and that movie theaters were very profitable at that time (just about everyone went to theaters almost every day, in those pre-TV days, especially because most theaters were air conditioned and most homes were not!).
So a theater owner could well afford the extra expense of really going the extra mile to make their theater front look super cool, and there was lots of reason to do so, since there was usually other theaters within a few block in a big city, and that great advertising might make people choose your theater over another one.
In the past few months we were lucky enough to have auctioned hundreds of candid photos of theater fronts and theater lobbies from the late 1930s and early 1940s. These came from an amazing scrapbook that was discovered, and sadly they are just about all sold now. But you can see these candid theater front photos (and a few others we had previously auctioned) by going to http://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/search/theater%2520front/tag/xtype%253A8x10%2520still/archive.html
And if anyone reading this has ANY candid photos showing theater fronts or theater lobbies, we would love to auction them (and as you can see from the above link, some have auctioned for over $100 each!). Go HERE to learn about consigning.
*****
I could go large print editions, but many titles don't come that way, especially in paperback. The answer for me is a Kindle app on an 8" tablet. I can change fonts, backlight, background color quickly based on how tired my eyes are. I can store my whole library on a tablet, so I can go back and reference stuff or choose the book that suits me this minute.
What bothers me the most is that ebooks are not static. The copy you own may change, even after you download it. I've seen it happen. The other weak point is magazines. I have yet to see a magazine subscription that is well adapted to an ebook. Most simply take a page image and display it as a picture. Impossible to do any sort of search or text capture. Worse, it is near impossible to get any sort of zoom that allows you to easily read the page. Either the font is way too small or you are constantly panning back and forth on the page.
i know I've read this before; in your auctions you have the "house" icon next to listings that indicate a "featured" poster on your Main page.
What criteria determines which posters are chosen as "featured"?
How many do you normally rotate in an auction of something typical of a count of over 900?
Thanks.
1) After the items have been live for two days, I feature the top 12 most expensive items to that point
2) After two more days, I add 8 more items, and remove ones from the first 12 that are no longer among the highest, so it is now the top 20 items
3) The morning the auctions end, I add everything that is not in the top 20 that is over $100
So some auctions have 20 featured items going into the close, and others have 50 or more items, depending on how many expensive items there are. And sometimes I forget to do one or more steps!
HAS unrestored and unenhanced images - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS 100% honest condition descriptions - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS auctions where the winner is the higher of two real bidders - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS up to SIXTEEN weeks of "Pay and Hold" to save a fortune on shipping - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS real customer service before, during and after EVERY auction, and answers all questions - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS 25% or 26% "buyers premiums" of any kind (but especially the dreadful "$29 or $49 minimum" ones) - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS "reserves or starts over $1 - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS hidden bidder IDs - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS "nosebleed" shipping charges - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS inadequate packaging - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS no customer service to speak of, before, during and after any auction, and answers almost no questions - NOT eMoviePoster.com
Actually, what I meant is I've read on your site that the "house" meant it was a "featured" item on your site.
Interesting and fluid way to identify a "featured" item.
Thanks for the explanation.
HA have an option in their searches where you can see your entire bidding history. Just curious if that is something you could incorporate into your "My Bids" section. It would be interesting to see how much we have bid in total dollar amounts over the years.
As far as I know, being on that page (which almost no one goes to) and having the house icon is all that being "featured" means.
HAS unrestored and unenhanced images - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS 100% honest condition descriptions - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS auctions where the winner is the higher of two real bidders - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS up to SIXTEEN weeks of "Pay and Hold" to save a fortune on shipping - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS real customer service before, during and after EVERY auction, and answers all questions - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS 25% or 26% "buyers premiums" of any kind (but especially the dreadful "$29 or $49 minimum" ones) - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS "reserves or starts over $1 - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS hidden bidder IDs - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS "nosebleed" shipping charges - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS inadequate packaging - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS no customer service to speak of, before, during and after any auction, and answers almost no questions - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS unrestored and unenhanced images - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS 100% honest condition descriptions - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS auctions where the winner is the higher of two real bidders - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS up to SIXTEEN weeks of "Pay and Hold" to save a fortune on shipping - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS real customer service before, during and after EVERY auction, and answers all questions - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS 25% or 26% "buyers premiums" of any kind (but especially the dreadful "$29 or $49 minimum" ones) - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS "reserves or starts over $1 - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS hidden bidder IDs - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS "nosebleed" shipping charges - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS inadequate packaging - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS no customer service to speak of, before, during and after any auction, and answers almost no questions - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS unrestored and unenhanced images - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS 100% honest condition descriptions - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS auctions where the winner is the higher of two real bidders - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS up to SIXTEEN weeks of "Pay and Hold" to save a fortune on shipping - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS real customer service before, during and after EVERY auction, and answers all questions - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS 25% or 26% "buyers premiums" of any kind (but especially the dreadful "$29 or $49 minimum" ones) - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS "reserves or starts over $1 - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS hidden bidder IDs - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS "nosebleed" shipping charges - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS inadequate packaging - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS no customer service to speak of, before, during and after any auction, and answers almost no questions - NOT eMoviePoster.com
1) Most importantly, we ban the PERSON, not just the ID. On eBay and every other site I know of, a bad bidder has their ID blocked, and they simply open a new account using a different email address, and they are back in business. On our site, we track them every way possible, and we ban that PERSON from ever re-registering.
You can easily tell the auctions that have lots of bad bidders because lots of their items come back to auction over and over.
The bottom line is I do everything I can to protect honest bidders. And I used to be more lenient about letting bad bidders back on, but I found that a lot of them end up doing the exact same thing a second (or third time), so now I take a much harder line, and I know that our bad bidders account for well under 1% of the total bidders, and I have heard that many auctions have 10% to 25% bad bidders, which seems quite possible, given the massive number of repeat relisted items.
HAS unrestored and unenhanced images - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS 100% honest condition descriptions - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS auctions where the winner is the higher of two real bidders - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS up to SIXTEEN weeks of "Pay and Hold" to save a fortune on shipping - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS real customer service before, during and after EVERY auction, and answers all questions - IS eMoviePoster.com
HAS 25% or 26% "buyers premiums" of any kind (but especially the dreadful "$29 or $49 minimum" ones) - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS "reserves or starts over $1 - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS hidden bidder IDs - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS "nosebleed" shipping charges - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS inadequate packaging - NOT eMoviePoster.com
HAS no customer service to speak of, before, during and after any auction, and answers almost no questions - NOT eMoviePoster.com