Bulletins for April - June 2002


June 28,2002

DEALER AND COLLECTOR ALERT

We have been alerted to a major problem developing for poster collectors. Anyone that ships posters through the Post Office needs to read this special report on the installation of new 'irradiation' equipment. For the details ...click here

ed

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June 27, 2002

This week has been frantic for a number of reasons. First because it's the deadline week for our article in Movie Collectors World for next month. Next because of the preparation of the Fantastic Heritage Auction coming up July 4th weekend in Rosemont, Ill. with some fantastic posters (they're listed in the sponsors section on the Heritage dealers page.) But lastly and most importantly, I've been working on a problem that is a major concern to ANY poster dealer or collector that ships through the post office. We'll be making an announcement as soon as we finish confirming a little more info.

You may notice that we're starting to change some of the layouts and adding a lot more material. We're turning on a new section dealing with 'Preservation'. Right now it's under the article section but that'll be changing this weekend. A lot of new additions and changes are in the process so if it seems a little chaotic......well it is......

later

ed

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June 19, 2002

I'm getting ready to send out the monthly newsletter and thought I better bring the bulletin board up to date at the same time..

First, we want to welcome another sponsor to our fast growing family(yeah!!!). Heritage Auctions is our very first auction house to come onboard!!!
Our first auction is coming up the July 4th weekend so you'll see a whole pile of great pieces in the movie section with their name on it!! You can click on their name to go to their 'dealer page' and see a list of what they have on site. So be sure and check out list ... (and there's no extra charge for drooling:)

To bring you up to date on our confrontation with the framing industry... we've almost finished our update on the 'framing article' with a special section 'For Framers Only' including framers charts to help them recognize our collectibles from regular commercial posters. I'm still rewording the checklist for collectors to have to take to their framers..

I just finished putting on our last article from 'Movie Collectors World' entitled 'Evolution and Degeneration of the One Sheet'. You can get to it from the 'Index' under 'Articles'

In the last couple of weeks, I've added over 300 movie pages (my fingers are about 1/2 inch shorter:) and you'll notice I'm trying to start a lot more filling in the NSS numbers. We have about 1200 NSS numbers in our database. We will be adding a section on them when we get a few more. When you have extra time.... take a look at your posters and write down the NSS numbers and title of the movie and send them to me to add in our database. Send to me at:

edp@LearnAboutMoviePosters.com

If you're not getting our monthly newsletter... you can send me an email at the same address and I'll add you to our list...

Well, back to work......

ed

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June 8, 2002

A lot of stuff going on that we want to bring you up to date on..

First we wanted to make a special notice !!!!!
Since we officially opened LearnAbout.... in January of 2001, our first year we just skated over the 100,000 hits mark....
BUT THIS WEEK WE WENT OVER THE 2ND 100,000 MARK IN A LITTLE OVER 5 MONTHS..
We wanted to give a SPECIAL THANKS for the overwhelming support...In addition, LearnAbout.. had visitors from over 75 different countries....giving us more reasons to move to a more international position.

we want to welcome another sponsor to our fast growing family(yeah!!!). Long time dealer Kirby McDaniel at MovieArt has joined us. Kirby has a great selection of vintage posters to drool over PLUS he specializes in large paper which is hard to come by. I love the large paper because is usually has the BEST artwork of that particular release (mainly because they have the room to put it on) Anyway, we'll be adding a lot of his stuff on that you'll be able to see on his Sponsors' dealer page and through the Movie Section or check out his website or even call him at 512-479-6680.

Next you might have noticed on the front page that we're trying to get the Star Wars Poster Archive back up and have created a special entrance for Star Wars fans. Because of so many fakes and problems, we've turned on the American section of Stars Wars, Empire and Return including breakdowns and fake reports and will be adding more soon. There's so much to add there that it will take a while to get to a lot of the foreign and promotional material......But we'll get it on as soon as we can.      
When you go thru the front page entrance, you'll see some special reports and articles being added (notice the fan art section with some great stuff) and you've got to listen to the Star Wars song I found on the bottom right corner of the entrance page. Let me know what you think:)

OK..... gossip times over so back to work:)

ed

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June 6,2002

You might notice on the navbar that we've added a new section. It's called 'Cool Stuff'. This is links that we like and thought you might also. The difference is that if you like them, they help support us at the same time..... how can you beat that. there's some great stuff there....excuse me 'cool stuff' there and we'll be adding a couple of others soon

ed

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June 3, 2002

Where did the month go???? It just seems to fly by.
We went over 2000 pages on the site this month. (yeah!!) We also posted over 400 movie pages with photos during May and added 11 articles and revamped several more. The problem is, in our new movie section, we have almost 50,000 movies listed so 400 is just a drop in the bucket:( Our target is 500 movie pages a month so we fell a little short this past month so we'll have to push a little harder. We will be trying to work on the Silent section a lot more in the upcoming month so be watching if that's one of your areas.

I pulled the end of the month reports and WOW, you wouldn't believe the amount of Non US visitors we had to the site last month. Anyone that may be interested, email me and I'll be glad to show you.... I didn't know they had that many countries:)

Please watch our dealers and sponsors lists to as we add them, these dealers are helping to keep LAMP a free reference site so check out their items when possible.

well, back to the poster pile.......

ed

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May 30, 2002

I would like to make everyone aware of an interesting development in the last few days. Everyone who's been in the hobby very long knows Sue Heim at Hollywood Poster Frame and has probably read her article here on LearnAbout..

It seems someone from the framing community found Sue's article and didn't like it. So he spread it thru the framers grapevine and I've been bombarded with questions.

yes, it's true that we're very critical of most framers mainly because,no matter how well intentioned, they blindly dry-mount,seal, mat and proceed to frame movie art to regular art standards which normally either ruins the piece or greatly diminishes it's value in our hobby.

I would like to submit to you typical email from a well meaning framer as well as my response:

'Dear EDP

I have just skimmed your web site home page: I will return to it when I have more time.
I strongly suggest that your website is guilty of the very thing that it criticizes others for having done, and I question the credibility of the writer.
Much of the information that it provides is rife with inaccuracies, and seems to be based upon extrapolations from an extremely limited knowledge base.
I perceive that although the writer may be well-intentioned, I also perceive that the writer suffers from a gross shortage of sound technical background. I suggest that the writer may have an agenda other than what is presented in the website.
Even though your web page slams the framing industry, I suggest that the writer may well learn more about the conservation and preservation of paper artifacts from framers than from the sources of information previously employed.
I extend an invitation to you, to join The Picture Framers Grumble. Perhaps you will see a side of the picture framing industry you did not know existed.
Sincerely
OTC

And FYI, here's my reply

Dear OTC,
How can you accuse my website of ANYTHING when you've read one page out of more than 2000. And the one page was NOT written by me but since it's not my
area it's written by one of the most respected collectors and framers in our industry.
Normally I take great interest from anyone who sends in a correction email BUT from your writing, 'I perceive' that you wouldn't know a double crown from a foglio, let alone the in's and out's of movie poster collecting.
Uninformed poster framers like yourself are feared in our hobby and we try to spread the word to every beginner that we can to stay away.
I did a reverse link back to the Grumble yesterday just to see what it was. I joined , for whatever good it may do. (If you would check YOUR Grumble instead of trying to preach to me you would see)I was hoping to get across
some of the problems that our hobby has with framers. Even though I was pleasantly surprised at most of the responses that I received, I doubt that it will do any good.
You may have more technical knowledge of paper conservation, but your lack of knowledge about our hobby negates any benefit of it. We would rather STAY
with our less technical framers for the simple fact that they don't RUIN 90% of the pieces they touch just from sheer lack of knowledge of what we require.
When you have legitimate comments that are of benefit to US as poster collectors and not just the concept of uninformed (but technically sound) FRAMERS, I'll be more than happy to listen.
edp

I'll keep you posted on any outcome.

ed

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May 22, 2002

You'll notice we're beginning to turn on the framework for several new lists, documentaries, shorts, and x-rated. We have also been quietly gathering NSS numbers for our coming list on it, but we've started posting NSS numbers under some of the titles as we post the movies. We hope to fill in as many as possible. If anyone has any lists of NSS numbers, please send them (with the associated title, not JUST the numbers) and help us fill them in.

Newsletter announcement

To help streamline our announcements, instead of emailing out announcments, we will be sending out a monthly newsletter. This is designed to be a little more in depth than the bulletin board with what's going on behind the scenes. If you would like to receive our newsletter, just click here and add your email address that you want the newsletter sent to. I have also put this announcement in the 'contact us' section.

For those dealers that invited us to come take photos from their site, my daughter has started the gathering so you'll be seeing your name soon as a 'courtesy of....' tag. Thanks for this help.

back to the grind....

ed

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May 16, 2002

We want to welcome 2 more sponsors to our rapidly expanding family(yeah!!!). First is Terry at Quadbod Media Memorabilia...Terry specializes in British Quads and has an excellent selection. Nice friendly people to deal with so be sure and tell them hello.

Next we have just added Alastair Soles at All Time Movie Posters. Alastair handles both original and commercial theater posters and specializes in new releases so be sure and take a look at what's new.

I wanted to update everyone on the progress of the 'Movie Section'. We had several comments about the layout of the section.... (primarily the comments were ....'I can't remember what year is was....' or something to that effect) so I thought I better stop and put in the alphabetical listing bar before it got too big.

Just above the year section is a little alphabetical navbar. It might be small but ...boy, did it take a lot of work!!! and a couple of those letters are pretty large documents!! I had primarily started posting some of the 'A's (which you can tell when you click on the letters) when I stopped to put it in and bring it in sync with the other section.. So now you can click on either one to find the title.

I'll start back posting and filling in again. We have several thousand ready to be posted now so you should see them start to fill in a little better now. My daughter (Sarah) has agreed to come help me with pulling photos from the kind dealers that told us to come get them.

Until the next update....

ed

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May 13, 2002

We want to welcome another sponsor to our fast growing family(yeah!!!). Long time dealer and collector John Colman at 20th Century Original Movie Posters in London. No, don't think that John just has British posters..... You can see his stuff at :
www.eFilmPosters.com. He's got a GREAT selection of US one sheets, pressbooks, lobby cards and heralds so don't miss out some really good stuff!!

As you can see, there's a lot of changes and expansion in the works so please be patient while we try to format the additions. Here's what's going on so you can be watching.....

You know the 'Movie Section' is in progress and we're adding and modifying it in the set-up.
We're about to put the alphabetical listings on in the next couple of days so you can look up a movie if you don't know the year. This should make it easier and we will then be attaching both listings as we add the photos

We're looking at breaking the posters sections down like this.....
Documentaries, Shorts, Serials(which will also be included in the Shorts list), and Combos will have their OWN breakdowns under their sections. These will NOT be included in the 'Movie Section'.

Black-cast, Animation and X-rated will have a breakdown in their section but will also be included in the main 'Movie Section'

Artists will tie to which one that's appropriate.

This may help understand the progress a little more. If anyone has any suggestions on how to better organize it, please let us know. Otherwise, a lot of the time it has to be trial and error.

Each week we seem to be getting more people coming on the site so I'll try to keep everyone posted as much as possible.

later,

ed

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May 10, 2002

We want to welcome 2 new sponsors to our fold (yeah!!!). Both are long time dealers and well known thru-out the poster industry. The first dealer is John from Musicman. John's famous Movie Poster Page has a great selection of ALL types of posters. (personally, I like the Polish posters:) Definately a place to check out and spend some time.

Next to join our growing fold is a name that you see EVERYWHERE. Dan at Mad Phat has the best selection of INDY posters on the net. Dan's also got a lot of other stuff so don't get lost and miss the posters - it's under Mighty Mighty Movie Poster Mania. You'll need to check out his dealer page in a couple of days too on the links page and the sponsors page.

Boy, no sleep for me for the next couple of weeks, I better go make another pot of coffee... later

ed

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May 9, 2002

We've had to make a few adjustments as we continue to work on the 'Movie' section. I thought you might want to know some of these. We decided to make 'Silents' the division line for the movies listed in the 'Movie' Section. So this will take the list back to 1927. Before that the movies become entangled with the 'shorts' so we'll be making a different section for the silent movies.

I was very disgruntled with the quality of the photos that were going into the movie section so we've changed programs and I think you'll see a big difference in photo quality as we add them on and go back and correct the ones that are already there.

We are in the middle of making a special announcement and offer for dealers while we load info in the section. (see dealer offer)
We're already getting tremendous response for dealers and you'll be seeing a lot of new sponsors and listings showing the posters they have to offer... we're working out the details with several now. so watch out for all the changes....

We received a suggestion that I hadn't thought about dealing with 'Foreign' posters and articles.
Since we're getting a tremendous amount of people from OUTSIDE the US, (I was totally shocked at the report of all the different countries that collectors are coming from) I've decided to make this a site for EVERYONE and NOT for just us in the US, SO...we're changing all sections and listings of 'FOREIGN' posters to 'NON U.S.'

If you have a suggestion on ANY way to improve the site, please let me know.

This was my break so I better get back to work,

ed

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May 2, 2002

We want to welcome a new sponsor to our fold(yeah!!!).
This is a special sponsor.. When we first sent word that we needed dealer sites for photos, Fred at theCinemaTrade.com said 'use whatever we needed'

Now as we start to expand, Fred wants to be our first dealer-sponsor for the new 'Movie Section' so as we put the photos we're acquiring from Fred for permanent use with his tag on them..... HE'S ALSO PUTTING THEM UP FOR SALE!!! So BE SURE to check out Fred's listings as we add them!! These will be marked in a RED
box underneath the poster shown. You can also find a list of items from a dealer-sponsor in the 'links' section or 'sponsors' section by their name. From there you can link directly to Fred's site for more great bargains...... For more info on this program, we've posted it in the 'Help' section under 'Advertising'

On another note.... while surfing the internet yesterday, I found 3 sites that had links to LearnAbout.... and I didn't even know about it!!!!!! How many more are out there like that??
If you put a link to us on YOUR site.... please let me know and I'll be glad to add you to our links.

ed

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May 1, 2002

I've been so busy that I haven't been posting updates, so let me try to bring everyone a little more up to date......

First I want to thank EVERYONE for the tremendous response that we've been getting since we reopened the site on the 11th..Let me share a little with you...

When we moved our site to our new host, (ReadyHosting is their name if you're looking for a host) we have added a complete stats package..
I love stats so this put me in hog-heaven:)
Since April 11th, it started a little slow at first but we ended up with 12,000 people coming on the site to 'learn about movie posters'...50 people spent MORE than an hour on the site, 6 people read more than 100 pages in one session on the site AND 1 fanatic spent over 7 1/2 hours on the site in 1 session!!!!!!!

As of today we have 1121 pages of information on the site, but with the new expansion, it will probably double over the next month. If you're not a stats person, then I apologize for the ramblings but I get excited over the response and want to push harder to expand and be able to present more infomation for everyone.

PHASE 1 OF THE EXPANSION IS ALMOST COMPLETE!!!!!! and it was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. I should have the remainder all the way back to 1900 posted by this weekend. What's the big deal you say???? I wanted a base to start gathering information. I know there will be constant modifications, but you'll really see what I mean as the alphabetical listings go in, and the photos and information start to be added.

One dealer emailed me to ask 'what was the big deal about Phase 1, you can go on IMDB anytime and get that'........ just try it, and see what you get.. we have movies listed that aren't even ON IMDB. We can't find anything like our lists ANYWHERE on the internet!!!

Anyway, back to the positive... Now that Phase 1 is almost complete, we've started Phase 2, which is acquiring photos and information about posters on as many movies as possible. We already have several thousand photos of posters of all different types that we're organizing right now so you'll start seeing a LOT of changes in that section.

We are also announcing to dealers with poster photos on their site, that if we can use them, we'll put a permanent...' photo courtesy of...' sticker on them. So if you have a site and want to help, please email me so your name can become a permanent part of the site:)

Please be a little patient while we try to attach and post new material. I know that some will be labeled wrong or in the wrong place as we try to get it sorted. I'm setting up a special email address to alert us when we've listed something wrong. I'll be announcing the address as soon as it's finished. Then we would appreciate anyone letting us know if we've attached something in the wrong place.

well, back to work, 'til next time

ed

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April 21, 2002

We want to welcome a new sponsor to our fold(yeah!!!).
One of the cornerstones of the industry..
Movie Collectors World. We've recommended them for years to ALL collectors, new and ...not as new. The Movie Collectors World magazine is now boasting 646 consecutive issues which is amazing.... and chocked full of information and contacts that you won't find anywhere else. And as a new addition........(I'm waiting for the trumpets to blow....) Sue and I will be writing an article in each edition for new collectors (and I KNOW you don't want to miss THAT). starting with the next issue.
So...... be sure to go to their website www.mcwonline.com and check out all the great stuff there and then get a subscription.
I think it's only a little over $2 per issue....
What!!!!! MY articles worth more than that!!!!!! I may have to tell them that they're selling them too cheap!!!
Oh well, take advantage before they realize what they're doing...

ed


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April 20, 2002

I've been getting several collectors asking about all the problems with new Spiderman posters. - As much as I would love to have the time to try to run down all the differences and details, I just don't any more BUT there's a great site by a fellow fanatic:) Dan enjoys running down these slippery little devils and alerting fellow collectors....
www.damnthe.com

If you're looking to pick up a Spiderman, be sure and check out this site FIRST. There's also several other major pieces that are shown.

ed


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April 17, 2002

As I sit here with my little fingers cramping, my only thought is 'What have I started??'........
Now I see why you can't find a list of all the US movies, no less poster breakdowns and info.

My wife and I debated back and forth whether to go ahead and turn the 'Movie' section on while we continue to load the info. The thought was ... it's going to take sooooo long to get this section completed AND it's a never-ending section because there's always new coming out AND always independents that you missed!!!

What we're trying to set up is an area to gather the poster information about each US movie released and have it in one 'organized?' section for collectors to be able to utilize. (At the moment it feels like trying to pick up all the sand on the beach:-)

The movies are arranged by year and we've turned on the 2000's and 1990's. You'll be able to see as I add additional years and movie info on each.

When you look at a movie page, notice that we've placed a navbar on the bottom of each movie page to add additional information.
The first section 'Theater Material' is where we'll be adding info on Presskits, Lobby cards, Half-sheets, Inserts etc. The next section 'Foreign' is of course where we'll be adding foreign posters released. Then 'commercial' is for any commercial material on the movie as we locate it.

We've already had several friends sending info to add. We appreciate this and will be tagging a 'courtesy of...' tag under each.

If you have any suggestions or comments...
let me hear 'em

ed


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April 12, 2002

WOW... It's good to be back....
(what do you mean you didn't miss me???) ..

Anyway, a couple of months ago, all of a sudden we couldn't get ahold of our host. Then our emails started going off and on, our sites started going up and down. We literally emailed hundreds of times and still haven't received a single email from them. We lost our LearnAbout and Star Wars email systems, then we lost part of our CSM systems, THEN we lost the whole Star Wars poster site!!! We had designed a new online database system for all the Star Wars posters that is now totally GONE......

We have now completed the move to a NEW LARGER and FASTER host that gives us a lot more flexability so look out!!!!!

Our email system is now in place so you'll start seeing a lot of new changes.....
Over the next week or so we will be restructuring and adding the 'Star Wars Poster Archive' to LearnAbout.
We're almost ready to turn on the new 'Movies' section.
These 2 monster sections will take quite a bit of work so..... please be patient while we add.

We'll also try to run down connection problems and add more photos and samples......
I've got so much to add and do I just got tired thinking about it... oh, well, it's still nice to be back.
Since I haven't been receiving any LearnAbout emails for the past month, if I missed anything important, please let me know:)

ed