ANNOUNCEMENT FROM BRUCE HERSHENSON
EMAIL 3/24/07
Taken from email:
From: Bruce Hershenson
Date: 3/24/2007
To: MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU
After 319 nearly consecutive weekly Tuesday auctions on eBay, I am now abandoning that "weekly" auction concept as something I no longer want to do, something that is not in the "best interest" of the successful future of eMoviePoster.com.
During that time, I auctioned over 270,000 items on eBay, for a total of well over TWELVE million dollars. This included several major "catalog" auctions, which included some of the largest daily totals ever seen from one seller in one day on eBay. It also included many wonderful collections of movie posters of all sizes, years and genres. You can access our online database with prices of just about every items we sell in that span at http://www.emovieposter.com/sales/priceguide.php
You can view images from an awful lot of those items (plus many thousands of others) at http://www.emovieposter.com/imagearchive/stars.php
Most impressive of all these statistics is that we have received over 30,000 consecutive positive feedbacks in the past 16 months, with no negatives or neutrals (we DID get one neg that the person chose to withdraw, as he had left it in haste without giving us a chance to tell him the problem was PayPal's not ours, and we also received two neutrals, one left in error, and one left in haste, and both those were also withdrawn by the people who left them). Try to find any other eBay seller of vintage one-of-a-kind items with anywhere close to this record.
But we started this e-mail by saying, "The END of our weekly auctions is at hand!" What will take their place? "Semi-weekly" auctions! You read correctly! Beginning on either April 5th or April 12th, we will expand to TWO auctions every week, not just one. Beginning on one of those two dates, we will have BOTH our regular Tuesday night auctions and ALSO our all-new Thursday night auctions!
Why are we making this major change from "weekly" auctions to "Semi-weekly" auctions? Because we feel that the optimum amount of items for us to sell on a single night is 1,000, and yet we keep getting consigned well OVER one thousand items per week (on average). We need to auction more items just to somewhat "keep up" with the TONS of consignments arriving here on a daily basis, and we feel that adding a second night is the best way to do this.
Will this cause there to be "too many" movie paper items to be sold each week, thus "flooding" the market? OF COURSE NOT! There are currently tens of thousands of items offered on eBay every DAY, and adding a few hundred more each week will be a mere drop in the bucket. What it will do (in addition to letting us keep up with new consignments far better than we have in the past) is let us offer the most popular sizes (lobby cards and one-sheets) on a much more regular basis, and the other sizes every couple of months instead of every four months or so, and that will greatly benefit those of you who mostly collect one size, and who were frustrated having to wait for months between our auctioning those sizes.
Of course, we will "start out slow" and see what direction to take. Our very first Thursday auction will contain around 100 "bulk lots" mostly containing hundreds of one-sheets each, with each "bulk lot" starting at just 99 cents with NO reserve (for the entire lot, NOT per poster!). The next few Thursday auctions will likely each contain around 400 mostly unfolded one-sheets from the 1970s to the present (as we have at least 1,000 of those here waiting to be auctioned). Over those weeks we will see if there is anything different about these Thursday auctions (I can't see why there should be) and then once we "have a few under our belt", we will begin auctioning items similar to those in our regular Tuesday auctions (but auctioning two completely different types of items in the same Tuesday and Thursday (like maybe lobby cards on Tuesday and three-sheets and six-sheets on Thursday).
Have we prepared for this? What do you think! We have hired five new employees over the past couple of months, spent a huge amount of time organizing most of our consignments that are "on hand", and greatly expanded several of our work stations for entering and packing posters. With all these new employees we have lately actually had a fair number of people standing around at times with nothing to do, but that will clearly change once the Thursday auctions begin! I feel we now definitely have the manpower, the space, the consignments, and most importantly the knowledge needed to handle two days of auctions a week, and I look forward to their beginning.
What WON'T happen is that I personally won't start working any more or any
harder! I like my current 35 or so hour work week, and I will NEVER go back
to 70 hour weeks (if need be, I will hire yet more people, and I will keep finding
people who can do most of the jobs I used to do). Yet I will continue to do
all in my power to assure that the guiding principle behind all my auctions
(Tuesdays and now Thursdays) will be to be 100% honest, and to treat all buyers
exactly the way I like to be treated as a buyer! As a buyer of collectibles
for over 40 years, both from dealers and from auctions, I can tell you that
VERY FEW other dealers or auction houses operate with the same principles I
do, and that MANY go on a very slimy "rob 'em blind if you can get away
with it" philosophy, both with the people they sell to, and also the people
they buy or get consignments from (I know that most of you long-time collectors
know full-well what I am talking about)! I believe this is why we a!
t eMoviePoster.com have been so successful (both in attracting so many consignments
and so many buyers) and I feel certain that if you have liked our Tuesday auctions,
you will now be doubly happy!
WE HAVE SEVERAL OTHER MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENTS OF BIG CHANGES SOON COMING TO EMOVIEPOSTER.COM, BUT I WILL SAVE THOSE FOR THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, AS I FEEL THIS CURRENT ANNOUNCEMENT OF ADDING A SECOND DAY OF AUCTIONS PER WEEK IS ENOUGH FOR ONE MESSAGE!
Bruce Hershenson
President
eMoviePoster.com