Not sure if this should go here or IMHO, but it’s about movies so I chose here.
We recently aquired hundreds of movie posters from my husband’s co-worker. She used to own a video store and kept them, she was going to throw them out but my husband in his infinite wisdom got her to give them to us instead. I haven’t even had a chance to go through all of them yet, but they are mostly from movies in the 80’s - 90’s, some are the 2 sided ones meant to go in a window, some in excellent condition, others in ok condition. Everything from 9 1/2 Weeks, to Indiana Jones, Dances With Wolves, Dirty Dancing, Pretty in Pink. Plus tons of movies I have never heard of, including ones that look pretty hilarious and/or just plain bad.
What should we do with them? Wallpaper for our entertainment room? Sell them? Keep them? Give them away as Christmas gifts? What? There are piles of them stacked in our rec room.
Seriously, sell them! If they are honest-to-goodness MOVIE posters (not advertising the tape or DVD) they can be worth big bucks. (A typical movie poster runs about $20 at a collector’s shop. Rare ones can be much more.) Even the posters of the videos of movies can be worth money. If you have thousands of posters, you’ve got thousands of dollars sitting there. Look on eBay, look up memorabilia stores… There are lots of people out there who collect those things. You’ve got a potential gold mine there!
Wow, quick replies! I think they are the real movie posters, that is, they don’t say anything about the videos on them. They just have the little blurbs about the plots or whatever. But some of them do mention awards the movie has won, so I guess those couldn’t be the first movie posters. How can I tell?
I have an account with ebay but have never sold anything, will no one buy from us if we aren’t established? How do I know how much to ask or should I not set a reserve and let the market decide? I am not experienced with ebay.
I didn’t guess most of the lesser known movies would be worth much so I thought ebay would be more of a hassle than it’s worth, shipping all those posters everywhere for a few bucks, but if it’s worthwhile I’ll do it.
Whatever you do, don’t list all of them at the same time! Could you imagine 14 days from now realizing that you now need to get your hands on 2,000 mailing tubes, labels and a way to get them to the post office?!
Figure out what it will cost you to buy a mailing tube and mail one poster, and list that as the standard shipping price (or round it up 50 cents for your time and aggravation). It’s standard for the buyer to pay shipping.
Set yourself up like a small business. Research movie posters on eBay and see what they’re going for. See if you can find a book/magazine with movie poster valuation, like they do for baseball cards and coins.
Design a process so you can minimize your effort. Pick the product, take a photo or two, create the listing, watch the auction and respond, accept payment, roll and ship promptly. When you already know the best way to photo, and upload and handle payment/shipping, you won’t waste as much time on it, and could earn some good money.
Start off running a few posters a week, then ramp up to whatever volume makes you happy. Set a good minimum price on each and you won’t waste your time packing up posters for $1 each.
Some lesser known movie posters might actually be worth more than those for popular movies, as they’d be harder to find. Of course, this only works if there’s demand for them, but plenty of minor movies have cult followings (either on their own merits or as a “before they were famous” thing for the stars).
If you manage to put together a list of them, post it here (and other places if you’re so inclined). I’m sure many here would love to buy something from you, myself included. Maybe UrbanChic and I can arm-wrestle for Pulp Fiction.
Could you, after you inventory them, put the full inventory here first? I suspect that there are a lot of Dopers who’d be interested in the right movie poster. But other than that, go with eBay.
I’m willing to make a list available to you guys as soon as I make one, but I’m not sure what the rule is for advertising. I don’t want to break any rules by selling through the board.
Maybe what I’ll do is go through them all and make a spreadsheet, then whoever wants to see it can e-mail me. This could take a while, though.
As to the requests, like I said I haven’t gone through them all yet and off the top of my head I can’t remember seeing those.
I’m so not a movie buff. Most of these posters are wasted on me! (I was most excited about The Breakfast Club…I loved Molly Ringwald.)
