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Does it mean that all such Frankenstein posters may be expected to fetch this amount in an auction or a private sale? Is there a solid market for this poster at this price? Will this poster be worth $500,000.00 in fifteen years? We don't know the answers to any of these questions, but we do know that what is demonstrated here is that someone was willing to part with almost two hundred thousand presumably hard earned dollars for this poster. Was it worth it? It was worth it to him. That subjective factor in determining value must never be overlooked; after all, the objective record of prices realized for any given poster is merely the sum of all these subjective value judgments: worth it to whom and when? There are many private sales of many posters. These never become part of the records of prices realized because such sales are by nature confidential, but they nevertheless affect the market.
So how do you know what to pay for a poster? I think you not only keep your eyes and ears open to determine what you might be asked to pay but also I think that you have to ask yourself the same question that the buyer who purchased Frankenstein for $198,000 had to ask himself at some point: what is it worth to me? If you balance these two considerations, you can make a reasonable judgment about how much to pay. You may find a raving bargain in a flea market. More power to you if you beat the dealers to a great poster. Or you may be offered a poster you dearly want by someone you feel may be asking 200% more than you might expect it to be. But do you really know the track record on this poster. And what about your time? Do you have the time and money involved to track a similar copy down? These are subjective considerations that are involved in every deal.
There are some things you can weigh in the bargain:
- Condition.
- Have you ever been offered this poster before? Have you
seen it for sale at what price or have you never seen
it for sale at any price?
- Is it good looking or evocative of the film or personality.
The poster market: selling.
You may buy for your own collection or you may buy for investment. Investing and collecting are two different activities. Don't confuse one with the other. Success in one area does not imply success in the other. A collector may be tangentially successful as an investor through a series of happy circumstances. But a collector is really concerned with acquiring items in his area of interest because he admires them. If he gets a good deal in doing so, he has made, in effect, a good investment, providing, at some point, there is an opportunity to sell. Many collectors would never sell what they have acquired. They enjoy their collections. An investor is looking from the beginning for that opportunity to divest; a collector is not. An investor in movie posters is just like an investor in the stock market, only with more risk generally. It is beyond the scope of this article, which must necessarily be focused on collecting, to address speculating in movie posters.
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