It has now been close to TEN years since we left eBay entirely and auction exclusively on our own site, eMoviePoster.com, and it occurs to us that so much time has passed that a fair number of our current bidders may not know at all that we were once among the very top eBay sellers!

We joined eBay on March 9th, 1998, so we were also among the EARLIEST eBay movie paper sellers! You may not know this, but back then both eBay and AMAZON had collectible auctions, so for a while we auctioned on both sites, but it quickly became clear that eBay had FAR more bidders, so we soon dropped our Amazon auctions and focused solely on eBay.

At first, we experimented with several different auctioning methods. At one point early on, we added new items every weekday, so we had items ending every day, but we quickly saw this created lots of headaches for us and for bidders, so we soon set on just holding auctions each Tuesday.

I also experimented with starting prices. Most auctions I started at $2.99, and sometimes I would have a "better quality" auction where all the items started at $9.99. But I soon saw that collectors really LOVED 99 cent auctions (because these were honest auctions, where everything REALLY sold to the high bidder), and I soon made it a blanket rule that ALL of our auctions would always start at 99 cents.

While I was doing all this experimenting, I TOOK NO CONSIGNMENTS! I did not think it was fair to experiment with other people's material, so everything I auctioned was my own items. That way, when I started a $100 item at 99 cents, and it sold for $25 (as sometimes happened in those very early days on eBay), then I was the one who took the loss.

But by early 2000 we had settled on 300 auctions every Tuesday, starting at 99 cents each. And we were getting a LOT of good results, and people starting asking me if I would include their items, and I agreed, as long as they could accept that they would all start at 99 cents with no reserve!

Over the next few years we kept growing our Tuesday auctions, and sometimes we would have 200 items, but other times we would have 1,200, or even 1,500 or 2,000 different auctions. By 2007 we realized that it was hard for our bidders to bid on so many auctions in a single night, and so, on April 26th, 2007 we added our first ever Thursday auctions, which contained just 84 bulk lots.

We auctioned around the same amount of items between the Tuesday and Thursday auctions, but splitting them in two made it easier for our bidders to keep up with so many items. But eBay kept raising their rates they charged us, and worse yet, they started micro-managing our auctions, adding all sorts of rules, many of which made no sense at all.

I knew it was time to make a change, and on Thursday, April 17th, 2008, we held a special charity auction on our own site (our first ever), and we donated ALL the proceeds to charity. The success of that auction proved to us that we could leave eBay and hold our own auctions, and while we continued with both our own auctions and eBay auctions over the next few months (so we could make sure our own auctions were perfected before we ended the eBay ones entirely), that was the beginning of the end of our auctioning on eBay!

Over our time on eBay, our sales there were over SEVENTEEN million dollars, and we had over 330,000 completed transactions, all for one of a kind items!

PART II NEXT WEEK: We get settled in our own auctions on our own site, and we soon add a third night of auctions!

For those of you who don't know more about our business, here is a brief overview:

About Our Philosophy Having seen how many auction houses operate first hand, Bruce Hershenson started eMoviePoster.com with the philosophy that auctions should be run with honesty and integrity.  That is why we are always as accurate as possible, have NO buyers premiums or reserves, ship orders as quickly as possible, endeavor to provide timely and friendly responses to customers, and provide our "no questions asked" return policy.  More so, these policies extend to EVERY SINGLE BUYER regardless of whether you spend a few dollars or many thousands.  When you buy from eMoviePoster.com, you aren't "just another buyer"; you are always be treated the same as our most valued customers!   

About Our Auctions Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday, eMoviePoster.com adds 200 to 1000 items to online auctions (2,000+ items per week). All the Tuesday and Thursday items begin around 7 PM CST (Sunday items begin at 3 PM CST), which means they close the following Tuesday, Thursday, or Sunday around the same time. If you go to our list of items each Tuesday and Thursday night PRIOR to 7 PM CST (or Sunday prior to 3 PM CST), you can view the current items just before they close (so you can make last minute bids), plus you can look at the items for the upcoming week (we add the next week's items just after the current items close).

Each week our three weekly sales combined contain around $70,000 of movie posters, lobby cards, and/or other movie paper, and EVERY ITEM starts at just $1, with NO RESERVE on any item, which means these have competitive bidding (where the final prices are set by two or more real bidders, not by you bidding against a reserve). Far too many auctions have sky-high reserves, which is why so many go unsold. Over 99% of OUR over 1,400,000+ auctions to date have sold (the few that don't get a $1 bid are displayed on the walls of our 35,000 square foot warehouse!), and around 60% of all our auctions close at under $20 each (and by contrast there are auctions with $19 minimum buyers premiums, who never auction ONE items for under $20).