AUCTION QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
You can find answers to the most commonly asked questions about our auctions below. If you do not find the answer that you seek, Contact Us, and we will get back with you as quickly as possible.

Index to Answers

HOW TO REGISTER IN OUR AUCTIONS
If you've not done so already, you can register to bid in our auctions on our Registration Page. Be sure to let us know if you have any difficulties registering. Note that the registration requires a phone number and a state/province to be entered. If either do not apply to you, please write "N/A" in the box so that you can complete registration.

Once you have created an account, we recommend that you change your user ID from the randomly assigned one to one that you can easily remember. You can do so by:
1.) Log into your account, and then you should be looking at your account settings page.
2.) In the first column, click "Profile/Username Editor".
3.) On that page, scroll down till you see "Username:". Change what is there to something you can remember (it may be the same as your eBay ID or something completely different)
4.) In the next box labeled "Verification:", retype your password, then click the button "Review Updates".
5.) On the next screen, verify that all the information is correct (if it isn't, go back and correct it), then click "Update Profile".
6.) That's all you have to do!

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HOW TO LOGIN TO THE AUCTIONS
To login, look at the very top of virtually every page of our site. At the left just above our logo it will read "Log In | Register | Members Area". Just click on "Log In", and enter your details on the next page.

or

If you are on one of our gallery pages (Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday, or All Auctions), near the upper right is a gold sign in box.  Enter your details there and click "Login". 

NOTE: a lot of customers have told us they are copying and pasting their username and password when trying to log in. A lot of times when they do this, there is an extra space at the end that is being copied, and when that is pasted in to the username and password fields, the log in is not recognized. So, if you are unable to log in, you should check for an extra space before or after the username and/or password you are entering.

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HOW TO TELL IF YOU ARE LOGGED IN
When you are on one of our gallery pages (Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday, or All Auctions), the gold box at upper right will show "Hello, yourusernamehere!" if you are logged in, or it will show a login box if you are not.

or

When you are on the auction home page, if there is a log in box at the left of your screen, then you are NOT logged in (if you ARE already logged in, it will show your username at the left of your screen).

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HOW TO LOG OUT OF THE AUCTIONS
There is a button to log out. It is at the very top of an individual auction page (when you click on any item in our galleries, you are looking at an individual auction page) within the auction site at the left just above our logo (it will read "Logged in as *youruserid* [Edit] [Log Out]").  Or if you are in our auction galleries (Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday, or All Auctions), click the "Log Out" button in the gold box near the upper right.

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How to Change Your Username or Password (updated 8/1/2011)
The username you are issued when you first register to bid on eMoviePoster.com (and to access these club e-mails) is intended to be a temporary one (it is generated using the the first 2 letters of your last name plus 6 random numbers). Many people never change it, but know that you can change it to anything you want (as long as it is within the number of characters allowed and is not offensive), and that you can change your ID or password at any time (some people change their ID when they feel that there are other bidders who "follow" them and bid on the same posters they do). It is fine to never change your temporary ID, but it is also just as fine to change it to something that is "fun" or easy to remember, and be sure to make your password something you won't easily forget!

HERE IS HOW TO CHANGE YOUR USERNAME
We recommend that once you log in, you should immediately change your user ID from the randomly assigned one you were given when you registered to one that you can easily remember (it can be the same as your eBay ID, or anything you want). You can do so by following these steps:
1.) Log in to your account, and then you should be on your account settings page.
2.) In the first column, click "Profile/Username Editor".
3.) On that page, scroll down till you see "Username:". Change what is there to something you can remember
4.) In the next box labeled "Verification:", retype your password, then click the button "Review Updates".
5.) On the next screen, verify that all the information is correct (if it isn't, go back and correct it), then click "Update Profile".
6.) That's all you have to do! Remember that unless you change your ID to your eBay ID (or any other one that you want) you run the risk of not being able to get it later, so doesn't it make sense to change it now?

HERE IS HOW TO CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD
If you think your password could have been compromised in any way and want to change your password (or if you just feel like changing it), you can do so by following these steps:
1.) Log in to your account, and then you should be on your account settings page.
2.) In the first column, click "Password Editor".
3.) On that page, in the "New Password:" box, type in the password you would like (and be sure to remember what it is!).
4.) In the next box labeled "Verify New Password:", retype your new password.
5.) In the next box labeled "Old Password:", type your old password (it should be located in the registration confirmation e-mail you received when you registered), then click the "Update Password" button.
6.) The next screen should read "Thank you, your password was successfully updated." That's all you have to do!

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I DID NOT RECEIVE MY REGISTRATION/OUTBID/ETC. E-MAIL
Some customers have not been receiving our e-mails. The cause is usually that some e-mail providers (Comcast, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Hotmail, WebTV, EarthLink, etc.) have really tough spam filters that block our e-mails, so if our e-mail addresses are not in your contacts list or address book, then our e-mails go into your spam or junk folders or do not reach you at all!

If this is the case, it is usually easy to solve. Just add our auction e-mail address of "emovieposter.com@emovieposter.com" (and mail@emovieposter.com, phillip@emovieposter.com, and shippingdept@emovieposter.com) to your contacts list or address book and that should allow our e-mails (such as outbid notices, winning bid notifications, payment details, etc.) to reach you. In addition, we recommend that you check your spam or junk folders for any e-mails from us, and if there is a way to mark them as not spam/junk, do that as well.

Doing the above will likely take you less than five minutes and will allow you to receive IMPORTANT auction related e-mails. We certainly hope the above helps make your bidding experience in our auctions run as smooth as possible.

If that does not work, Contact Us, and request that we help you get a free Gmail e-mail account that has never had a problem receiving our messages.

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HOW DOES PROXY BIDDING (OR "LIMIT BID") WORK
A proxy bid is a bid that works the same way as bidding on eBay. You bid your maximum, and the auction software will bid on your behalf. So, if another bidder is currently bidding $25 and you place a maximum bid of $100, you will have the high bid at $27. If another bidder comes in at $60, you will then have the high bid at $63. So as you can see, it works just like eBay does.

By the way, you can see what your maximum bids are. When you're logged in to the auction site, on the menu below our logo, click on "My Account". On that page just below the menu is a link that reads "Bids". Click on that and it will show you all the bids that you have placed as well as what your maximum bid is.

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HOW COME SEARCHING DOES NOT WORK AS EXPECTED
For right now, searching from auctions.eMoviePoster.com will only search the TITLE of the auction. We are working with the software company to get full description searching added, but until that time, we really recommend that you use our thumbnail galleries to search as it works much better allowing you to search the full descriptions of the auctions, and it does have direct links so that you can bid on the auctions.

The Tuesday Auction Gallery is located at https://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/13.html
The Thursday Auction Gallery is located at https://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/14.html
The Sunday Auction Gallery is located at https://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/15.html
 Search All Auction Galleries is located at https://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/all.html

Getting results that aren't what you were looking for? You can now use exact "QUOTES" searching.  Here is what we mean: let's say you are searching for John Wayne, but you keep getting items that don't feature John Wayne (such as How To Stuff a Wild Bikini).  If you search with quotes around his name, like this: "John Wayne", it will now find exactly John Wayne only.  This will work with any phrase that appears in our film description.  Here are some more examples:

You can find many more search tips here.

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How to use the Watch List feature (updated 7/20/2011)

Our auctions have a Watch List feature that allows you mark items to "watch". This is useful if you want to come back later to review the items either to place bids or if you are just curious to see how the items do at auction.

There are three main ways you can add an item to your Watch List:

There are also some settings available to you. To change these settings, go to your My Account page. Then at right, under the Preferences section, click "Bidding". Here are the settings (NOTE: By default, both are set to "Yes"):

Finally, you may view your Watch List by going here: https://auctions.emovieposter.com/WatchList.taf. Once on that page, there are sort sorting options at the top of the page. Additionally, you may check boxes of some items and then click "Clear Checked Items" to remove them from the list.

Also know that your "Watch List" and your "Want List" are two separate things! 

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How Is Bidding Different or What is 'Time Extended Bidding'?
 The bidding in our auctions is similar to how it is on eBay (it includes proxy bidding where you can bid the most you are willing to pay and the software will bid on your behalf until you have been outbid).

There is one major difference. These auctions use time extended bidding. That means five minutes must go by without a bid being placed for an auction to end. So if an auction is due to end at say 7:06:45 and someone bids at 7:03:30, then now the earliest the auction can end is 7:08:30 (five minutes after that bid was placed). If someone again bids at 7:07:02, then now the earliest the auction can end is 7:12:02 (five minutes after that bid was placed).

Some buyers have voiced a concern that the auctions could last "forever" with time extended bidding, but actually fewer than 10% of the auctions are extended at all, and most of those are extended by only a few minutes. In very rare cases two bidders keep bidding on an item, and it gets extended 20 or more minutes. This is because buyers quickly realize there is no benefit to waiting until the very end to bid (because they can never "bid at the last second" as they do on eBay), so most buyers bid on whatever they are interested in well before the end of the auction, but at the latest, in the final few minutes.

In a way, this is the exact reverse of eBay "sniping"! There is no advantage whatsoever to bid in the final seconds, because the auction will be extended for 5 minutes after you bid, whenever you place the bid. And you have a lot to lose if you try to bid in the final seconds, and your bid is not accepted (either due to a problem with your computer, or with the auction software), because if you try to bid with seconds to go and fail, then the auction ends, but if you tried to bid with minutes to go and fail, then you have a few extra minutes to try again.

Or to put it another way, a time extended auction is very much like a live auction. The auctioneer takes bids, and when no one bids for a short period of time (in this case, the "time extension"), the auctioneer says "going once, going twice, sold!", and the auction is over.

So, there really is no purpose in having snipe (last second) bidding in an auction that is time extended because the auction would be lengthened when the snipe bid was placed, eliminating any benefit to last-second bidding. Therefore, all bidders should understand that our auctions are more like a live auction and should either bid in advance or within the last 5 minutes of the auction (the ideal time to bid is with exactly 5 minutes to go, because that way, you don't extend the auction, and if those last 5 minutes go by without another bid being placed, then you surely win the item).

To any of you who think "without sniping, I will never get anything (or I will have to pay way more)", we ask you to wait and see these auctions in action! There WILL be some auctions where you will lose the item (or pay more), but we guarantee you that there will be many auctions where you get the item for less than you would have had you placed a high snipe bid.

When we first started these auctions three years ago we had some bidders (who were used to eBay) say that they didn't like these auctions, and preferred the eBay model. Now, 200,000 auctions later, just about everyone sees that these auctions are more fair to everyone, and prefers them! I think you will understand once you participate, but if you have any questions, please ask them.

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Do our auctions have any buyers premiums or added fees? NO!

We have been a major auction house of solely movie posters since 1990 (when we hosted yearly million dollar movie poster auctions), but there is a HUGE difference between our online auctions and those of other major auction houses who have opened websites. THE DIFFERENCE IS THAT OUR ONLINE AUCTIONS HAVE NO BUYERS PREMIUM WHATSOEVER! Most other auctions add a 20% or 25% added charge to everything you buy (some even have a $14 minimum, even on a $1 purchase!), and this massive added charge turns many good buys into terrible ones. Some auctions may also charge hidden fees such as "photography fees" or "handling fees". But in our auctions, what you bid is what you pay plus the actual cost (or less) of getting your purchases to you!

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WHAT ARE THE BID INCREMENTS?
These auctions use whole dollar bidding ($20, not $20.43), so the system will not allow bidding using cents at all. Currently, in order to allow bidding using cents, we can only use the same type of incredibly tiny bid increments that eBay uses, and we felt bidding a nickel or a quarter at a time could result in auctions needlessly being extended.

So, here is a breakdown of the bid increments in our auctions:

Current Price Bid Increment
$1 - $9 $1
$10 - $49 $2
$50 - $99 $3
$100 - $299 $5
$300 - $499 $10
$500 - $999 $25
$1,000 - $1,999 $50
$2,000 - $4,999 $100
$5,000 - $9,999 $250
$10,000 + $500

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I MADE A MISTAKE! HOW DO I RETRACT MY BID?
We do not have a "retract my bid" option. On eBay, bidders were able to retract their bids which allowed some to place a sky high bid on an item, therefore exposing the high bidder's maximum bid. Then, they would retract their bid. This is unfair to honest bidders (exposing their bid for all to see), so we think it makes sense to not have the retract option. Instead, if a bidder places a bid by mistake, they can contact us and we can cancel their bid on their behalf, so that ability is still there. This would also allow us to monitor any suspicious bid behavior, so we think it is a win-win situation.

If you need to retract a bid, Contact Us.

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HOW CAN I LEAVE FEEDBACK?
We are glad to hear that you would like to leave feedback, but our auctions have no feedback system (since we are the only seller). However, you are correct that we should have some way to share your feelings about purchases, so we will work on a customer reviews portion of our site. As soon as we have it ready, we will notify everyone through our e-mail club and on our homepage.
      In the meantime, if you would like to share your feelings about your experience with us, just send us an e-mail and we may run your comments in our Weekly E-Mail Club.

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HOW CAN I REVIEW THE RESULTS OF AN AUCTION?
We have "Results Galleries" which are on our website for one week and allow you to browse or search auction results in the same ways that you could browse and search our current auctions. To get to the results galleries, go to our homepage (www.eMoviePoster.com), and then click on Tuesday Gallery or Thursday Gallery. At the top of either gallery are several links. If you are looking for the results of Tuesday's auction, click on the link that reads "Tuesday 3/3 Results" (replace "3/3" with whatever the recent date is). If you are looking for the results of Thursday's auction, click on the link that reads "Thursday 3/5 Results" (replace "3/5" with whatever the recent date is).

Here are links to the results galleries for quick reference:
Tuesday Results Gallery: https://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/11.html
Thursday Results Gallery: https://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/12.html
Sunday Results Gallery: https://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/16.html
All Results Gallery: https://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/results.html

If you wish to view results from more than one week ago, there are two ways to do it:

  1. Using the auction software: you should go to https://auctions.emovieposter.com. Then, in the menu bar below our logo, hold your mouse over "Browse" and then select "Recently Closed". This will show you a list of our categories that contain items that ended over the last 30 days. Just click on the category that you want to know about, and it will show you the results in the order in which the auctions ended.
  2. Using our Poster Image Archive, go to our Date Sold page and click on the date you are curious about.  At the moment, you can't see the prices until you click on each individual item.  We are looking to revise this part of our website as time permits.

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Is there a way to be notified when you have items I'm interested in?
There are a few ways.  The first two ways are through our free Weekly E-Mail Club or Weekly Promotional E-Mail.  Both e-mails detail what we are currently auctioning.  In addition, the Weekly E-Mail Club includes fun polls, collectors' comments, hobby news, and website updates. The promotional e-mail is only sent to buyers who wish to be notified about items similar to what they've bought before.  For instance, if you bought one-sheets in the past, we will notify you when we are again offering one-sheets.

However, what if you want to know about specific items (such as Apocalypse Now Japanese poster, or Laurel & Hardy, or glass slides)?  We recently developed our "Want List Notification System" which allows you greater customized notifications.  This part of our site allows you to save searches in our auction galleries. You can create saved searches using virtually any details including film title, movie stars, directors, specific poster sizes (one-sheets, lobby cards, Polish, etc.), genre, or anything else that appears in our auction description (even "double-sided", "re-release", "tri-folded", etc.!).

First, you must be registered in our auctions. If you're not already registered, please go to our registration page (https://auctions.emovieposter.com/Registration.taf).

Once you are registered for our auctions, you use that same username and password for the Want List page (note: if you registered within the last 24 hours, the want list page will not work with your details until the following day as it is updated once every night).

When you are ready to use the Want List page, go to https://www.emovieposter.com/members/wantlist.php, and sign in. You will then be able to add saved searches for any movie details to your want list page. Once you have set up your saved searches, you can visit your personal Want List page and view your saved searches at any time. In addition, the day before an auction closes, you will receive an e-mail letting you know of any items we have that meet your searches. That e-mail includes links directly to your Want List page as well as links to those saved searches in our galleries.

We certainly hope you will find this part of our site to be easy to use, but if you have any questions, be sure to read over the details we provide on the top of the Want List page. If you still experience any problems, report them to us by using the "Testing Feedback" box located at the bottom of the Want List page.

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What about inactive accounts?

We are more vigilant than any other auction site in stopping people from bidding and not paying, and we collect from over 99% of our buyers, which helps every honest bidder, because that means they are bidding against real bidders who will pay for their purchases. We have noticed that sometimes "dormant" accounts (ones that have not been logged into for over a year) have been "hijacked" and used to place "prank bids" (bids that are never honored). In addition, it seems likely that those who don't log into our site for over a year have lost interest in movie posters, so for the above reasons it makes sense to remove them from our list of registered bidders. Therefore, we make all accounts that have not been logged into for 1 year or longer inactive. If this is done to your account, we notify you at your registered e-mail.

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If you did not find the answer that you seek, Contact Us, and we will get back with you as quickly as possible.