eMoviePoster.com

You might be surprised to learn that many collectors begin collecting without any sort of plan (or you might have done it yourself!).  What do I mean by "any sort of plan"? Most people first discover this hobby after seeing a single poster they love, and they get it, and then they search the Net and find more items for sale or at auction, and they often start buying more without taking a little time to think about where they are headed with the buying. Sometimes they will get 100 or more items before first thinking, "Where am I going with this?".

Here are some things you should be thinking about when you first start collecting (and if you haven't done it already, you should do it now, even if you have been collecting a while!):

Are you buying to eventually re-sell them at a profit, or are you buying to display them, or are you trying to put together a "collection" (most or all of which might rarely or never be displayed)? This is VERY important to start considering, because if you are primarily an investor, then you will surely want to research how rare items are, and how much they have sold for in the past, because if you don't "buy well", you are unlikely to ever make a profit.

If you are are you buying to display them, consider how much wall space you have, and what sizes of poster will fit in those areas. Once you know that, be sure that the items you get are ones you will REALLY enjoy looking at on a daily basis for years, because this is like the commitment you make when you get a pet or have a child!

If you are trying to put together a "collection", then try to set clear parameters for what should be in the collection. Say you want to collect Clint Eastwood posters. Do you want ONLY ones from his westerns, or maybe ONLY from his Dirty Harry movies, or maybe one from ALL his movies? And do you only want one-sheets, or do you also want inserts, half-sheets and lobby cards? And if there is more than one style of one-sheet, do you want them all, or just the one you like best? The same holds true for any other type of movie paper you choose to collect.

Now of course you can "shift gears" at any point, and go in an entirely new direction, or you can just modify your collecting a little bit. But by doing this thinking EARLY in your collecting rather than later, you can avoid being one of those collectors who ends up with lots of "mistakes" (items they bought early on where later they are not exactly sure why they bought them).

Of course, too, there is absolutely NO "right or wrong" to any of this! What is "right" for one collector might be completely wrong for another. But I can tell you some things I have observed over the years:

1) Many collectors end up with "quantity" over "quality". Why is this? Because you can often get bargains on "lesser" items, but top items almost ALWAYS attract many bidders and sell for a high price. But often a few years down the road those top items appreciate far more than the lesser items, and often the lesser items sell for the same or less as they did a few years before.

2) There have been lots and lots of types of movie paper that has gone in and out of fashion over the years. Be careful not to get caught up in a "bubble" where prices have risen drastically on a type of item, because many "hot" items later "cool" off considerably.

3) Research, research, research! You want to be up on what the various posters and other movie paper items look like (on movies you like, or poster images you would love to own) and you also want to research what prices items you are looking have sold for in the past, and a general sense of how rare each item is.

FORTUNATELY, THERE IS ONE PLACE ON THE INTERNET WHERE YOU CAN FIND OUT ALL OF THIS! It is our "Auction History Database" at http://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/archive.html where you will find 1,281,930 guaranteed authentic auction results and 1,233,164 images attached to those auctions (a very few of our oldest auctions do not have images). With this database at hand, you can become a MUCH more informed collector in short amount of time, but be prepared to stay a while when visiting, because "surfing" it can be very addicting (especially when you use our wonderful "Search Filters" which make your time there much more productive!

So I hope everyone reading this will think about what kind of collection they want to have, and start taking steps towards achieving that goal. If you do, you will be much happier a few years from now!