eMoviePoster.com

In May of 1990 I, Bruce Hershenson, became a full-time movie poster auctioneer, and that year I took in around two million dollars from my movie poster auctions and my semi-annual sales catalogs. By early 1998 I was hearing more and more about something called "the World Wide Web" and I decided to join it and see if there was any way to use it to enhance my auction business!

Over the next few months I began emailing with some of my customers, and in June of 1998 (WAY before I held my first online auction or sale of ANY kind) I decided to start a weekly email club, offering a great deal each week to the members, and also sharing news about the hobby, and info for newer collectors. I sent that first club message to 35 people, with an offer for the hardcover book Graven Images (which was published at $50) for just $10 for one copy of this wonderful book!

Here is that very first historic club message from June of 1998 (emailed to just 35 people!):

"This is the first of a series of e-mails I will be sending once a week to everyone in my e-mail club. The common denominator that joins everyone in this club is that we all collect vintage movie posters. The club can be anything you want it to be. My sole purpose in creating it is to make it easier for people to learn more about collecting. When I first started back in 1969, it was extremely difficult for new collectors to learn about the hobby. Now there are many ways to gain knowledge about many different aspects of poster collecting, and the internet will make it easier than ever to quickly learn about collecting, and how to avoid costly "mistakes". Please send me any suggestions you have along this line. I'm open to any idea. I am moving in August to a much larger warehouse which will allow me to pursue a lot of projects that I couldn't do for lack of space. I have tons of material (books and posters) and there's a lot of things that I'd rather sell than move. So you're going to see a lot of items offered in these weekly e-mails at ridiculously low prices. It will all be on a first come, first served basis. This week, I'm going to offer copies of Graven Images, the great hardcover book. It originally sold for $50, and I bought out all of the remaining copies and I currently sell them for $35 each. Unfortunately for me, just about every case contained one copy that has a two or three inch "slice" in the dustjacket, where somebody at the printing plant cut open the boxes with a blade, and cut just deeply enough to "score" the jacket (sometimes on the front, sometimes on the back). Otherwise the book and the jacket are just about perfect. I'll sell anyone in this club (while my supply lasts) these "sliced" copies for only ten dollars each! Because each book weighs three pounds, I'll need $5 shipping for the first book, and $1 each additional (in the United States; elsewhere you'll have to pay the actual shipping costs). To make things more exciting, I'll give the first five people who order one copy for free (if they order one, there's no charge, if they order two or more, they'll get one free). I'll go strictly by the order in which I receive your e-mail orders. To order, send me an e-mail, and be sure to include your shipping address and how you are going to pay. This offer expires June 14th or when my supply is exhausted. Next e-mail I'll give a lot of news updates, as well another special offering. If you don't want to get the next one, just e-mail me, and I'll take you out of the club."

Over the years, the club has grown and grown, and this week we have 17,093 members  (not bad from those humble beginnings)!

Did you  know that you can view (and search) all of our 1,041 past club messages HERE: https://www.emovieposter.com/club/archive.php?

Please know that the search for the club works different from that of our Auction History and Galleries in that it searches the exact phrase you type. Because of this, you may perform a search and get a large number of results. If so, then you should think of a different word or phrase to search for. If you get too few results, you should reduce the length of the phrase you are using or try searching for different keywords. We will make the search "smarter" in the future.

Also note that all club messages prior to #325 were "condensed" in an effort to make it easier to access the unique information presented in each message and to eliminate the information about the current week's offerings. Messages #325 and on are presented as they were originally issued, so they will always refer to past auctions and/or events that are no longer relevant, but they also contain unique information such as news and general movie paper info that is certainly still relevant. Also in those club messages prior to #325 we had some regular features in the club (like questions and answers and collector profiles) which we "stripped out' of those messages and put on a different part of our site.

One of the most valuable features of the early club messages were the many questions I published each week from club members. Back then, so MANY people were discovering movie poster collecting (and the hobby) each week through the Internet that I would receive lots of emails every week with questions about many different aspects of posters and poster collecting.

Each week I would spend around 3 hours compiling all the questions that had been asked that week, and I would write out answers to each and every one of them, and publish them in the club messages. So if YOU want to learn a LOT more about posters and poster collecting, I advise you to look at the old club messages (either one by one, or by searching them) and I think you will be amazed at how much good information is contained therein. And if you find any incorrect or outdated information, let me know what that is so I can correct it!