eMoviePoster.com

Most collecting hobbies take their grading systems from that used by coins, the oldest collectible. Because coins were created in "mints", a coin that is flawless became known as being in "mint" condition, and it means one that is as perfect as it was the day it was created.

This may work fine for coins, but movie posters were NOT "minted" and after they were created they were either actually used in movie theaters or sent to movie poster exchanges, where they sat for decades on dusty shelves unprotected. Even posters that were never used almost always show SOME signs of age and wear, while almost all those that WERE used have a good amount of wear, even if they are in generally nice condition.

But all movie poster auctioneers stubbornly stick to this ill-advised grading system, calling really nice condition posters "mint" and then using "near mint", "very fine", "fine", "very good", "good", "fair" and "poor" to describe items with greater defects. I THINK their thinking is that they hope by using such optimistic sounding words the bidders will be fooled (at least subliminally) into thinking posters are in better condition than they actually are (after all, how bad can a "fine" condition poster be?). The truth of the matter is that it can be pretty darn bad! Since it is four grades down from the top grade (even with leaving out the in-between grades like "very fine to near mint") it describes a poster that has LOTS of defects, and I assure you that no one would look at it and say "That is a fine poster!"

So we at eMoviePoster.com completely junked this fatally flawed system, and substituted one of our own (one that I successfully used as a major comic book dealer from 1966 to 1976). OUR top grade is "fine", which describes a posters that is pretty close to defect free (we can't use "mint" or "near mint", because no poster was "minted"!). Our next grade is "very good to fine" which describes a poster with just a few defects, but one that is in clearly better condition than the vast majority of similar posters (in terms of country, size, and age). Next comes "very good", which describes a posters that has clear defects, but ones that are not very distracting, and a poster where the majority of collectors would be happy to display it "as is".

Next comes "good to very good", where the defects are not significant enough that many collectors would want to repair or restore them before displaying the poster, but they are not the sort that are very difficult to repair, or are not terribly distracting, so there are still some number of collectors who would display the poster as it is. Next comes "good", where the defects ARE significant enough that many collectors would want to repair or restore them before displaying the poster. Below that are "fair" and "poor" where the defects are REALLY significant, and it might be quite costly to repair them. And of course there are all the in-between grades ("good to very good", etc) for all those posters on the edge between two different grades.

But even OUR grading system has evolved some over the years, as we have auctioned many hundreds of thousands of posters and have seen the need to make "fine tune" adjustments! First and foremost, we made a sliding scale where we grade posters based on how most posters of that size and era are found. So Australian daybills from the 1960s on (for example) are graded FAR more harshly than most other posters, because so many of them are found in great condition, while U.S. silent one-sheets (for another example) are graded FAR less harshly than most other posters, because so many of them are found in lesser (or much lesser) condition.

The reason for this seems obvious. If Australian daybills from the 1960s on were graded on exactly the same scale as U.S. silent one-sheets, then most of those daybills would get our top grade of "fine" while most of those silent one-sheets would get our bottom grade of "poor", and how does that help anyone?

Another adjustment is that we found that too many posters were being graded as "very good" and not very many as "very good to fine" or "good to very good", so we have made a real effort to grade the best of the "very good" posters as "very good to fine", and the least of the "very good" posters as "good to very good", and that has seemed to help bidders quite a bit, as they now better know which posters are in the best condition, and which are in the worst, and to also get a good sense of each item's TRUE condition!

Because the above is the bottom line on condition grading, it doesn't matter what names you give the grades, or if you use letters or numbers. What DOES matter is how often the buyer opens their package and are happy with what they got, and how often the buyer opens their package and are disappointed with what they got! We know full well our system works, because we only get a tiny number of items returned for condition, and we regularly get LOTS of feedback from buyers praising our honest and accurate grading!