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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;User 67, post: 7289, member: 67&quot;]In regard to Rare Posters dot com, I just took a closer look at the search you suggested. Thank you.</p><p><br /></p><p>I think what they (rp.com) are doing right is that they also sell high end posters, art work and art books. No doubt they may go to a sale and pick up higher ($500+) and lower end (under $20) pieces</p><p>I still can&#039;t believe that selling only offset poster prints would make for a thriving business model. You can price a poster at $500, but that doesn&#039;t mean it will sell. I&#039;m still having a hard time believing that there is a serious market for offset posters. Who buys them? I guess, there has never been a shortage of fools.</p><p><br /></p><p>As a pretty decorative piece for 20 bucks, sure. As a $2,000 collectible, at that price I&#039;d rather invest in real art or sterling. But if you can buy a poster print for $2 and sell it for $2,000, who wouldn&#039;t? I&#039;m just saying, more power to you.</p><p><br /></p><p>I went to the site to check out the offset posters and I was shocked.</p><p><br /></p><p>I entered &#039;offset lithograph&#039; and sorted the search by price and indeed there were around 3,000 listings starting at $10 (which doesn&#039;t say rare to me, and several of the same baseball poster show up on the first page. In the $10-$20 range I found what I would expect to see, quite a few museum poster prints (surrealism, Botero, impressionists, Pop Art, Art Deco graphic art, garden watercolors and babies). These are the kinds of things you see on Allposters.com, but I have to admit they were chosen with a decorators or art lovers eye, even if geared to the broadest market. I&#039;d like to imagined that $20 would be the nut for these posters but the under $20 prices only number about 100, while those priced $20-$30 number about 240 ($25 being the apparent nut)</p><p><br /></p><p>200 @ $35; 600 @ $45;</p><p><br /></p><p>I am a little shocked at this point, as only about a third of their off-set posters are priced under $46, a price that seems in line with the new poster market.</p><p><br /></p><p>180 @ $ 50; 120 @ $60; 330 @ $75;</p><p><br /></p><p>At these 600 or so posters is where I start scratching my head. These are for the most part posters with bold, stirring images from the usual suspects: Magritte, Pop Artists, Movie Legends and odes to a Harley Davidson. I am thinking, if I were helping to decorate a friends home, I might steer them to a poster like this to frame for wall art. But nothing in this selection looks any more or less ordinary than what I can find at Allposters.com. I&#039;m wondering what is the appeal of this site over allposters?</p><p><br /></p><p>30 @ $100; 450 @ $125;</p><p><br /></p><p>The prices jump from $75 to $100, and that&#039;s the point where I spit out my coffee onto my key board. To my way of thinking, for $100 I should be able to go to an art fair and find a wonderful little something from an emerging artist (I remember seeing the most enchanting glass 5&quot; busts at an art&#039;s booth in Coachella Valley a few years back and I still regret not buying one at $125!)</p><p><br /></p><p>This is about the half way mark.</p><p><br /></p><p>Okay, in this range I am seeing the Leo Castelli gallery posters, which I will grant are collectible, and always made on good quality paper and top quality printing in limited editions without reissues. If you were going to collect off-set printing these might be some of the hallmarks.</p><p><br /></p><p>If I were buying an offset poster from rare posters in this range, I would be very careful of what I was getting and it&#039;s relative value. Many of these posters don&#039;t seem to fit the value and the sellers also seem to be taking shots in the dark perhaps asking a ridiculous price hoping to snag the buyer who equates value with the cost, if it&#039;s too low, they think it&#039;s crap.&nbsp; I am also seeing quite a few of these with a big purple &quot;MAKE OFFER&quot; button.</p><p><br /></p><p>Also, the descriptions on these items is deficient, that would make me, as a buyer, skeptical. To not take the time (for a $125 item) to list the museum, date, and any information printed on the poster, is unconscionable. It makes me believe that they are hiding something, trying to make it hard for me to research what I am buying -meaning these posters are probably objectionabley over priced (otherwise why wouldn&#039;t they tell me what they are selling?) They also list &quot;Estimates&quot; on their Make-an-Offer items that are not in line with the search parameters, which seems like a double red flag that would make me run from this particular site.</p><p><br /></p><p>What is the draw? I have to admit that the search engines at sites like All posters are atrocious. (You try to narrow your search with more words and actually are broadening it.) Am I paying a premium ($50+) at rareposters.com for a better search engine and a marketing that boarders on being crass and pretentious? I mean, pretentious sells, right? Also if you click their suggested-you-might-like listings, at the bottom of the listing pages, you are sent to a registration page. You are not allowed to view that very precious item. That is another red flag that reminds me of the Emperor&#039;s New Clothes, forcing me to jump through hoops before I am bestowed the privilege of seeing their &#039;private&#039; gallery. Sheesh.</p><p><br /></p><p>In this price range I am seeing museum posters from 1968, for instance. Personally, I really don&#039;t want a faded, (shows slight signs of wear) artist&#039;s show poster, I would rather have a modern poster depicting that same artists work. Now if it were a rock show poster from 1968, that&#039;s another thing. Or a hippy freak out poster from 1968, okay, but a faded poster of an obscure James Rosenquist show from 1968? I&#039;ll pass even at $20, let alone $125.</p><p><br /></p><p>I am gob-smaked that anyone would pay that price for the vast majority of the posters they have listed at this price range. There is no way to tell how many, if any, they actually sell at $125. I am not saying that there aren&#039;t posters worth $125, just that most of these seem <a href="http://news.distractify.com/people/amazing/18-ridiculously-expensive-things-you-didnt-know-existed/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://news.distractify.com/people/amazing/18-ridiculously-expensive-things-you-didnt-know-existed/" rel="nofollow">ridiculously overpriced</a>. But as PT Barnum said, there&#039;s a sucker born every minute. I will bet you anything if you offer to sell to Rareposter.com most of these posters they have listed at $125, they wouldn&#039;t pay you $75, or even $50, I bet they don&#039;t pay over $20 for them and maybe not even that. I am sure they would tell you that they don&#039;t buy through the internet because they can&#039;t see the item. And if you showed up at their offices in New York with an exact poster listed in that price range, They would either say flat out they aren&#039;t interested they got one all ready that they can&#039;t sell or they will tell you that they don&#039;t buy, but have buyers who work for them. No, they can not give you the contact information of any of their buyers.</p><p><br /></p><p>This company does also sell real art and they sell a lot of art books. I imagine that their real money comes from the sale of artist signed work, they probably purchase large (dealers) lots and from estate liquidations (final day), so these off-set litho posters are probably a way to sell the better offset posters, but also try to make a buck off of the dregs that come along with their large lot purchases. I don&#039;t know. I can&#039;t imagine that they scour thrift shops looking for it.</p><p><br /></p><p>90 @ $150; 120 @ $175;</p><p><br /></p><p>This is the price range where I am throwing up in my mouth a little bit.</p><p><br /></p><p>180 @ $250; 30 @ $275; 30 @ $350; 30 @ $375;</p><p><br /></p><p>Suddenly the prices jump from $175 to $250. Okay here they have that image made for the poster by Chagall, but it&#039;s a reprint of the original poster made 10 years later, at $250 you have to be a little impressed that rare posters finally does take the time to tell you a little about what you are buying and <a href="http://www.rareposters.com/index.php/chagall-the-magic-flute-die-zauberflote.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.rareposters.com/index.php/chagall-the-magic-flute-die-zauberflote.html" rel="nofollow">make an effort to describe</a> the printing to a minor extent.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here&#039;s a $250 poster <a href="http://www.rareposters.com/index.php/deyrolle-le-the-tea-history.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.rareposters.com/index.php/deyrolle-le-the-tea-history.html" rel="nofollow">Deyrolle Le Thé</a></p><p>that has languished at BIN on eBay for ages</p><p><a href="http://www.ebay.com/itm/301023126356" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.ebay.com/itm/301023126356" rel="nofollow">Planche pédagogique Deyrolle Le Thé</a></p><p>€16.50/$22.42 + €11.35/ $15.42 international shipping (That&#039;s $37.84. If I could purchase posters on eBay for $37.84 and talk someone into buying them from me for $250 plus shipping, I&#039;d be making millions, too.</p><p><br /></p><p>I will grant that many of these are portfolio signed prints, but I would still be skeptical of paying that price for an offset.</p><p><br /></p><p>One of the mysteries of the selections in this price range is the great number of posters where they don&#039;t even have an image (Image Coming Soon) or title (Unkown), how weird is that?</p><p><br /></p><p>I mean, I know my job here, if this is a debate and I am trying to support my first assumptions and beliefs, but come on, they are making it too easy.</p><p>And another red flag is that sometimes they show the prints framed and matted and other times not, are they selling the frame with the poster? Well, no, they are not.</p><p><br /></p><p>30 @ $400; 30 @ $450; 30 @ $500;</p><p><br /></p><p>Now we are over the 2/3 point of their listings?</p><p>at this point my eye did catch a 1940s French movie poster, which would seem to be priced okay. A 1960 Picasso poster. One off images for the Metropolitan Opera and Gallery (not museum) posters and billboard sized posters.</p><p><br /></p><p>30 @ $700-875; 30 @ $875-1,800; 30 @ $1,800-5,500;</p><p><br /></p><p>If you catch me buying any of these posters at that price, you may have grounds to get me committed.</p><p><br /></p><p>Conclusion:</p><p><br /></p><p>First of all, the numbers listed above are general and reflect the search pages (30 items per page) rather than the actual offerings, if that makes sense. I did not look into these listings in a very detailed way. However, <i>I will admit</i> that there is a more healthy market for offset posters than I ever imagined, I <i>will concede</i> that for sure! I just don&#039;t believe that this site is an accurate refection of what most dealers can expect to see, price wise. Perhaps cut the prices in half, and in some instances even by a quarter and that may reflect what you would expect to get in your shop if you let it sit there for a year or two.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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