ARE YOU LOOKING TO BUY MOVIE POSTERS OR RELATED ITEMS? We are the world's leading auctioneer of movie posters and related items. You are currently on one of our non-auction pages. We hold 4,000 to 5,000 auctions every FOUR WEEKS. To learn more about our auctions, click here. To register to bid on our auctions, click here.

About eMoviePoster.com:

In the past 32 years, we have auctioned MORE movie paper for MORE money than ANY other auction company, period!

EVERY item we auction starts at $1, with NO reserve, and NO buyers premium, and EVERY item is honestly described, with an unenhanced super-sized image!

We charge consignors the lowest rates of ANY major auction, and we have held over 1,834,000 online auctions!

Go to our current auctions in our Auction Galleries, and you will quickly see why we are the most trusted auction site!

eMoviePoster.com was founded in 1999 as the first all-movie poster auction website. We have auctioned well over 1.8 MILLION posters (movie and NON-movie), lobby cards, stills and related items through our auctions since 1999, surely the most of any online auction!

eMoviePoster.com

eMoviePoster.com - The most trusted vintage original movie poster site & the only major online auction with no buyers premiums!

What are the objects in the corners of some images? Learn More
Login or Register to see large images.
Auction History Result

1z204 MASTER MYSTERY linen chapter 3 1sh 1919 serial, Harry Houdini's 1st & 1st robot, ultra rare!

Date Sold 12/5/2019
Sold For: Login or Register to see sold price.


An Original Vintage Theatrical Linenbacked Chapter #3 (The Water Peril) One-Sheet Movie Poster (1sh; measures 27" x 41" [69 x 104 cm]) (Learn More)

The Master Mystery, the 1919 Harry Grossman & Burton L. King silent mystery magic crime serial ("A super-serial"; "By Arthur B. Reeve and Charles A. Logue"; Houdini is an agent of the Justice Department, sent to investigate a bogus giant company, which is well guarded, especially with the help of a robot, in the movie called "The Automaton", which was the very first robot ever to appear in any movie!) starring Harry Houdini, Marguerite Marsh, Ruth Stonehouse, Edna Britton, and William Pike. Note that this serial movie was Houdini's first appearance in a movie, and the producers knew what his fans wanted, and almost every chapter ended with Houdini captured, and the next one began with him making an amazing escape. Note that for years it was thought that 13 of the 15 chapters of this movie survived. But it now seems that all of the chapters exist, although they are not all in one place (at the last time that I read). Two different archives have multiple chapters, and between them, they seem to have them all. The great magician Harry Houdini only appeared in this movie and four others, and none of those were serials. Movie paper of any kind from any of those five movies is incredibly rare!
NOTE: Click on linked names to see a biography.
If you know who did the art (if any), please let us know.
Important Added Info: As noted above, this movie was Harry Houdini's very first movie, and it was his only serial, and it had "The Automaton", the very first robot in a movie. So it is certainly a very historic movie. Posters from it were unknown until around 35 years ago, when the son of the man who produced the movie surfaced, and he had one one-sheet from each of the fifteen chapters! Those were quickly sold, and later, another complete set of the posters were discovered at a Houdini museum. Over the years, some of these posters (from both sets) have gone to auction (we have auctioned a number of different chapters over our many years of auctioning). In 2013, we auctioned a one-sheet from "The Grim Game", another Houdini movie, but not a serial, and that poster auctioned for $67,166, a world record for a Houdini poster (either movie poster or magic poster)! In June 2019, we auctioned a chapter that we had never auctioned before (chapter 9), and that one showed Houdini pointing a gun at the Automaton, and that poster auctioned for $28,500! Now, we are auctioning the one-sheet from chapter 3 (which we have also never auctioned before), which shows Houdini pointing at a safe that he has rigged with wires (of course, he was famous for opening safes as a magic trick), with the silhouette of the Automaton is behind him! In 2016, the Houdini museum that owned an example of this poster (which may be the only other surviving example of this poster), and that example sold for $28,080, slightly under what we auctioned the chapter 9 one-sheet for in June 2019. And the fact that this is 2019 is also significant! That is because this is no longer a "collectible movie poster", but it is now an "antique movie poster", because just about everybody defines an "antique" as being a century old, and this poster now is a full 100 years old! In case you were wondering, for many years, it was thought that two of the chapters of this movie did not exist, and one of them was this chapter 3. But, as noted above, it has now been located, and in this chapter 3, Houdini is assisting Marguerite Marsh, who has stored papers in a safe, ones that if they get out, will ruin her and her business. Houdini has ingeniously rigged wires to the safe that, if someone tries to break in, will both notify him and hold the person that tries to break in, and he mentions that this might "discover who is in the automaton"!

What IS linenbacking? Learn More

Overall Condition and Pre-Restoration Defects with Quality of Restoration: very good. The poster had tiny paper loss at the top crossfold and slight darkening along the top horizontal fold, with very minor wear on the other folds. It had a 1 1/4" tear in the top border, slightly extending into the red background, and a 1 1/4" tear in the left of the bottom border, extending into the edge of the circle, with some small tears and tiny stains in the rest of the borders. Overall, the poster was in very good condition prior to linenbacking. It likely has survived in as good condition as one could hope, especially since is it a century old!
Learn More about condition grades

Complete Buyer Protection - No time limit on our guarantees & NO buyer beware
Hershenson Help Hotline - Direct line to Bruce (our owner!) for urgent problems
Also, please read the following two pages of Consignor Reviews - Page 1, Page 2, and two pages of Customer Reviews of our company - Page 1, Page 2, which shows you in our customers' own words exactly what makes our company and our auctions so very different from all others!


LAMP Approved - Founding Sponsor since 2001 - eMoviePoster
Postal Mailing Address:
Bruce Hershenson, P.O. Box 874, West Plains, MO 65775. 
(For our UPS or FedEx address, click here)
phone: +1 417 256-9616     fax: +1 417 257-6948
E-mail: Contact Us
Hours of Operation:
Monday - Friday 8:30 AM - 12:00 PM & 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM (CDT)