First, let
us find out if you are a good
candidate for our selling your items. Your items need to have a realistic retail
value of at least $50 per item (they could possibly retail for
as low as $30 each, IF they are in wonderful condition!). You need to be willing to send them to
us and trust us with them. You need to let us sell them with NO minimum bid for each item, and
accept the possibility that you may receive less for some items than you thought they were
worth. After we sell your items, we will send you (the end of the month after the
month in which your posters were sold) a
printed report that shows what each item sold for, and how much you will receive for each
item after our commission (see below), and a check for payment in full. So basically, you
need to trust us with your material during the time we have it, and trust that
we will
honestly report how much each item sold for (although, since they will have sold
on our auction site, you will be able to "follow along" and
verify what we say). If you have any doubt about your willingness
to trust me, stop reading now! We can say that we have paid out many millions of dollars to
hundreds of people such as yourself, and we have had only a couple of dissatisfied consignors
(out of over 1,000),
a record we are very proud of!
There are many positives to having
us sell your
items for you online. You get all the benefits of selling online without going to all the
time and expense of learning how to do it. You don’t even have to be online yourself!
And you may end up with almost as much money as you would have if you had sold the items
yourself, without doing any work at all!
How can that possibly be? For several reasons.
Most of the online bidders know us and know that we always describe everything honestly and
send purchases out within 24 hours of receiving payment (and we can take credit cards),
very securely wrapped (in specially made extra-strong boxes and tubes). This makes bidders
more likely to bid on an item I’m offering than one offered by someone unknown to
them (like you!). And since we almost always have between five hundred and one thousand items up for bid, they will be
more inclined to look over our auctions because we will probably have something to interest
them. There are many hundreds of people who regularly check our auctions, who would probably miss your
item unless they hit on it by chance!
Now for the details.
We have carefully figured
out how much time and effort goes into selling an item online, from start to finish. It
takes the exact same amount of work to sell a $10 one-sheet as a $1000 one-sheet. The cost
to us of the labor and overhead required to sell each item is an absolute minimum of $9 each. The vast
majority of people pay with credit cards or PayPal, which costs us roughly three percent of the total. Taking everything into consideration, we have arrived at the following commission rates
(note that the rate is very high on sub-$30 items (and sky-high on sub-$12 items) in order to greatly discourage
people from sending such items; we lose a substantial amount of money on all items that sell for just a
few dollars each, and we are trying really hard to get people to stop sending them, as they "drag down" the final prices
for all items):
Items selling for $ .01 to $ 7.99 | | 75% of the actual selling price |
Items selling for $ 8.00 to $ 11.99 | | 66% of the actual selling price |
Items selling for $ 12.00 to $ 19.99 | | 60% of the actual selling price |
Items selling for $ 20.00 to $ 29.99 | | 50% of the actual selling price |
Items selling for $ 30.00 to $ 39.99 | | 40% of the actual selling price |
Items selling for $ 40.00 to $ 69.99 | | 35% of the actual selling price |
Items selling for $ 70.00 to $ 99.99 | | 30% of the actual selling price |
Items selling for $100.00 to $299.99 | | 28% of the actual selling price |
Items selling for $300.00 to $399.99 | | 26% of the actual selling price |
Items selling for $400.00 to $499.99 | | 24% of the actual selling price |
Items selling for $500.00 to $999.99 | | 22% of the actual selling price |
Items selling for $1000.00+ | | 20% of the actual selling price |
These may seem like really high rates on the sub-$20 items, but in
actuality, we will not come close to breaking even on the sub-$20 items, because
we have an hour of labor in
every item, and we don't get enough to pay for that hour for items that sell for under $20, plus
we still
have to pay all the web hosting fees, advertising fees, and credit card fees (I’ll get
$5.99
for an item that sells for $7.99, but we still lose money on that item! We get $7.20 for an item that
sells for $11.99, but we still lose money on that item! We get $12.00 for an item that
sells for $19.99, and we probably just barely break even on that item, which is a waste of
our time!)
Therefore, we have made these rates extremely high on the sub-$20 items in an attempt
to get people to stop sending them to me! Sub-$20 items COST us money (we lose money on almost every one)
and they cost our consignors money, because having a lot of sub-$20 items causes bidders to lose interest
in bidding, and they bid less than they do when there are very few sub-$20 items! Remember
that we must pay all the website fees, the credit card fees, and the cost of sending the
items, and, unlike every other major auction company, WE CHARGE NO BUYERS PREMIUMS TO
OUR CUSTOMERS!
Please realize that if you listed these lower priced items yourself, you would probably find that you weren’t
even earning minimum wage, after taking into account the amount of time you spent and the
fees you would pay. Selling items for just a few dollars each is just a waste of
everyone’s time. We are looking for individuals who have items that have a
minimum realistic value of at least
$20 per item, and will trust us to be honest with them and to price the items fairly.
Using this system, you can send us a box of posters and within a couple of months,
you’ll start getting monthly checks for what sold the previous month, until all of your items are
sold, and you won't have to do anything other than pack the box!
What if you have posters that are only worth a few dollars each,
and you simply want to get rid of them? We can create "bulk lots" of 20 to 100 posters each,
containing such posters, and auction them for you that way. You won't get that much money for
the posters, but you WILL get more than you could selling them any other way, and there is no
effort on your part. Plus, if you sell 100 posters for $1 each in a bulk lot, you only pay the commission on the
$100 sale, not the commissions on the individual $1 sales, so that is far better for you.
If this seems good for you, then
we need you to
provide us with some details about what you have, along with your phone number.
After we review what you send me, we will call or e-mail you to make sure we are
in general agreement as to what your posters are worth. Then you’ll send us your
posters, and we will begin to get them listed at auction
the next time we sell those size(s) of poster (we sell a different size of
poster each week, and it takes us around three months to run through all the
sizes). Since we work months in advance, it may take several months for the first of your items to be
listed, especially if they are not very valuable, or unusual sizes that we sell far less often (generally
we auction items that are valuable very quickly, but inexpensive items may take
quite a bit longer to auction, which we think is only fair).
PLEASE DO NOT
SEND INEXPENSIVE ITEMS (or "difficult" items like six-sheets or 40x60s, or
special large items) UNLESS YOU CAN ACCEPT THAT IT MAY TAKE US 6 MONTHS, A YEAR OR MORE
TO AUCTION THEM. But we really do auction 95% of what we are sent within a
few months! It is the "oddball" and very inexpensive items that take a very long time to get
auctioned (and it would be fine with us if no one sent those).
Of course, you can start with some items and
see how they do, and then decide from there. But if we see that we are not making money at
these rates, we will raise them. Let us tell you that we have sold over 300,000 items
online in the past 10 years, and
we are extremely happy
with the results as are 99% of our consignors! We are 100% sure that we will get you far more money for your items than
you would get by selling them to any dealer, or consigning them to any other auction company,
and if you sell them yourself, you will AT BEST get around what you would have gotten from
us after our commissions, but you will have done a LOT of work!
We can be contacted via e-mail on our
contact form
By phone at: 417 256 9616 (business hours are Mon to Fri, 9 to 5 except from 12
to 1 when we take lunch)
By fax at: 417 257 6948
If our consignment terms above are agreeable,
please send the items (securely wrapped) to (if by Post Office):
Bruce Hershenson
Attention: Consignments
P.O. Box 874
West Plains, MO 65775
Our address for UPS, FedEx, or DHL only is:
Bruce Hershenson
Attention: Consignments
306 Washington Avenue
West Plains, MO 65775
WHEN SENDING CONSIGNMENTS, PLEASE BE SURE TO INCLUDE A SHEET OF PAPER THAT
LISTS: your name, phone number, mailing address, AND e-mail address
with your package. We will let you know after we have opened your package and
examined the items you sent.
We look forward to hearing from you!
Bruce Hershenson & the staff at eMoviePoster.com
