eMoviePoster.com

Very sadly many collectors don't want to face their own mortality, and, after they pass away, their heirs often have NO IDEA what to do with the collections they often spent several decades building? Over the years, I, Bruce Hershenson, have received a lot of phones from the relatives or heirs of a collector who recently passed away, and they tell me that the collector told them, "If anything ever happens to me, call Bruce Hershenson at this number, because he will be completely honest with you AND you will get the most possible money".

But I have also received a surprising number of phone calls where the relatives or heirs of the collector who recently passed away left them no instructions, but they went through their papers and found a number of invoices from me, so they figured they would start by calling me. Almost always those relatives or heirs end up consigning to us, so they were not hurt by the collector not informing them.

But in many other cases, the relatives or heirs have no clue what to do, and in the worst case, they sometimes sell the collection to a dealer for pennies on the dollar (and often those collectors will brag about what a "great deal" they got). But also unfortunate is when the relatives or heirs choose an auction that is nearby to where they live, or they go on Google and call the auction that takes out the biggest ads (not realizing that the reason they can afford those big ads is because they charge the highest fees).

This sadly happened with two recent auctions of collections from a single owner. One was a collection of all horror/sci-fi items, and the other was a collection of mostly classic Warner Bros one-sheets. Both auctions had overall lackluster results, and in both cases I feel 100% sure we at eMoviePoster.com would have received substantially overall higher results.

But that is not all. Because of the FAR higher overall commissions those auctions charge, in both cases the consignors received FAR less from the auctions they gave the collections to than they would have received from us, likely maybe half as much overall. So if you don't want this to happen to your relatives or heirs, make 100% sure they know who to contact in case something happens to you, and make sure they have the contact info!