Movie Poster Grading Service?

As a follow up to the post I made the other day about third party poster authentication, the subject also brings up the issue of third party movie poster grading. Typically collectors counted on the dealers and auction houses they bought their posters from for grading, and of course would use their own eyes once receiving the poster to back that up. It has been this way for over 20 years, and some ask why should that change. Well with the recent events of fraudulent movie posters being made to look old with fakes stamps, marks, and even poster restoration, this has become a much harder task for the collector to determine what he or she is actually getting. Restoration (i.e linen backing, paper backing, cleaning, bleaching, recreation etc.) is acceptable in the movie posters hobby and in my opinion will continue to be. BUT full disclosure needs to be presented to the buyer at or before the time of purchase, so an informed decision can be made. I have several movie posters, window cards, and even lobby cards in my collection that have had restoration ranging from minor cleaning, to actual areas of the poster recreated where paper was missing. The difference is knew the condition of the posters I was buying, and decided to do so bases on that posters rarity or my desire to own a copy now, with the anticipations of upgrading condition at a later time when another one became available. Third party grading and authentication companies as I mentioned in earlier posts are done for several other hobbies, and the typically the grading system is on a numbered basis from 1 being the worst to 10 being mint. In comic books there are two separate grading systems, one for restored books, and another for unrestored comics. As you would guess the same comic in unrestored shape is worth much more than a book that has had restoration. The one factor with this type of grading is the item has to be encapsulated in a tamper proof holder and cannot be removed or it will void the grade and guarantee from the grading company.

I do not think this will work for movie posters for three main reasons;

1. Restoration is accepted in our hobby and is sometimes needed to preserve the paper and save the poster. (Remember movie posters were not made to be collected like comic books, baseball cards, etc. There were made on cheap pulp paper and meant to last a year or less hanging or glues to walls to advertise a film while it was in, or before it was released to movie theaters)

2. Rarity - Even the most common of movie posters from pre-1950 that are still around today number much less than 100 copies, and some do not exist at all. There is simply not enough supply out there to make this a viable business for a company to invest in.

3. Encapsulation - I do not know of any serious collectors, myself included, that would want to take their posters out of a frame or display book, send them out to a company to encase them in some plastic holder, making them very hard to store, or display nicely.

I am not saying this is a dead issue but we need to go back to the drawing board on this one. At least that is my two cents worth.

Best

Ralph DeLuca