Valley Independent Sentinel

Could Movie Posters Raise Cash For The Strand?

by Tony Spinelli | Jan 5, 2011 12:03 pm

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Posted to: Seymour

Those movie memories in the Strand Theater on Main Street could be worth money for the Seymour Culture and Arts Commission.

The basement is packed with hundreds, “if not thousands,” of movie posters from flicks that have screened in the theater in the past 15 years or so.

Members of the commission are considering organizing the collection and, possibly, auctioning off the posters to raise money to help replace the Strand’s marquee, seats and carpeting.

The idea is scheduled to be discussed at the commission’s next meeting, Jan. 11 at 7 p.m. at Town Hall.

The commission leases the old movie house from the owner, the Knights of Columbus. Movies in the past 15 years include popular titles such as “The Phantom Menace” and “Toy Story III,” although it is not certain which films are represented or how many copies of the promotional lobby posters there are.

“They could be worth nothing, they could be worth a couple of dollars,” said Judy Simpson, chairwoman of the commission.

The idea is to find out what is there, and what they could be worth. Then choose a method for selling them, for example, through an auction. Simpson expressed an interest in doing the auction locally, since Seymour is known as the antiques and auction capitol of the Naugatuck Valley.

The downtown area has a number of antiques shops and a live auction every Tuesday night at Keystone Associates on First Street.

“We do want to raise money,” Simpson said.

She said she is certain it is not a small fortune, but any money raised would help. A quick check of poster prices on eBay showed that in good condition they are selling for anywhere from $5 to $25, sometimes more.

The most valuable and collectible movie posters are the old ones, from the 1930s and 1940s, for example. But those would not be in the Strand collection because the commission has only been showing second-run movies for the past 15 years or so.

Movie posters expert Rudy Franchi, who has appeared for the past 15 years as an appraiser on the popular television show “Antiques Roadshow,” said only the true vintage posters have much collectible value.

“I am hard pressed to come up with any valuable titles from the last 20 years,” Franchi wrote in an e-mail.

He operates several appraisal services, including posterappraisal.com.

The key is to have an original movie poster, not a copy. Even then the value is not as great as it was years ago.

When the Internet came along as a method of buying and selling, the market for collectible posters became flooded, Franchi said, and the prices dropped.

“Posters that I had sold for well over $100 in 1998 or ’99 now trade for under $20. Not even the provenance of buying a poster from a movie theater that actually showed the film helps much since the market has been so debased. Collectors have fled the hobby, many stuck with large holdings of posters they cannot sell for anything near what they paid for them,” Franchi said.

But still, $10 or $20 per poster multiplied by 1,000 posters or more could be money in the bank for the arts commission.

That is what they are hoping for. Some are apparently unique.

“Some of the posters are double-sided, made for being seen on both sides of a window,” Simpson said.

The Strand shows movies on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, at a price of $4.50 per ticket. The snack bar is also more reasonably priced than a commercial theater.

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