eBay Archives - Page 9 of 14

Poster, poster, poster, table.

eBay

There are a ridiculous number of posters on eBay right now, and I’m not just talking about the Crownfolio clearance sale. The poster collectors of the world seem to be spring cleaning with a vengance. Or something. Whatever the cause may be though, there are posters out there and you can buy each and every one of them for money.

To start with, worthydownbookstore have unleashed a flood of health and public information posters. Now I quite like a few of these. Although I am less of a fan of the carpet.

But I don’t think that many of them (with the possible exception of the one above) are from World War Two, which is how they are all described. This Reginald Mount I am pretty sure is early 1950s (another from the campaign has appeared on here before ) while the one below that has to be even later.

Whatever the actual dates, it’s still an interesting haul. As ever, my beef is with the prices, which range from £45 to £80 for the ones above. all on Buy It Now. Which is only a bit under what I’d expect to see them fetching in an expensive gallery, rather than on a carpet. We shall see.

One of our regular haunts, thebasement101, is currently selling a selection of what can only be described as the wrong sides of pair posters – the side with all of the text rather than the pretty pictures, like this Harold Hussey from 1952.

Compare and contrast with the other side. I think the birds have it over the words.

And, like every other LT poster they sell, the asking price is £99. Not even the linen backing can make that value for money. Unless I suppose you want to make up the pair.

While we’re there, you could also pay £95 for this 1967 poster by John Finnie. Or perhaps not.

I would love to know where all of these linen backed posters came from though.

Elsewhere, a quirk of fate means that you have not one but two chances to buy this Tom Eckersley stock poster; either in the UK for £150,

Or from the States for $195.

Another fine carpet there too, I see.

Finally, something which is not a poster, not for sale on eBay and doesn’t even have an estimate attached. But it is wonderful.

And unlike a poster or indeed pretty much anything else by John Piper, you can put your coffee cup down on it. For sale on the 10th in Malvern if you wish to enquire further.

Alert

designers, eBay

I mentioned a while ago that we’d got something interesting on eBay. Well now they’ve arrived so you are going to have to suffer a bit of crowing. Because it’s not only this.

But also this.

And this too.

Along with the other three posters in the set. As mentioned before on here, they were designed for the Sunday Times by Patrick Tilley sometime in the 1960s, and I’ve never seen one in the wild before, never mind six.

Interestingly, they look much better in reality than as scans or digital images; something I think to do with the collaged newsprint showing much more.

They came from a dealer in the U.S. who had in turn bought them from the widow of a man who had worked in the print industry and travelled to Europe a lot on business. He clearly brought back things that he liked from his travels. And then kept them.

They were originally up for sale on eBay, and as I mentioned on Monday there’s an interesting cautionary tale here about the ways in which eBay can fail. Which is mostly that if something isn’t already popular, people won’t be searching for it and so it won’t be found.

I’ve never seen a Patrick Tilley poster up for sale, so we never search for them – and nor, I will hazard, do many other people. So, up on eBay without the right keywords and no one finding them, this amazing set of posters only reached $20, which wasn’t anywhere near the reserve. We then did a bit of negotiation and got them for rather more than that. Although it still feels like a fair price. But maybe only to us, who knows.

Baying

eBay

Well I’d like to say that I was persuaded to write about our own eBay sales by the overwhelming vote that I should. After all, it was 100% in favour. There on the other hand, there was only one vote. But as that voter also correctly worked the eBay seller ID and outed us in the comments, there’s not much point in being coy any more. So now you can all see the piles of slightly underwhelming posters that have piled up by accident over the years.

But in a way it’s a relief. Not because I’m desperate to publicise them, but because there are one or two which I’d have definitely mentioned on here had someone else been selling them. Like this LMS/LNER poster for example.

It’s a rum ‘un. It would be quite unusual just for being a photographic railway poster produced before the Second World War (the NMSI dates it to 193o, but as the book was published in 1932 my guess would be that’s the actual date). But it’s even odder because it’s not a simple railway poster; instead it’s promoting a book about Scotland. The idea being, I assume, that you would read the book, be seized by a desire to go immediately to Scotland and then book your tickets with the railway. Which is not unreasonable, but I’ve still never seen anything like this before. Anyone else?

It came, like so much else on eBay at the moment, from the last Morphets sale. In this case, it came from one of the very last lots of assorted odds and ends, and which also included the four Jock Kinneir typeface posters. So rather a treasure trove in the end. But we will not – and I can say this with some certainty – ever put this on the wall, so it will be much better off somewhere else.

The other posters worth your time are the black and white tourist posters

Not immediately prepossessing, I’ll admit. But that’s part of the reason why they’re interesting. The posters (there’s a few, but I’ll spare you the rest) are all in various shades of black and white, ranging from greenish to sepia, and are printed on some really quite poor paper.

It’s not exactly how you might imagine advertising inercontinental tourism to the Americans in the early 1950s (these posters originally came from the States, so that’s what I’m assuming they were over there doing).

But technicolour was out of reach for Britain after the war; this slightly shoddy monochrome was all the country could afford at the time. So these posters are another reminder of the hardships of the post-war period, when every ounce of the country’s production and economic muscle had to go on exports, as the debts of the war had to be repaid. I wonder whether must sometimes have felt harder than the war itself, like running a marathon and then discovering that you’ve got to walk home.

But that’s not the only reason to look at them. Because, elsewhere on eBay, this is also for sale.

Similarly tatty, but if anything a slightly more challenging image of docks rather than historic castles (I wonder whether any Americans did come over to visit the Lancashire Docks as a result of this poster campaign; I am inclined to suspect not). But this seller has priced his at £49.99, ours started at just 99p.

So who’s right? What’s this poster really worth? Normally I’m in favour of starting with a low opening price on eBay, on the basis that if you’ve described it and photographed it well, a good poster will find its level. But I have to say that a sale in the last few weeks (about which I will blog later this week) has made me wonder whether that’s always true.

It still works for posters like an Eckersley or a Games, where people are searching for those designers and their works. I think that’s probably true of railway posters too. But with less well-known types like these, where there aren’t any obvious keywords that will be searched on, then what do you do? In our case, put them on at 99p because we want to get rid of them – but also put them on with some posters that will be found in searches so that poster collectors might actually see them. And a couple of these have now gone up to £5 already, so they do have some value. But will they ever be worth £50? Perhaps to one person and I’ve got it wrong. Or perhaps not; we will see.

And finally, when I was researching this in the LT Museum catalogue (it says it’s from 1967 and by Peter Roberson on the bottom so I don’t quite know what else I was expecting to find out)

I found this.

Isn’t that fantastic? Does anyone have one going spare? I promise I’ll pay more than 99p for it.

No alarms and no surprises

eBay

I keep prevaricating about whether to post about eBay or this week or not. There is stuff out there, but very little of it makes me jump up and down with excitement. But then I thought perhaps that’s not fair, one man’s meat etc. So here it is. But don’t blame me if you don’t like it.

Let’s start with this, as the precise encapsulation of the malaise.

Yes, it is an 1957 Abram Games poster, with an opening bid of just £50. But, how shall I put this, it’s not the most inspiring Games poster I’ve ever seen.

The seller has a few more posters for sale too, including this one,

Which means that I can take an educated guess that he, like so many other sellers, got these from the third Morphets Sale. It’ll be very quiet when all that dust has settled, won’t it.

But the other posters he’s offering are a bit more interesting.

They look like the kind of half-printed stock excursion posters that were more commonly produced by the coach companies. But he says these ones are 40″ x 25″ and so railway sized, and I can’t find any trace of them in the Morphets sale. I’ve seen a few before, but they tend to be earlier, like this Eckersley.

Of course there may be loads of them, and they either weren’t kept much, or else they are sold continually at railwayana auctions and I fail to notice them as they go buy. I shall endeavour to be more vigilant in future.

Elsewhere, expensive things.

Now I cannot deny that this is a very fine poster, mounted on linen and doubtless worth a small fortune were it to come up at Christies. But is anyone going to pay $1,200 for it on eBay? I think not. Especially not if they refer to it as ‘whimsical’ in the item description. Were I about to spend a lot of money on something, I’d rather have it referred to as a very serious investment, thank you, not ‘whimsical’. Honestly.

Now there are some other posters out there on eBay that I would normally mention but haven’t. And that’s because we’re selling them. Now a good part of this is because of embarrassment – much of what we’re selling is some rather tatty odds and ends that I’d rather pretend we’d never bought. Along with one or two nice bits too.

But there’s also an editorial question of how to do this without turning the blog into a shop window. Shall I just leave it out? Or would you like me to mention stuff that I would, under other circumstances, point at but make it clear that they’re ours and bear the shame anyway? I don’t have an answer to that, so if anyone does, I’d like to hear it.

Finally, auction description of the week.

A box of wooden items, including elephants and posters.

We’ve asked, so if I get hold of a picture of a wooden poster, I’ll share it, I promise.

Going, gone

auctions, eBay

So it’s back to work after the birthday festivities, which today means a brief round-up of eBay and auction news. Such as there is.

Thebasement101 seems to have an almost inexhaustible stock of slightly obscure London Transport posters backed on linen. He has put another three up for sale this week, of which my favourite is this Victor Galbraith owl from 1960.

Although I do not like it with £99 worth of like. I must research Victor Galbraith properly one day, because the few bits of his work I’ve seen I always enjoy. But I’m not even going to look today, as who knows where it will end up and I have other things which have to be done. But if anyone out there knows something, please do get in touch.

Mr Basement also has the two posters below, by Stella Marsden and Maurice Wilson respectively.

If you prefer railway posters and steam trains (is this the Quad Royal demographic? I’m not sure) then there is also this Studio Seven piece, which is quite good if you do want a piece of 1960s text about steam trains. And a lot cheaper than £99.

Elsewhere on eBay, two conundrums. Exhibit A is undoubtedly an interesting and very rare survival of some World War Two propaganda that is also commercial advertising. But it’s the picture that’s the problem.

Because at first glance it could easily be mistaken for a pro-Nazi poster. Which is an interesting reminder that context is all; I am sure that no one in an art shop in 1942 would have thought that way. But which makes me feel that it belongs in the context of a museum. Or am I being too sensitive here?

Exhibit B is only really a conundrum in the sense that I am forced to wonder who on earth thinks it is worth that money? Yes it is a McKnight Kauffer poster, but it is a 1973 reprint for the V&A with, frankly, not very nice lettering added.

If that is worth £159, I am a stick. It’s not even ‘Must-have’ as the seller suggests in the title. Really.

The rest of this post is a slightly sorrowful litany of Things We Have Missed. Starting with this Barbara Jones book. Now the seller didn’t do themselves any favours -here’s their photo.

And here’s the cover scanned rather than photographed in infra red.

But even so, I would have expected it to go for a bit more than just £7 when it goes on Abebooks for between £40 and £50. (To my chagrin we put a stupidly low bid on it because we’ve already got one, and now I feel foolish).

And finally, this.

A collection of posters, Keep Britain Tidy, Henry Moore Exhibition, Heath Robinson posters etc

That’s all the lot description said, and it caused a mad panic here at Crownfolio Towers, because the email alert arrived on the day of the auction. I do know that it had one of these in.

And also, possibly, a 10 x 15 version of one of these.

Along with a couple more Keep Britain Tidy posters that I can’t trace. But more than that I will never know, because it went for £10 over our top bid. I can, just about, live with that, because we hadn’t seen the condition or anything. But I would still love to know what the posters were, so if any of you lot bought them, can you send the photos over? I promise I won’t be too bitter.

Golf and pageantry

auctions, eBay

The weather is grey, the economy going into a tailspin, but still those auctions keep on coming. This week’s offering is from The International Poster Center in New York.

Because it’s in New York, it’s heavy on the usual suspects of Art Nouveau, bicycle posters (which for some reason that escapes me are disproportionally collected and expensive), French travel posters and so on. Although I do quite like this Cassandre, if only as a terrible warning of what television might do to you.

Cassandre 1951 vintage poster for Phillips television
Cassandre, 1951, est. $1,400-1,700

Naturally there are golf posters too, although here at least there is a small amount of British interest.

Rowland Hilder come to Britain for golf vintage travel poster
Rowland Hilder, est. $1,200-1,500

Andrew Johnson, 1930, est. $2,000-3,000

People with lots of money do choose the oddest things sometimes.

Elsewhere there are a few more British odds and ends, although they tend towards the traditional, you might even say stereotypical view of Britain. Golf and pageantry, that is probably what we mean to the Americans.

Christopher Clark Trooping the Colour poster 1952 vintage travel british railways
Christopher Clark, 1952, est. $1,500-2,000

Seeing as we’re here, the poster above raises an interesting question about dating. The auction house have dated it as 1932. Which is approximately when the picture was painted, but given that it was previously issued in 1930 as an LMS poster, I’m not even sure that that’s quite right. Here’s the earlier poster from 1930.

But neither of these are really the date of the poster, as the British Railways logo shows – it was actually printed in 1952. So which is the answer ? I suppose it depends whether you’re seeing this as a print of the painting, or as a poster itself. I’d date it at 1952 on that basis – what do you reckon?

Along the same lines is this, which might as well be a print of a painting rather than the Southern region poster it claims to be.

Anna Zinkeisen Southern Region poster Laying of Foundation Stone at Southampton Docks
Anna Zinkeisen, 1938, est. $2,000-2,500

The frame is particularly bemusing, because the description says merely,

B+/ Slight tears at horizontal fold.

but the image on NMSI has no such frame. So what is going on here? Search me.

Fortunately there are a couple of pieces of modernity to lighten the day. Like this Austin Cooper, even if the image is stubbornly retrograde today.

Austin Cooper golliwog vintage London Transport poster Shop between 1928
Austin Cooper, 1928, est. $1,200-1,700

Along with this McKnight Kauffer.

McKnight Kauffer vintage shell poster lubricating oil 1937
McKnight Kauffer, 1937, est. $1,000-1,200

Now the McKnight Kauffer isn’t alone, because one thing that the New York auction does have going for it is an interesting selection of Shell posters.

Vintage Shell poster friend to the farmer Applebee 1952
Leonard Applebee, 1952, est. $700-900

Harold Hussey, 1952, est. $700-900

These two are the most pedestrian of the bunch, but I’m putting them here because the estimates seem quite high. I can say this from a position of some confidence, given that we bought one of these on eBay for the grand sum of just £12.50 a few years ago.

This Ben Nicholson, however, is great.

Ben Nicholson vintage shell poster Guardsmen use Shell 1938
Ben Nicholson, 1938, est. $800-1,000

But I also rather like this, by Sir Cedric Lockwood Morris.

Summer Shell vintage poster by Cedric Lockwood Morris
Cedric Morris, 1938, est. $800-1,000

I like it and him even better for having read this fantastic reminiscence. Anyone who gets into a fight with Munnings has a lot going for them.

Should any of these take your fancy, you can bid online via LiveAuctioneers. But I have to warn you that buyers’ commission comes in at a rather painful 22.5%, and then you’ve got to get the thing back over the Atlantic too.

All of which makes eBay seem an attractive option. If only there was anything out there to buy. All I can offer you at the moment is a lot of rather late Public Information Posters. Which I’m mainly pulling out to reinforce a point I’ve made before, which is that National Savings posters are rarely design classics.

The only one I come close to liking is this incentive to teeth-brushing.

But I’m not sure I’d pay the £9.99 they’re asking, although I am sure someone will.

The best lot I can find at the moment isn’t even a poster.

The cover design for this LP is by Reginald Mount. But it would be wasted tucked away on a shelf.

There was one good thing on eBay this week, but we bought it. So I’ll share that with you when it arrives.