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memorabilia. At the time of trial, Warren maintained a database
of prices of over 100,000 items of movie memorabilia.
Warren assumed that the relevant market was the movie
memorabilia convention. He based his assumption on the buyer’s
being a knowledgeable collector who performed, or should have
performed, an appropriate amount of research prior to entering
the convention market, which is a mixed wholesale/retail market.
Warren asserted that the single key element in pricing movie
memorabilia is demand by collectors for a given title.
The interplay of these two assumptions was critical to how
Warren priced several categories of memorabilia in the
collection. He heavily discounted the value of foreign posters
because he maintained that there was little or no demand for them
in the mid-1980's. In Warren's view, collectors viewed foreign
posters of American films as inauthentic novelties, and that only
when domestic posters, especially one-sheets, began to rise
dramatically in price after 1985 did collectors begin to show
interest in foreign posters of American films. According to
Warren, twenty-four-sheets were considered virtually worthless in
the 1985 movie memorabilia markets because of their size. The
only twenty-four-sheets then in demand were classic titles such
as “Gone With the Wind”. Warren contends that three-sheets and
six-sheets were likewise virtually worthless in 1985, although
they subsequently came to be worth as much as one-sheets, if not
more.
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