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Post by Steven Sigel on Mar 11, 2012 20:54:53 GMT
Its what youre comparing it to A dozen Dr Who prints on ebay (which were all existing) is a lot compared to the amount of missing episodes found on ebay or from any source for that matter in the last decade. I dont know what the statistics are of found prints compared to found missing episodes but a dozen to zero gets me thinking.. If there are only a handful of prints made of each episode that amount of duplication had me thinking that there is a chance sooner or later a new one will show up on ebay or elsewhere. Of course feel to fill me in if Im not understanding. None of the Doctor who's on ebay were missing when they were sold (The Lion was on ebay at one point, but well after it was returned to the BBC). Several of them were extra prints I sold (made up for Ian Levine AFTER the destruction era), some were prints sold by Mick Hall (which were David Stead's prints). some were the dupes made in the 80s, and a few were random prints that just showed up (I can think of 4 or 5 including this current one). Not sure what your point is... Mine is that compared to other shows there are very few Doctor who prints out there at all. And we know where most of what has turned up came from. So the idea that because a few have been on ebay that there's some likelihood that something missing out there is wishful thinking at best. On the contrary, if we were seeing dozens of them on ebay - like MASH or Star Trek or whatever, then I'd agree with you that there was a good chance that something missing might be around. But given that we've only seen a handful of episodes turn up for sale - it's pretty clear that the chances of missing eps turning up for sale is not very good.
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Post by John Wall on Mar 11, 2012 21:00:14 GMT
Do we know what missing episodes (not Dr Who) have turned up on places like Ebay ? I have a recollection of a missing Z-Cars ?
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Richard Develyn
Member
Living in hope that more missing episodes will come back to us.
Posts: 574
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Post by Richard Develyn on Mar 11, 2012 21:06:04 GMT
You are missing my point... Let's leave aside any legal issues with selling the print. Let's say I put a 16mm missing Dr. Who on ebay -- three classes of people are going to bid on it -- 1) people who want it returned to the BBC, 2) People (like me) who collect dr. Who films. or 3) people who want to have a missing episode and not return it. I must admit I think you're missing mine. If an episode has extra value to whoever wants to buy it because it is "missing", what guarantee does the buyer have that the episode will continue to be "missing" the day after he forks out the money for it. You don't have to hand back the actual film print to the BBC in order to remove it's status of "missing". A good copy will do. Richard
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Post by Steven Sigel on Mar 11, 2012 21:22:06 GMT
Richard --
I understand what you are saying, but I think you are wrong... There are people out there who will bid on a PERCEIVED missing episode because of the various reasons I've listed. They have no way of knowing whether a seller might also make copies, true, but that's beside the point. Once the episode is KNOWN to have been returned to the BBC, the value is solely that of any other episode.
To make it personal - I know I would pay a LOT more for a missing episode than for one that exists because I would want to make sure that it got to the BBC. This scenario has played out for other shows -- for example, a couple of missing Z-Cars episodes turned up on ebay a while back. The bidding was ferocious and they sold for something like £1000 each... A non-missing episode of Z-Cars probably wouldn't sell for more than a few hundred tops... Talk to the guys who bought those prints and ask them whether they would have gone after them had they been episodes that already existed. And I guarantee you that if they attempted to resell the prints (now that they've been returned), they would not get anywhere near the money that they put into them.
Also - if a seller wants to maintain any sort of reputation, he/she is not going to make copies available after selling the original as "one of a kind".. That's a great way to lose your reputation, and also to potentially be sued.
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Post by David Buck on Mar 11, 2012 22:16:04 GMT
Well the two z-cars on ebay was actually one on ebay & the other sold for the same price from the same guy as a private sale - £750 each as I recall.
When I sold my z-cars episode on ebay I got £420 - 3 times what I'd paid for it - and I'd long since loaned it to the BBC - and stated that in the auction.
More tellingly - the recentish ebay sale of the kipling & suspense episodes show what general missing BBC drama goes for - I believe both sold for very reasonable amounts of around $700 - whereas existing Maigret & Dr. Finlay from the same batch of films fetched about $300 ( from memory - though I doubt I'm far out )
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Post by David Buck on Mar 11, 2012 22:27:09 GMT
Of course- those kipling/suspense episodes weren't flagged up on here - so It cut out a certain amount of do-goodery that might have pushed the price up.
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Richard Develyn
Member
Living in hope that more missing episodes will come back to us.
Posts: 574
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Post by Richard Develyn on Mar 11, 2012 23:07:13 GMT
Hi Steve,
Ok, I understand what you're saying too, however I would like to make a couple of points.
Given the fact that an episode can only be "perceived" missing/unique rather than "guaranteed" missing/unique means, in my opinion, that there will be a cap on the amount of money that people will be prepared to pay for it.
This is exacerbated by the fact that the increasing technology available in episode restoration will soon mean that even a relatively poor copy of a film print would be good enough to effectively reduce the desirability of the original print to the status of existing episode.
Given that, I accept that the value of a perceived missing episode may well be greater than that of an existing one, though this has to be balanced against the fact that in the Doctor Who world a recently returned film print will be extremely collectable.
So I'll concede the point that you may well make more money selling a missing-episode on ebay than selling it after handing it back to the BBC first. However, you'll have a harder job of it - passions in the Doctor Who world run far higher than in Z-cars - and you're not going to make an astonishing sum of money from it anyway because you cannot guarantee the episode's uniqueness. You might make a bit more, but you'd be far better off going down the first-return-to-the-BBC then sell-as-collectable route.
Note that I'm not talking about film collectors here. Film collectors may well be shuffling missing-episodes between themselves for any sort of figure they like and, sure, they're going to have a reputation between them that they want to maintain. What I'm talking about here is the open market, where there is no loyalty between buyer and seller once money has changed hands. I think that a buyer would find it very difficult to sue a seller who sold a missing-episode which turned out not to be missing on the next day, and I think that a seller would find it very difficult to manage the logistics whereby the buyer could somehow or other be guaranteed that this was not going to happen.
Richard
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Post by Steven Sigel on Mar 11, 2012 23:44:16 GMT
Of course there's a cap - my point is simply that it would sell for more - I didn't say it would be worth a fortune... Although, I think it would potentially go for quite a lot. Look at the amount of money paid for some other rare bits of film that have been auctioned off (like the missing Oswald the Rabbit cartoon that was located recently).
Most people interested in buying it would want it to return it, and therefore would be aware that they were investing in something for the "greater good", not buying it to make a profit... The problem happens when there are two (or more) people with such good intentions and they bid against each other, even with the same goal...
BTW - Film collectors are NOT "shuffling around missing episodes".
From the point of view of a non-fan seller who solely wants to make money - the best bet is to put it up for sale without returning it. And in fact, that is what happened with the Z-Cars... When the missing Z-Cars episode went on ebay, I called the seller (who is another film dealer as I am) to see if I could get him to return a copy to the BBC, he refused because he wanted to maximize his profit - he didn't care about what happened to the episode once it was sold...
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Post by John Andersen on Mar 12, 2012 1:47:46 GMT
Richard -- Also - if a seller wants to maintain any sort of reputation, he/she is not going to make copies available after selling the original as "one of a kind".. That's a great way to lose your reputation, and also to potentially be sued. That can be a dangerous game to play, depending on the type of people being dealt with. With my luck, there could be a legitimate recovery from another country, and then the buyer might come looking for me because I sold it to him. That could end up with somebody being seriously hurt or killed.
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Post by dennywilson on Mar 12, 2012 2:09:58 GMT
BTW - Film collectors are NOT "shuffling around missing episodes". Do You know every film collector and circle of film collectors in the world to make a broad statement? It's fair to say the collectors YOU know are not shuffling around missing episodes. Episodes have turned up that changed hand a few times among film collectors, but people didn't know they were "Missing", which is how I'm sure a lot of lost TV shows (U.S. as Well as British) have surfaced. Now I'm not saying I beleive there are collectors who knowingly have lost episodes (Doctor Who and Others) and are hording them,or passing them among themselves but anything is possible. Hey, not every collector (or dealer) is well knowledgeable or a good guy like you, StevenS
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Post by Steven Sigel on Mar 12, 2012 2:12:25 GMT
BTW - Film collectors are NOT "shuffling around missing episodes". Do You know every film collector and circle of film collectors in the world to make a broad statement? It's fair to say the collectors YOU know are not shuffling around missing episodes. Episodes have turned up that changed hand a few times among film collectors, but people didn't know they were "Missing", which is how I'm sure a lot of lost TV shows (U.S. as Well as British) have surfaced. Now I'm not saying I beleive there are collectors who knowingly have lost episodes (Doctor Who and Others) and are hording them,or passing them among themselves but anything is possible. Hey, not every collector (or dealer) is well knowledgeable or a good guy like you, StevenS The implication of the original post was that there was some underground black market in missing Dr. Who episodes. This is simply not realistic... It is possible that there might be an episode or two kicking around that no one is aware of (like Terry Burnett's episodes), but that's a very different concept.
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Post by John F Brayshaw on Mar 12, 2012 3:56:41 GMT
I think anything can pop up at anytime and I think there is a possibility that "lost" eps are in some collection currently not known or known of at this time. Like with this Hartnell ep, the seller might know of more eps in the collection or put the word outto his connections. Which is what we hope happens, needless to say he is going get a quite substantial amount for the ep he has listed currently.
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Richard Develyn
Member
Living in hope that more missing episodes will come back to us.
Posts: 574
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Post by Richard Develyn on Mar 12, 2012 9:03:39 GMT
From the point of view of a non-fan seller who solely wants to make money - the best bet is to put it up for sale without returning it. And in fact, that is what happened with the Z-Cars... When the missing Z-Cars episode went on ebay, I called the seller (who is another film dealer as I am) to see if I could get him to return a copy to the BBC, he refused because he wanted to maximize his profit - he didn't care about what happened to the episode once it was sold... Where you and I are at cross-purposes, Steve, is that you're consistently talking about film collectors, whereas I'm thinking about private individuals selling material on the open market. I think a film collector, with a reputation to preserve, will be able to sell a missing episode on the open market for more money than a private individual. I think a lot of the reason for this is that they will have enough of a good idea about its uniqueness either because they know the source or simply because of their experience in the field (and I accept that this is your area of expertise) to be willing to stake their reputation on it. A private individual can give no such guarantees. First of all they would have to persuade people it wasn't a hoax, which would at least require a substantial clip posted on youtube (which would then infringe the BBC's rights - correct me if I'm wrong). Then they would be faced with the problem of trust both in the exchange of goods for money and in the promise of uniqueness. Such an individual could try getting a collector to sell it for him, but that could put the collector in an awkward position since they would have to trust the originator on the episode's uniqueness. In my opinion, it would be a mine-field, and I still believe that such a person would be better off returning the episode first and selling it as a collectible. Richard P.S. I have no idea what film collectors get up to in their private circles. I merely said they "may well" be shuffling episodes around. Maybe the masons are shuffling episodes around as well. Who knows what goes on in these close-knit groups? There's nothing we can do about it anyway.
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Post by G D Peck on Mar 12, 2012 9:22:08 GMT
Curious to know, is there any possibility that this print could be in better condition than the print returned from Cyprus? Is it worth the BBC talking to the seller or winning bidder to get access to the print?
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Post by John Wall on Mar 12, 2012 9:30:15 GMT
It's been discussed several times but it's unlikely that there are missing Dr Who episodes "shuffling around" - simply because there are no rumours. The most probable avenue for recovery from collectors is where they simply don't know that what they've got is missing.
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