Investors may be steering clear of equities at the moment, but at Christie's sale of vintage film posters in London on Tuesday, 97 per cent of lots were sold by value - the auction house's highest percentage for a film poster sale.
The sale fetched GBP266,984 (HK$3,326,620), and the top lot of the day was a poster for the 1943 film The Outlaw, which sold for more than GBP50,000, the third highest price paid at Christie's for a film poster.
'The market is currently very strong,' says Sarah Hodgson, popular entertainment specialist at Christie's South Kensington. 'The sale result was fantastic, which proves that there are buyers for the right material at the right price.'
Christie's acknowledges that most buyers are American and British, with very little interest from Asia outside Japan. While Christie's and rival Sotheby's, driven by growing business from Asian collectors, have brought a variety of sales to the region - of items ranging from jadeite to Chinese calligraphy - neither auction house sells vintage posters here.
Despite the apparent lack of Asian interest, one dealer believes the local market has potential. Chris and Pamela Bailey of Picture This have been selling vintage posters in Hong Kong for more than a year, with their first public sale last year drawing a strong response.
'It became very quickly apparent that there was enormous latent demand in Hong Kong for vintage poster art, which nobody here has been selling,' says Mr Bailey. The two popular exceptions, for which there has long been a strong local market, are 1920s Shanghai advertising posters and Mao-era propaganda posters, which Picture This does not deal in.
