Grey Smith
Director, Vintage Movie Poster Auctions
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1-800-872-6467 x1367
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Visiting a "nostalgia" convention in the late 1960s, Grey Smith saw tables with dealers selling vintage movie posters. Realizing for the first time that classic movie posters were actually available to people other than the theater owners, Grey became enthralled with these relics of the motion picture business to which he would dedicate his life. His interest in classic films, posters and filmmaking led him to the University of Texas in Austin where he studied film and received a degree in Communications. After college he pursued a career in the motion picture industry. From the late 1970s through the late 1990s he traveled the country and globe in the industry as a Set Decorator/Prop Master and later as an Art Director in film, working on over 35 feature films, often with famous directors such as Oliver Stone, David Mamet and Norman Jewison. In his travels he was always searching for, collecting and selling movie posters, studying the market and its trends. Then in 2001, Grey was invited to begin auctioning posters with Heritage in their first Comics and Movie Poster auction. He began as Heritage's first Movie Poster Expert in November, 2001 and now heads up the world's #1 Vintage Poster Auction venue, which has sold over $28 million worth of rare and vintage posters since its relatively recent inception. Heritage now holds the record for the largest grossing movie poster auction of all time at $2.6 million (November 2007).
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Barbara Franchi
Consignment Director
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1-800-872-6467 x1525
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Born on Long Island and raised in New York, Barbara Franchi attended City and Hunter Colleges through the graduate level. She taught in both the New York school system and at the university level (geology at Loyola of Montreal) before joining her husband Rudy in starting The Nostalgia Factory in 1969.
While dealing in original old advertising, entertainment memorabilia and other forms of commercial 20th Century ephemera, Ms. Franchi's forte has always been researching the history of new acquisitions and then preparing them for display.
Barbara recently co-authored Miller's Movie Collectibles, a guide to collecting movie posters and other film paper, autographs and props. She is also a well-known figure in the world of mystery fiction, both as a reviewer and as an editor of the information site www.reviewingtheevidence.com. She also represents Heritage as a generalist on Antiques Roadshow, and has been with them since the first season.
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Rudy Franchi
Consignment Director
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1-800-872-6467 x1525
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Born and raised in New York, Rudy Franchi has been involved in the movie business since he was 16 years old. He ran a film society while in college at Fordham and then went into New York exhibition as program director of the Bleecker Street Cinema during the early 1960s. He was a film critic for New York Magazine, Variety and Show Magazine when he started his own publication, NY Film Bulletin, credited with introducing the Aauteur Theory of film criticism (via France's New Wave) to the United States. He went on to become director of New York newspaper publicity at 20th Century Fox and in 1969 started the Nostalgia Factory with his wife, Barbara.
The Nostalgia Factory dealt in a wide variety of collectibles and ephemera, original old advertising, posters as well as other forms of vintage graphic art. Mr. Franchi has organized major movie poster auctions for Skinner of Boston and Christie's New York and has recently co-authored Miller's Movie Collectibles, a guide to collecting movie posters and related film paper, autographs and props. He also represents Heritage at the Antiques Roadshow collectibles table, and has been with them since the first season.
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