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How reliable are those "film strip" sellers on eBay?

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 (Edited)

Was googling around while reading the thread on attempting to get the first SpongeBob movie to look closer to its 35mm version and I came across this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/276190844827?itmmeta=01HW5M49S7FVT96M630SVDCN0N&hash=item404e41d79b:g:-28AAOSw1jZlYhc6&itmprp=enc%3AAQAJAAAAwOETHMIl5M4XBYmm89Lzp5JP9%2F2Yv8fa2hWJqAHfecnPY3AG7Gq%2Boy5YUgogrLvxuZ8LgLGOSWSp87%2FIDMpu0HfK27vvq2ka59eju3SsGs3nBJgiYA3Gbr25XSqtzFBoEb0xEfgXJnLhgrxd0WLWK5BJefjpYfViZT%2Fxx1Taqw9hijPdukIWyVXQf2fb2tf%2FwZUzrBFVIycAZTtLpuBbt0iElHsKmTyZ%2FL0j0NAKdrlXWbVxxuL77YBM2AqAU3RSaw%3D%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR9ickbThYw

Are these sellers legitimate? Or are they doing something to put maybe a Blu-Ray or dare I say DVD rip onto film stock?

EDIT: Poster on listing page aside…

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 (Edited)

They’re called cutters. They take perfectly good prints and cut them up to sell for profit.

Please do not buy.

That link you shared is printed from digital anyway. But it’s from a print. So it was printed to a negative, a theatrical print was struck from the digitally printed negative, and then that seller has cut up the print to make those strips.

Or are they doing something to put maybe a Blu-Ray or dare I say DVD rip onto film stock?

There are services that allow you to do this, but I can tell this is cut up of a real print just from looking at it. There’s printed-through damage from the negative easy to spot if you know what to look for.

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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RU.08 said:

They’re called cutters. They take perfectly good prints and cut them up to sell for profit.

Please do not buy.

That link you shared is printed from digital anyway. But it’s from a print. So it was printed to a negative, a theatrical print was struck from the digitally printed negative, and then that seller has cut up the print to make those strips.

Or are they doing something to put maybe a Blu-Ray or dare I say DVD rip onto film stock?

There are services that allow you to do this, but I can tell this is cut up of a real print just from looking at it. There’s printed-through damage from the negative easy to spot if you know what to look for.

How can you tell?

Also, noted! Will not buy from these!