how much are old movie theater seat worth? (1 Viewer)

[Jeremy Illingworth]

I have some movie theater seat, probably from the forties, that I was going to sell in the local paper. I have no idea what to ask and I though maybe some of you guys might have purchased some and could give me an idea of the going rate. Here's a picture: http://jeremyillingworth.tripod.com/

They're imitation leather which is got some cracks in them as you can see.

jeremy

 

[Mark Philp]

In the many years I've been collecting movie related stuff, I've never known anybody who collected used theatre seats. I've known some who have bought them for their home theatres, but usually didn't pay much for them. I'd guess that maybe someone might be willing to pay $5 or $10 each if the seats are in good condition. I don't think there's really much of a market for used seats. Just a few years ago I saw a large theatre being torn down and the contractor was selling off the seats for $1 each. I think a local theatre group bought about 300 for their playhouse and the rest were sold for scrap. I suppose if the seats had some historic value, perhaps coming from a famous place they might be worth a little more.

 

[DaveGTP]

If you do a few searches in the for sale/trade forum, someone had a mass of them pulled from a theater remodel for sale earlier this year/late last year.

I just recently bought 4 4-chair rows of seats. They were actually pulled from a university lecture hall or something - they've got little tables that you can put down. They wanted $15 apiece for the 4-chair rows. They had like 20 rows of them. They advertised them in the freebies as HT seats but explained on the phone that they were more like lecture seats. When I called they were down to 6 (I bought 4 rows). They are pretty slick. I don't have the money for the HT-garage project I want to do yet, but I stocked up on the chairs.