The 3 Huge Mistakes Poster Buyers Make
1. Don’t Buy Fakes
How To Tell If It’s Authentic
Movie Posters
Movie posters used in advertising theatrical runs have several markings and features to look for. The first is dimensions (the measurements of the poster). For example, US one sheets were printed at 27 by 41 until 1985, after which they were printed at 27 by 40.
If you are looking at a US one sheet movie poster that is 26 by 39 it is not an original vintage one sheet for theatrical use. Reproductions are usually slightly smaller than the dimensions of the original. One sheets are the size most frequently faked.
Second is the NSS notice. It’s a long, dry story, but the basic thing you need to know is that for a poster from a movie from between 1940 through the 1980s there will be a National Screen Service number and notice, usually on the bottom border.
The NSS Stock Numbers are the numbers you see printed in the corners of old vintage posters. The first two digits are the year the film was released, followed by a slash, then one to four digits that represent the order of films assigned a number that year. For example, 77/21 (Star Wars) is the twenty-first movie assigned a number in 1977.
An R before the year stands for Re-release. It could also be stamped on the back side of the poster in blue or red ink. A re-release is not considered as valuable as the first run, but it is still an original movie poster.
The NSS notice is usually a couple of lines of mouse print in the bottom border. It would typically state that the material is “Property of the National Screen Service licensed for display in connection with the exhibition of this picture at your theatre. Must be returned immediately thereafter”.
A restrike is when they need more posters printed (as for an unanticipated blockbuster) and they pull out the original printing plates and put them back on the press. Since this is a new printing setup things may not be exactly as they were before and there can be slight variations. This is still an original movie poster.
A reprint is a commercial poster that is the same image as the original movie poster but is printed in slightly smaller dimensions. These are usually properly licensed and they are sold at a much lower price than original theatrical release posters.
Reprints that are printed as theatre size (27 by 40) one sheets are not original movie posters. These you need to watch out for because they are basically counterfeits. This is where you need to look carefully at the NSS info and printer markings of a known original and make a comparison to a known authentic poster. Look carefully at the colors, with a lot of these reprints there will be a tonal difference in the colors of an entire area.
If you know the movie is from before 1984 it would have been distributed to theatres folded, so there should be fold lines. Even after linenbacking, which flattens the lines, you can still see the fold lines if you look up close and sideways across the surface.
Non-Movie Posters
To check the authenticity of non-movie posters, use the internet to research the dimensions of the original printing of that poster and compare those measurements to your poster. There should also be printer marks you can compare against a known original. The website for IVPDA (International Vintage Posters Dealers Association) is a good research resource. Sign up for accounts on Heritage Auctions and emovieposter (they also auction non-movie paper). These are two huge auction sites for buying posters with enormous auction history information databases you can access if you register for a free account. There you can look up known authentic posters and look at close up images of the posters.
Feel the paper if you can and compare it to a known original. If the original poster should be a lithograph you can inspect it very close up to check for signs of it being a modern reproduction.
Throughout the 1800s and 1900s vintage posters were printed with the process called lithography (invented in 1796). A lithograph print was made from an inked stone printing plate and the art was drawn on the plate with wax based pencils. As time passed the stones were replaced with metal plates and then rubber plates on a cylinder. However, by the 1950s lithography began to fall out of favour due to the efficiency of phototypesetting and photoengraving.
You can look at the poster through a strong magnification lens to determine if it is a lithograph.When you see the magnified image, the inks used were layers of primary colors (yellow, red, blue, black). The art will look like a pencil or crayon line texture. You may see dots, as the use of handmade halftones (gradations) was invented in 1881 and so early 1900s posters can legitimately have dot patterns and still be lithographs. By overlapping or placing these dots side by side any color could be created.
In the 1950s the inks changed to modern CMYK: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black. If you see tiny honeycomb patterns of dots of hot pink, bright yellow and turquoise blue that poster would not have been printed previous to the 1950s. This patterning only applies to halftone areas (gradations) of the image; solid colors can be printed in any color without the dots.
Modern reproductions of antique posters are made by reproducing the entire image, often including the text, as a very fine halftone dot pattern. A modern halftone will have a tight, even pattern, evidence of mechanical production, compared to a true antique hand created halftone. Better quality reproductions will use solid color where the original had solid color, such as border lines and text.
2. Don’t Overpay
How To Tell If It’s A Good Price
A great method to find out what a poster usually sells for is to look for it in the auction history of several websites. You’ll want to compare posters of similar condition since posters in better condition sell for higher prices. Use internet searches to find dealer websites where they leave the information about what they’ve sold up on their websites.
Also, use Ebay to search on the title of the poster and filter your results by completed and sold listings. This is because people can and will ask wildly different prices for a poster on Ebay, which is their prerogative, but the market will tell you what the poster is really worth by looking at what it actually sells for.
Sign up for accounts on Heritage Auctions and emovieposter. These are two huge auction sites for buying posters with enormous auction history information databases you can access if you register for a free account. Other similar websites are subscription based Worthpoint and Invaluable.
Keep in mind that at an auction some days there’s a bidding war and prices get crazy high, and other days you can get the same poster for a steal. If you have an idea of what people have been paying recently for a poster you can make a more informed choice. Some posters have been rapidly gaining in value (Jaws) and others go down in value. Some are always popular (Star Wars episodes 4,5,6).
If you are buying from a poster dealer the prices will be higher than at auction or from your cousin’s friend of a friend. As retailers, dealers have markups on their inventory to cover the cost of business overhead, investments in shipping, restoration, linenbacking, framing, employees, advertising, and more. Posters will be priced so that the business is profitable. If you don’t like the price, you don’t have to buy it; you can do your own legwork rather than buying from a curated selection where effort has already been invested to search for and acquire the posters, which saves your time, effort and the cost of making mistakes. That being said, many dealers are open to negotiating and do auction posters as well.
3. Don’t Buy The Unfixables
How Condition Affects Value
Trimmed Posters
You may see posters come up for sale that have had the sides cut off, which is occasionally done by uninformed people to better fit the poster into a frame. Border pieces can be replaced with new paper after linenbacking and disguised so that it is unnoticeable. If a piece of the poster with credits or image has been cut off then it will be much more involved (and therefore costly) to replicate the missing area by hand.
You need an estimate from a restorer to decide if the cost to have the trimmed areas restored is worth it to you. A trimmed poster will have a severely reduced value compared to the same title that is not trimmed, not just because of the difficulty in restoring it, but because it also affects your ability to determine authenticity of the poster without the correct dimensions and printer marks.
Say No To Plaque Mounting
This is when a poster is glued to a sheet of wood or mdf (medium density fibreboard) with permanent adhesive and frequently the poster's surface will also be laminated. The poster is then completely smooth and flat and can be hung as is. Never, ever do this to a poster that has collectible value. The glue used is permanent and the wood is acidic. The poster cannot ever be removed from this mount to be repaired or authenticated. In the poster world this poster now has no collectible value. It would be a rotten thing to do to sell it to someone and let them think it was valuable.
Sun Fade
Can fading from exposure to sunlight be fixed? Maybe. It depends on how badly it’s faded and the nature of the poster design and the paper (for example, it would have to be pre-1980s paper to accept paint well). However, even if it can be fixed, the entire surface WILL have paint on it. Heavily restored posters are fine if you can’t find another copy in better shape and you really want that title, but at auction it will not command a top price in comparison to a less restored poster of the same title.
Furthermore, fixing sun fade by repainting the entire poster while retaining the original detail is a magnificent feat of optical colour mixing and should be attempted solely by the most experienced, most talented restoration artist.
Creases and Tears
These flaws are actually very well dealt with by linenbacking and restoring the poster. Don’t be afraid of purchasing a creased or torn vintage poster, you may be able to get it for a good price that will more than make up for the restoration expense. Even posters where it has completely separated at the fold lines.
However, modern paper, from roughly mid-eighties to present does not glue down as well as older paper. The ink surface is not melded with the fibres the way lithographs were printed and can flake off. Also, there is a higher chance of bubbling (air bubbles that appear inside the paper) with newer paper and these air pockets remain after the poster is mounted and dry. Oddly enough, it’s not every modern paper that does this, some posters may linenback just fine, but you can’t tell if the ink will flake off and bubble until it’s too late.
General rule to follow, therefore, is assume creases and tears can be fixed unless it’s after the 1980s.
Mold
Mold is THE WORST. Most people are told to apply bleach and see it disappear and think it’s gone. No, mold is like a tree and you’ve just killed the part you see above ground, the roots are still there and they will regrow. Something that really kills mold so it can’t come back is acetic acid.
This is where conservation linenbacking is the obvious winner compared to commercial linenbacking. In conservation linenbacking the poster is deacidified first, and then bleached, NOT with harsh household bleach, but with calcium hypochlorite. Remaining chloramines are neutralized with a mild acetic acid solution, which will get rid of the mold roots as well. But since you’ve now lowered the pH you need to bring it back up with a second deacidification. It’s the two essential deacidification baths in the conservation process that stabilize the fibres, initially and after the bleach, and ensures the poster paper has increased flexibility (ie: not brittle) and is buffered against aging. In between treatments the poster is thoroughly rinsed with water.
I generally wouldn’t recommend buying a poster that has mold. If there is a little bit of mold on a border the poster can be saved, but the paper affected will need to be replaced. This is because even with only a little mold the affected paper will often become unstable. What is unstable paper? That is when the fibres become disconnected upon wetting the poster and you will see that the areas where the mold was will get bubbly, separated and pulpy.
These areas are lost and will need to be replaced later in a restoration. This happens a lot in posters that got wet and then the posters dried out and it seemed that the mold had stopped growing. However, the damage had already been done and as soon as it got wet again the paper got pulpy.
Location of damage, border vs face
As I’ve mentioned a couple of times above, if the damage is in a border or a solid coloured area it will be faster and less expensive to restore. If you have missing paper in a highly detailed area, for example a famous actor’s face, a talented artist can repaint in the missing image but be prepared to pay for the length of time that that will take. You can weigh the cost of fixing the damage vs the value you could ask for the poster if selling it restored.
Tape
No discussion of poster damage would be complete without cursing tape. Many posters have terrible stains from 30 year old tape. Over time the adhesive dries up into a dark yellow crust and the plastic tape will just float off.
Most times it requires solvent and a razor blade to gently remove tape and remaining adhesive without damaging the poster further. Tape stains are permanent, cannot be removed by cleaning or bleaching, and will have to be painted over to conceal. Consider the expense of restoration if buying a heavily taped poster.