I have heard people talk about buying Movie posters as an Investment. It is very hard to say how much a poster is worth, though I have encouraged my wife to believe my collection will be worth a fortune to her when I die. Anything to help justify my habit...

Any poster is worth what someone is prepared to pay for it. Value is in the eye of the beholder.

Like anything else collectible, supply and demand, condition, country of origin, original or re-release and the overall nostalgia factor all play a part in the assessment.

Supply and Demand

Film posters were never intended to be privately owned. They belonged (in theory, they still do...) to the movie's distribution company, they were sent along with the actual reels of film for the theater to use in it's promotion of the feature playing that week. At the end of the films run they were supposed to be returned. Many posters say as much in the small print at the bottom, either from the National Screen Service (NSS), the advertising company or the distributor. If they were returned to the distributor they were often destroyed, discarded or forgotten about.

The supply of some movie posters is from, or connected to, that chain of people between the Printers and the Theaters. Some unfolded posters may have come direct from the printers and have never seen a Theater, or have been samples hanging around the office. Folded and clearly used posters likely came from Theaters, either from someone who worked there's personal hoard or contacts in the industry. One way or another they made it to a dealer, who sold them to us.

The supply is very limited. However many may have been churned out at the time, few made it out into the public domain. Those that did are hunted down with various degrees of avidness by their fans. Age and rarity are of course connected, old titles tend to only show up again when collections are sold off.

Demand comes from several factors including the popularity of the film, the actors involved, it's genre, it's worthiness as a milestone work, it's historical context and the visual appeal of its artwork. Along with fellow Film Poster Collectors, we now compete for titles with people who are fans of the actor or who just want some spectacular decorations for their new Home Theater room.

Condition Matters Unless it Doesn't

There is no standard for describing the condition of posters that everyone agrees on. Terms like Fine, Excellent, Very Good, are the sellers point of view of what they mean, not necessarily yours. More useful is specific descriptive text cataloging the faults and blemishes of which there are bound to be some, this is disposable ephemera after all. Folded, Edge Tears, fold separation, tape marks, stains, pen marks, etc are all useful pointers to what you are actually getting. Of course a picture speaks a thousand truths but not at the resolution allowed on Ebay, a good and detailed description is really going to help you. If the description is lacking, email them for answers.

Remember what you are buying though and don't set your standards too high. A poster was originally a discardable advertising aid, sent folded from cinema to cinema to be repeatedly pinned on display, inside and out, in all weathers. They were not handled with kid gloves but by spotty kids with butter soaked fingers. Expect at it's best it will have folds, pinholes and some staining round the edges.

What you are looking for is minimal damage, if any, to the visible art. Fold creases and even some light wear (and tear) are par for the course. Pinholes in the corners are to be expected, even tape marks at the edges, but again, not on the main artwork. Tolerance for stains, pen marks showing through from scrawl on the back and general rumpling are up to you to figure in to how much you want this item. Posters should not be trimmed though, if some previous owner cut the edges of a 27x41 1 sheet or 30x40 British Quad to fit their Wal-Mart frame then it is pretty much ruined. Unless...

Condition matters, but demand can out weigh it. Recently on Ebay a version of the Carry On Cleo movie poster for the popular UK 60's comedy went for nearly $1,000. It's description included this:

"The Poster has been trimmed to 24/3/4"x 40" & has been rolled (as the Poster was printed on a heavy stock card paper this shows through but suitable framing would largely obviate this effect). "

Poster appears to be on card, unusual for a quad, rolling had put extensive creasing across the art -10 points. Condition is not good, especially trimming 5 inches off it is a real negative, -100 points at least. Also, it's a double bill which some people like and specifically collect and others see as a re-release version and the less for it, -5 points. But...It has the same art as the first UK Quad version painted by Tom Chantrell and deemed too close a parody of the actual Burton-Taylor Cleopatra movie poster art. Under threat, the Chantrell "bed" version was withdrawn from circulation, making that UK quad a very rare poster indeed, +1000 points. So just to get the banned art in any form at all, the bidding went up and up. Yep, one of my bids is in there somewhere, near the bottom.

The Nostalgia Wildcard

You may find yourself the owner of a hot poster for no other reason than someone really, really wants that poster. They may not even be a poster collector, it may be a nostalgic link to some part of their life that they alone know. Maybe they were in that film, their wife loves it or they lost their virginity in the back seat of the cinema to it. Whatever, it may be almost money no object for that specific poster.

I once had and angry email from someone I had outbid on a Frankie Howard Up Pompeii poster. They said alright, name your price. Well, I never found out how high they would go. Turns out this was a must have for me too, my nostalgia factor kicked in because I loved Frankie, I had seen him on stage weeks before he died and Up Pompeii was a movie my Dad had taken me to seen to celebrate being old enough to get into a UK AA rated movie. I had never seen one offered on Ebay before and I had wanted it for a long time. No sale. Of course a couple of months later another one appeared on Ebay and went for half what I had paid, I don't know if it went to my accuser or not.

What's Worth Collecting

There are a lot of niche demand posters out there. Maybe a good idea to find a genre you like and stick with it. Things come and go in popularity, the difference between a junkshop and an antiques dealer is specialization.

James Bond movies, for instance, have always been popular and big box office, lots of theaters had the posters, all over the word. Demand is high enough that though I would love to, this is one niche I just can't afford to get into. Popular movies, big stars, important leader in a genre, part of Cinema and Cultural history and last but not least, great art by Mr Robert McGinnis and others push Bond prices way up.

I try to collect Hammer Film Posters, which are also starting to move beyond my reach. When I can't feed this habit I make do with other British Quad posters, I like the large landscape format 30x40 art of the 60s-70s by people like Tom Chantrell. Unfortunately, so do a lot of other collectors.