eMoviePoster.com

We regularly receive a variation on the following question (usually from brand new collectors):

"Recently at auction I purchased an old lobby movie advertisement. At the bottom it read 'Property of National Screen Service Corp., Licensed for display only in connection with the exhibition of this picture at your theatre. Must be returned immediately thereafter.' Would it be of any value? And IS it the 'Property of National Screen Service Corp.', and can they claim ownership of it?"

The good news is you don't have to return your poster to ANYONE! Most collectors have a subliminal fear that someday an official-looking guy will knock on their door, flash a National Screen Service badge, and demand the return of all their posters! If National Screen had any claim on the zillions of movie posters they printed between 1940 and the very early 1990s, it ended long ago when these posters were publicly traded back and forth for 40 years without any claim of any kind from NSS.

So stop worrying about this, and continue your collecting of movie posters. But DO remember to always buy from reputable dealers and auction houses, because sadly there ARE a lot of reproduction movie posters sold as originals, especially on eBay, which not only does nothing to police their site, but they also do nothing when people complain to them about getting cheated there.

See Also
Did you know... what NSS numbers on the bottom of a poster mean?
Did you know... that starting in the late 1970s, studios printed their own one-sheets in addition to the NSS versions and that at around the same time the NSS started printing some unfolded one-sheets?
Did you know... that we have much added information about NSS distribution?