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Last week we ran an article entitled "Did you know... that some early re-release posters are far more rare than the first release posters?" where we discussed THEATRICAL re-releases of movies. This week I'd like to discuss more recent re-releases, as well as commercial repros and limited edition prints that are not associated with any showing of the movie, and the more recent "art house" prints from companies like S2, Alamo Drafthouse and Mondo.

From the early days of movies into the early 1960s, most re-releases were very similar. Studios took movies that had been out of circulation for at least 7 years or so, and then they would re-release them into theaters, with either similar posters to that of the first release (sometimes only two color) or with completely different posters (this was especially done when one of the stars of the movie had been low-billed during the first release, but had become a major star over those 7 years), and as I explained in the previous article (at Did you know... that some early re-release posters are far more rare than the first release posters?), those posters can sometimes sell for pretty high amounts.

But in the early 1960s the showing of old movies on TV started killing the market for re-releases (except super major movies and all Disney movies). When there WAS a re-release of a non-classic movie, they often played in a very tiny number of theaters, and consequently they made few of those posters and they can be extremely rare and very collectible!

After Jaws and Star Wars started the cycle of blockbusters, studios found they could re-release those types of movies over and over in a very short time and still make money, and they would often make entirely different (and really cool posters) for those re-releases, and because there are completionist collectors for those movies, those re-releases sell for quite respectable amounts!

There are also major limited edition re-releases of classic 1920s to 1960s movies by the AFI, the BFI, and others, and the posters they produce also often sell for surprisingly high amounts (probably partly because those posters can be found "rolled" and in mint condition, and there is an entire group of collectors who pretty much only collects posters of the past 30 or so years, and these re-release posters fit into their collections, where originals would not).

In the 1990s, a man named Jack Solomon bought original 100 year old presses and produced newly created stone litho close re-creations of the most classic older posters. These "S2 recreations" are incredible to look at and display, and they sold for a tiny fraction of the cost of the next-to impossible originals.

In recent years, a company called Alamo Drafthouse opened a theater that would show a classic movie for one night only, and they would hire an artist to create a very small quantity of signed and numbered prints of newly created posters for that movie, usually with wildly different art. Those have been a huge success, and there are now quite a few different companies doing the same thing, and time will tell how those posters appreciate over the long term, but for now, those who purchased these early have made huge profits doing so!

There are also commercial reproductions that are NOT limited printings in any way. These were first widely created in the 1960s, and the two largest distributors were Portal Publications and Celestial Arts, but there were many others. Because they sold many tens of thousands of these, they usually have very little collectible value, except when they are sold dishonestly as originals!

This is just a very brief overview of a very broad subject. I most want all of you to realize that you need not only collect first release movie posters, and that there are many other categories of movie paper that continue to grow in popularity, and that they may well be worth your time to explore some or all of them!

See Also:
Did you know... that some early re-release posters are far more rare than the first release posters?
Did you know... that Meet John Doe was quickly re-released two different times?