As someone who loves movie posters and old school movie art, it was quite exciting to read about a secret stash of posters that was recently discovered and put up for sale.
They were all stuck together, the glue was steamed, and once the posters were pulled apart, it was movie lover’s mother lode that included the1931 Bela Lugosi Dracula.
The posters were all glued together because in those days, you pasted an upcoming movie poster on top of an older one because no one realized posters would ever be valuable.
With the explosion of Star Wars, movie posters became major collectors items, and as expensive as some of the Star Wars posters can be, it’s nothing in comparison to buying a Universal monster movie poster from the thirties, which can easily go for six figures, or the poster for Metropolis, which may be the rarest movie poster on earth.
As The Hollywood Reporter confirms, a poster for the 1927 science fiction classic just went up for auction because it was seized in bankruptcy liquidation. The poster that was seized is one of four copies of the poster left in the world. The collector who lost the poster in the bankruptcy case paid $690,000 for it back in 2005, and it was a record breaker for the time.
So as Reuters reports, a memorabilia collector named Ralph DeLuca bought a set of nine posters from the bankruptcy sale, including the ultra rare Metropolis, an original 1933 King Kong poster, and a teaser poster for The Invisible Man.
Outbidding Heritage Auctions, DeLuca bought the lot for $1.2 million, and he told Reuters, “I honestly feel that the Metropolis poster is worth more than the whole lot. It’s ‘The Scream,’ the ‘Guernica of film posters. It’s literally the ‘Mona Lisa.’”
DeLuca added that he won’t resell the poster unless he gets an offer he can’t refuse, “a Guinness Book of Records offer. I believe it will be the first to go past $1 million and even hit $2 million.”
Thankfully, an original Star Wars poster will only set you back a few grand at most, but maybe when it’s over eighty years old, like Metropolis, it will go for millions at auction too.
