Determining the Value of a Vintage Poster

During the later 1970s, buying and selling vintage posters became very popular. The market focused on the most popular artists like Jules Cheret and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Posters made by artists from the Art deco period, like Fix- Masseau also became very popular.

If you want to start building your own vintage poster collection, it's important that you know how to determine a poster's value. Here are some tips that you can follow when appraising a poster.

Printing technique
Posters made between the late 1800s and early 1900s were created using the printing technique of stone lithography. Today, posters of this kind are very expensive and are considered as rare finds.

Lithography is a printing process where colors that are to be used are put on individually on a porous stone. With an acid, the design is created on the stone and ink is spread on the stone so that it is absorbed on the design. The stone is then pressed on a paper to transfer the design. Once one color had dried, the process is repeated using other colors with other designs etched on it.

Stone lithography is replaced by silk screen and photo offset when World War 2 ended. Posters that are made from silk screen and photo offset are cheaper than those created using stone Lithography although posters drawn using this technique may be sold at a higher price if the posters are rare, made by well-known artists or advertised a popular movie. Poster from Switzerland or Japan can also be very expensive.

Originality
Genuine posters are more expensive than authorized reproductions. Most posters created using the lithography technique only has one original copy as lithography is a very expensive technique to use in making posters.

Achievements and Recognitions
Posters made by well known artists like Cheret are expensive. Those made by Toulouse- Lautrec have a high value because his posters paved the way to the acceptance of the medium as fine art. With this, many artists started to venture on making posters.

Here is a list of some of the most popular poster artists in the industry

• Adolphe Mouron Cassandre
• Angelo Cesselon
• Henri de Toulouse- Lautrec
• Jules Cheret
• Jean Carlu
• Beautiful Angle
• Michael Byrne
• Milton Glaser
• Mark Young
• Favianna Rodrigues

Subject
Subjects may vary depending on the type of poster that is created. Some popular subjects are bikes, automobiles, well-known political propagandas and women.  Subjects of the poster depend greatly on the time that the poster was made.

Rarity
The number of copies that a poster has will have an effect on how much a poster is marketed. Posters that only have a limited number of copies would have a very high selling price.

The number of copies of a poster can be hard to determine. It's very important that you do your research well when buying a vintage poster that is said to be rare.

Preservation
How the poster is stored will also have an effect on its price. Posters of good quality and in good condition will normally be sold at a higher price than those that weren't preserved well.

When collecting vintage posters, it's very important that you know how to examine a poster well so that you don't pay too much for a poster that shouldn't be sold at a high price.