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Posters have long been a problem at our cinema. We only have a small office and have put them on the floor, flat in a cut up standee box. We hate it and it is no system at all. Im curious as to how other people store them and sort them. there must be a solution to our problem. Thanks!

Some of the larger office supply stores and catalog houses sell Blueprint storage racks designed for architects' offices, and these can make your posters take up much less room. Some work for rolled papers and others for straight hung papers; this last is the best choice for those with the room, but for more cramped quarters, the rolled-up storage can be done with the rack mounted high on the wall or even attached to the ceiling. Other racks such as hat racks might also be so adapted.

You don't want to fold or refold any posters, since with time they gain an antique value and could be quite valuable to you years from now. Folds only hasten the demise of a poster or any other paper, so try to keep them flat or at least rolled up inside a mailing tube (or similar blueprints tube) in regular rooms (not attics or basements where extremes of temperature and humidity are common). A mildewed poster will be of no value to you or anyone else. Likewise keep them away from sunlight or bright lights which will quickly fade and embrittle them. If a poster strikes your fancy or you think it will be a collectors' item in future, consider deacidifying it by use of a simple spray bottle of deacidifier available through the various Archival supplies dealers such as University Products or Conservation Resources, and others found by typing the subject into Google.com These places also sell the racks and tubes you may want to use.

We store them in two ways: in rolls and after 11 years of storgae like this it has become a nightmare yet to reslved because my wife likes to keep doing what she's doing. nuff said?......

In our Temple Theatre I had our old projection room to work with so I set up a table that is 10' long. We unroll asap. New ones go on the "we'll be using these pile" and we have a few long strips of plywood to hold them down and unflatten them. When it becomes clear we will not be using these ever again we slide them over to the "never using again" pile. 2 times a year we have a sale in the lobby.... 10.00 each or 7.50 each for more than one. Anyway: this made access, storage, and getting rid of them very easy. It takes a huge amount of posters to stack up 1".

The best way to store them if you will be keeping them is to either get a used blue print file and they do store a huge amount of flats, also known as a flat file, or build one somewhere, 4 ....4" deep trays would store years and years of posters alphebetically.

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Michael Hurley
Impresario

Is the poster sale an advertised day? Do people look forward to it?? Do you end up selling them all?
We have often thought of doing a big sale with the posters, standees and banners. Just never have got to it. We tend to just fold up the old ones and stick them out for free about once a year

I'm under the impression that it's not legal to sell the posters. Are they not promotional material that remains the property of the film company?

they let you sell them when theyre old. A while back we had a Kill Bill2 banner that we had finished with, but the film was still running. I decided to put it on ebay. got stacks of bids etc, but the film company rang us to find out if it had been stolen, which it hadn't . We were told to take it off sale immediately as it was a brand new show and selling it was breach of copywrite. We asked if we could sell it when old and they said yes, but wouldn't specify how old. So we take it to mean once they are out on DVD. I have sold a few things after their dvd release and had no problems.