Usually, the original is worth more than the copy.
The real thing is worth more than the knockoff.
But as The New York Times reports, there’s an exception to this rule of the art world. Alternative movie posters — created not by studios but by fans — are fetching more money than the official movie posters themselves.
“To be fair, most official posters today aren’t made to be beautiful or even art — they’re made to sell tickets,” the Times notes. “In the ’90s, studios figured the best way to do that was to skip hand-painted posters in favor of gigantic photos of stars’ heads. The creators of alternative movie posters, however, don’t care about big heads or bottom lines. They’re concerned, often obsessively so, with reminding us just why we love these films so much.”
The result: posters that are more treasured — and often considerably more expensive.
Mondo, a company based in Austin, Texas, is the company most often credited with the explosion of alternative versions. As soon as Mondo puts a print on sale, an entire run can be gone in seconds. Many fetch hundreds or even thousands of dollars on eBay.