Why is it that these sorts of finds always seem to be made by nearly clueless non-collectors?!
From Grey's MoPo post: http://movieposters.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=7094&lotNo=83590 etc...
Justin Hall and his wife Katie, both 27 years old, discovered the posters after
they moved into a fixer-upper late last year. When a pawn shop offered Hall a
fast $500 sight unseen for the dusty box he pulled from the garage attic,
something told him the posters - which date between 1895 and 1918 - might be
more valuable than he initially thought.
"One afternoon we started looking through them and right away we noticed the
color on some of them is amazing," said Hall, an engineer. "Some of them my
wife loved and wanted to mount and hang on the walls. All that changed when we
learned they may be worth a few thousand dollars apiece. My father-in-law asked
if he could research them and he did the leg work and learned a lot."