This situation was unusual because the studio supposedly recalled/withdrew them under threat of lawsuit from RJ Reynolds, a formidable legal adversary. Has that been confirmed? Exactly what happened? Did the studio make active efforts to ensure theaters sent them back or destroyed them? Did it destroy the posters that had not yet been sent to theaters? Obviously some theater employees kept them.
In the end relatively few have surfaced. Maybe nobody wants to sell, maybe relatively few were ever printed, maybe many of them were actually destroyed, maybe somebody is sitting on a big stack of them and slowly parceling them out. Who knows?
In a normal recall, the studio would send a letter and ask for a return of the posters. On rare occasions (mainly Disney), they would call the theater directly - I know that they did this for the Dick Tracy Mind if I Call you Dick poster.
For Pulp, they called and told each theater that they would be charged ($10 per, I think) for every poster that was not returned. I have not heard of this threat being used for any other recall case.
As for the NSS number, why wouldn't it have a number?
Repost - this is a rather non-controversial post, but, due to it's information, should be kept with the previous Pulp Fiction discussion.