Hello All! I’ve been serious about my poster hobby coming up on 30 days or so now, and I’ve been reading tons of posts and such on the art of authenticating posters. I’ve gotten to a point where I’d really like to make sure that I’m doing it right and taking all of the proper points into consideration. Rather than say, “Hey, tell me how to do it”, I thought I could post a more or less “walkthrough” based on all that I’ve learned thus far and others could tell me where I’ve gone wrong. This way, nobody has to post things we all already know, and it can also serve as a more straightforward guide for others new to poster authentication, much like the recent “Advice for Novice Collectors” thread, but more in a walkthrough style. I don’t want this post to grow into a long messy monster, so I think I’ll post it in parts based on the topic.
A few things to take note of; I collect mostly Japanese anime and video game related posters, which is why all of my examples are such today. I believe that most of the points discussed here can be applied to all posters, but just be sure to keep that in mind. I’m also aware that, in the world of anime and vg posters, there may or may not be a whole lot of fakes going around, with the obvious exceptions of the hits (anything Ghibli, Lupin III movies, etc.), but I still wanted to make this guide as the principles could be applied elsewhere as well.
I picked out a few examples I had on hand:
A 1997 Princess Mononoke B2 announcement poster
https://icedrive.net/1/666W5A7MtYA 1990s Sailor Moon “prize poster”
https://icedrive.net/1/50ldgSFAkfA 1984 Macross “Do you Remember Love” Movie Announcement Poster
https://icedrive.net/1/df42HnTpHyOk, here we go!
Where did it come from?
First things first, you have to take into consideration who you’re buying from. This can tell you more about the posters than you might think!
Princess Mononoke:
I got this poster on yahoo auction from what seemed to be a good seller. But after I purchased it, I did a little more digging into the seller, which I should have done BEFORE I gave him my hard earned money. I checked his profile and saw that he sells a lot of posters. A lot of legitimate sellers sell a lot of posters, but so do a lot of scammers, so that doesn’t tell me much. I did a quick google search of the seller and found that he had sold several Princess Mononoke posters in the past few months. This was supposed to be, as he claimed, an original 1997 announcement poster that was stored in a warehouse as dead stock. This set off some red flags immediately. Princess Mononoke was the best selling domestic movie of all time in Japan for years, only to be surpassed by Ghibli’s next film, Spirited Away. You just kept a bunch of copies in your warehouse and never considered selling them until now? Also, Yahoo Auctions will delete old auction pages after a certain amount of time, 30 days I believe. Using Aucfan, a japanese service that keeps track of auctions from various sites, I noticed that this seller’s very recent successful auctions had been deleted (which is a manual process) and then identical items with identical names and identical pictures were being posted. None of these things immediately disqualify a poster from being real, but definitely raise more questions. Not looking good for the princess at the moment.
Sailor Moon:
I got this poster off of Merucari (Mercari in English, I believe). After checking the sellers profile, I found that the seller had only sold a couple of posters in the past, but sold a lot of various other items, such as clothes and makeup. Not exactly the profile of a potential scammer. The seller claimed that the poster had been won by her and after being displayed for a short while, was kept in her closet for the past 20 or so years. Seeing as it came with its original poster case, I thought that this was perfectly reasonable. Side note, this series of prize posters came in their own custom BanPresto cases. Sailor Jupiter seems legit so far.
Macross:
I got this poster in a lot of 18 posters from a seller who, like the Sailor Moon poster, claimed that they had all been stored in his closet and he was just trying to see what he could get for them. From his profile, I could see that he hadn’t sold any posters recently, though he had sold other various items, like a few hockey sticks and such. Nothing really stood out to me here so far. Furthermore, I looked at the backs of all the posters and noticed that they all seemed to be of different shades, dirtiness, quality, thickness, ect. This is good as it shows that the seller is either the most meticulous scammer of all time, or does not seem to be printing out fakes. However, it’s very possible that this owner unknowingly or not purchased a fake. Nothing seems too out of the ordinary here.
Thanks for taking the time to read through all of it so far. I'll be looking forward to everyone's comments!
