Many, many U.S. collectors, especially newer ones look to buy a poster or posters from several of their favorite movies. Often they will find they have the ability to buy many different size posters and other movie paper from those movies, ranging from very large posters, like a six-sheet or three-sheet to the most common size U.S. poster, the one-sheet, but also smaller posters like an insert, half-sheet, or window card, and also a lobby card, herald or still, plus many different non-U.S. posters!

But how to know which of these many different types and sizes are the most valuable, and which are the "best buy"? Common sense might SEEM to indicate that the larger the poster the more valuable it is, but here is a case where common sense can lead you astray! Just because a three-sheet (or a six-sheet) is larger (and likely much more rare, too) than a one-sheet does not necessarily mean it is worth more than the corresponding one-sheet.

Why? Because for every hundred people who would buy a one-sheet, likely only a small percentage of them would buy the same three-sheet or six-sheet, usually because they wouldn’t have a place in their home to display the three-sheet or six-sheet. So often a three-sheet or six-sheet can sell for the same or less than the one-sheet. Of course if the three-sheet or six-sheet has a spectacular image that is different from the one-sheet image, it will almost always sell for far more than the one-sheet (maybe many times more)!

The same logic holds true for large posters from other countries. Italian two-panel posters can often sell for less than the one-panel poster from the same movie, and there are many similar cases from countries all over the globe. One of the more unusual cases is in Australia, where the most common poster size is the daybill, and most collectors there would rather have the daybill from most movies than the corresponding Australian one-sheet!

There is also the question of whether a U.S. collector SHOULD solely seek out one-sheets (or three-sheets or six-sheets) and mostly ignore the many other sizes and types of posters that were made, and I will discuss that next time!