My Star Wars Poster

Star Wars Poster Book

At last, an all-inclusive visual compendium of the most illustrious imaginative promotional silver screen campaign worldwide for the most popular series of all time – Star Wars, and in poster form.

This item: The Star Wars Poster Book by Stephen J. Sansweet, head of fan relations at Lucasfilm, is a hardcover 288 page masterpiece from Chronicle Books. Within this book are 350 of the most amazing posters from the Star Wars series, including the very first which was only a text ad saying, "Coming to Your Galaxy This Summer: Star Wars."

This anthology chronicles the history of the genre perfectly in picture form. These are the posters which have been displayed on the bedroom and office walls of serious fans. Some of these posters capture the campy nature such as the infamous exploding head of Darth Vader while others show the more serious artistic form like that of Luke Skywalker battling Darth Vader on the Death Star.

Stephen Sansweet and Peter Vilmur, as well as contributions from other collectors, give behind the scene details of the history of this series through poster form. If you are a collector, the commentaries these expert collectors give are invaluable.

If you collect posters on eBay or anywhere online or at swap meets, you will want a copy of this book that can give you accurate information about bootleg identification so you can tell the difference between a fake and the genuine article.

If you are trying to collect every known Star Wars poster, you'll be in for a treat. You would have a hard time searching the internet to find every poster that is revealed in this volume. This book is that comprehensive and is going to be used as the definitive book on Star Wars poster collecting. It's already being used by dealers as they will often cite this book when it comes to their posters.

As this book was put out in October of 2005, it is sure to be followed up with a sequel book to capture the same in-depth nature as this one, but to include the movies that have been out since like Revenge of the Sith. While it may not have the posters from some of the latest films, it is as authoritative as it gets.

Star Wars Movie Poster

Imagine becoming part of the movie making magic of Star Wars. There is so much paraphernalia and collectibles circulating—its worth is growing astronomically. One thing many don't always consider when they remember Star Wars is that the actors were no-names, for several of them it was in fact their first movie. If Harrison Ford was not cast as Hans Solo, many believed that his career would have never gone anywhere. Nobody knew from the get-go that Star Wars would blow up as immensely as it did. So many posters from the trilogy are still huge price contenders in auctions throughout the U.S. Remember, the most rare posters from the trilogy are still circulating out there somewhere, but few know the right angles to approach when seeking them out.

How does a collector know if he or she is viewing an original Star Wars movie poster or an impostor? For example: Star Wars, The New Hope (1977), supposedly only has one hundred original PG rating version posters before impostors’ setout to do the unimaginable—replicate them. After Star Wars amassed unearthly success, few exclusive theater engagements used the extremely rare masterpiece posters for promotional purposes only. What happened? Star Wars geeks came out of their cubicles and labs—and they took the unshorn, untrodden path to poster seeking bliss. Much to the geeks' chagrin, impostors proliferated everywhere, and the universe was at a standstill. Gaining strength by following in the footsteps of Luke Skywalker's bravery, fans began tracking these few originals and paying extreme prices for them. Attaining one of these rare specimens may cost roughly four thousand dollars nowadays, but that is a small price to pay in order to become the envy and awe of every Star Wars geek out there, as well as every other less ecstatic collector.

Test Star Wars posters, in small amounts, went out before the mass quantities did at the release in 1977. The main difference between those testers and the abundant promotional release posters is that the testers had color edge borders. The test posters would be shown around in order to seek approval from the powers-that-be before mass production. A gem like this costs anywhere between $3500-5000, depending on the quality of it. It's interesting to note that the overall quality and excitement of Star Wars seems to endure the hype of just about every movie today, although that is relatively difficult to say with complete assertion. Remember, we are still currently feeling the affect of its glorious grandeur, so it's difficult to predict which current picture will supplant the hype of Star Wars.