Movie Poster Postcards

When I was a boy sitting in the movie theater, there would be a certain music that would play,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye8KvYKn9-0

my little heart would skip a beat and the all kids in the movie theater would cheer. And man wearing suit and hat would walk across the screen, stop and shot his and screen would go red. Another James Bond movie was going.

                  

 Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, Diamonds Are Forever. So what does that have to do with post carding? I was in a little shop in New York City and on several racks there were postcards of movie posters. There were 100’s of them. I got so excited; I had never seen this type of postcards before. So this was the start of another chapter in my postcard collecting, movie poster postcards. I started collecting the James Bond movies poster postcards first and then moved onto what ever was there. The Bullitt, Dirty Harry, Frankenstein, the list is long. But there was a little problem with collecting these postcards. I could only find them in two places in New York City. I would find out that both places imported there postcards from Europe. I asked one of the owners what was going on with him being the only person having these postcards…he would just smile at me warmly. Then one day he explained. It was illegal to sell these types of postcards. I would then learn you weren't allowed to copy a movie poster of any movie poster in the USA. It was an infringement of copy rights. So I was purchasing black market postcards. I bought hundreds of them. When I want them now, I have to order them from London. But if you read the laws now, the copy rights for movie poster made between certain years have expired.

-  All movie posters created on or after January 1, 1978, are copyrighted.

-  Some movie posters created between 1923 and 1977 are copyrighted. Some have fallen into the public domain.

-  No movie posters created prior to 1923 are copyrighted. They are all in the public domain.

I will always love my collection of black market movie poster postcards, I chuckle. Who said post carding isn't exciting?