1952 Red Man Display Posters. What's real and what's not? My opinion

Lucas00 · #1 Today, 03:03 AM

Hi everybody. Doing some searching and using some critical thinking along with some historical tells, I think the vast majority of these sold as originals are not.

I own the card stock Kiner I will be referring to just to be transparent.

What is known- these are seemingly quite easy to find as original. "Originals" are for sale constantly on ebay.

There was a "Find" in the 90s of "unused" posters. I am 90% sure these are reprints and not original to 1952. These are paper thin and see through. Original sign and memorabilia collectors, please tell me how many original large form advertisements from the golden age of advertising were printed on see through paper thin sheets? I'm going to guess very few. At least everything I see original and intended for store display from the 50s is on some form of card stock. Advertising never seemed to be something cheaped out on and quality seemed to always be very high in the period. I personally think these were made by somebody in a print shop using real examples to make copies. As they are very high quality on the front.

There are also other known fakes/reprints, they are- on foam board, on metal, and some are on card stock with Bright white backs (I'll get to that later). If you purchased these already framed, (and I've seen quite a few of these sold framed) I am going to assume they are not original, and likely white back reproductions or the wafer thin 90s "find". All of these examples will usually be essentially perfect shape with little to no wear.

Now, onto what I believe are the legitimate posters. First of all, they should show considerable age related wear, the corners shouldn't be perfect, there should be creasing. Age spots, paper loss. Normal wear you would expect for something 15 inches long that's 70+ years old. They should not be see through. They should have Cream/Brownish colored backs. They should be on a thicker than paper card stock.

I'm going to include a few pictures, these are quite hard to tell differences from the front, but take my word for it the card stock kiner has handling creases all over as well as heavily damaged corners. And hanging damage on the back. The front photo i used is darker than it looks in person, used a bad lighting pic as I don't have a good one yet. The colors are much nicer in person, the green in particular is not accurate.
As well as the mize that has heavy age toning and similar damage. However the backs are where you can really see the difference.

Also to note, the card stock version of Kiner shows his card in a shade of purplish blue that's much closer to the card itself. Where the paper examples are more of a dark sky blue.

I did say 90% chance earlier because I think there is a slim chance red man did use the very thin paper as a cheap alternative. Or maybe even used for the later cards the next few years as a lazy and cost efficient strategy. I just don't think either is true personally.

Let me know what you all think. Are they both original. Or do you agree with me and think the thin paper ones are reprints. Or something else?

Sorry for the crappy visuals I made this post on my phone. Hopefully it is viewable. You may need to right click and view images in a new tab.

Lucas00 · #2 Today, 01:16 PM

I think the images should be viewable because they are posted via Tapatalk. Though I'm not certain. They do show up for me

perezfan · #3 Today, 01:20 PM

Excellent post. I have always seriously questioned the thin paper versions myself.... both in terms of their low quality, cheap prices and the easy availability to find them.

I agree that the so-called find was more likely a huge batch of more recent reproductions that "miraculously" surfaced. Great research!

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