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Related Articles

Merchandise vs. Memorabilia

by Jacob Grossi, ConcertPosterArt.com

In the world of concert posters some good examples of memorabilia are punk flyers, telephone pole posters, early mimeograph handouts, one-color flyers. Extending out from concert posters you might get into ticket stubs, stage used setlists, performer or venue contracts, menus from famous clubs, clothing and instruments...

Art Of Rock Poster Collecting

by Jacob Grossi, ConcertPosterArt.com

In recent years the field of concert poster art has expanded greatly, leaving many collectors to wonder just what is an original concert poster. Sadly, the most significant and true to form material is often getting buried in the masses of colorful oversized commercial posters, unauthorized posters, and reprinted material...

Blues Legend B.B. King Opens Museum in Mississippi Hometown

by Randy Lewis, LA Times

Listen to what the blues master has to say about the $15-million museum bearing his name that's slated to open Saturday in the small Mississippi Delta town where he sweated for a few cents a day picking cotton nearly eight decades ago.

Family of Leadbelly Preserves Legacy of the Blues Legend, museum and music archive to open

by Eron Edgemon, Murfreesboro Post

The organization dedicated to preserving the music of legendary blues and folk musician Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly, hopes to have a music archive and museum open in Murfreesboro within five years...

Collecting Vintage Newspaper Concert Ads

by Jacob Grossi, ConcertPosterArt.com

ConcertPosterArt.com has one of the largest collections or music related vintage newspaper advertisements in the world, featuring many items which simply do not exist any other collection. In the past few years we have supplied ads to many reasearchers, biographers...

History Of Concert Posters As Merchandise

by Jacob Grossi, 2008, ConcertPosterArt.com

Bill Graham was perhaps the first person the capitalize on the concert poster as a combined promotional and merchandising tool. Prior to Bill Graham, concert posters were for the most part strictly a promotional tool.

Collecting Original Punk Rock Flyers

by Jacob Grossi, ConcertPosterArt.com 2008

Punk flyers were the perfect piss off, in your face response the psychedelic era posters of the 1960's. Printing was done on zerox machines, photo-offset, or offset for larger shows. Ranging in style from cut and past ransom-note collages to the handrawn images of Raymond Pettibon, Pushead and...

How Music Memorabilia Trades Work and How To Benefit

by Jacob Grossi

Having a good working knowledge of trades will further your collecting goals and increase the investment potential of your collection. While in the long run, you may be after certain posters, you begin to see the value in buying any poster or handbill you can get at a reduced price.

Rarity Desirability and Value of Collectibles

by Jacob Grossi, ConcertPosterArt.com 2008

A common question we often get both in our retail location and online is how do you asses the value of a given piece of memorabilia be it a concert poster, handbill record, guitar pick or anything for that matter. One thing...

Lasting Benefits of Posters As Advertising

by Jacob Grossi, ConcertPosterArt.com, 2001

These days, concert promoters often don’t publish a high quality poster to advertise their events. They know that newspaper and radio ads are very effective, and many stick to these formats exclusively. What is often not taken into account is that both newspaper and radio ads are a time limited exposure...

ConcertPosterArt.com Music Memorabilia Collector Resources and Related Links

The following is a list of concert poster and music memorabilia related websites and resources, as well as links to friends, family and local merchants to check out while visiting our retail location...

Jimi Hendrix Burnt Guitar Expects Millions At Music Memorabilia Auction

by 7/18/08

Hendrix's 1965 Fender Stratocaster, which was famously set alight on stage during a performance at London's Finsbury Astoria in 1967, is going under the hammer with other historic artifacts from the world of music.

James Brown Memorabilia to be Auctioned at Christies

by Rod Carter 7/17/08

James Brown may be gone, but he’s certainly not forgotten. Items once owned by The Godfather of Soul are scheduled to be auctioned off Thursday, July 17th in New York.

Deadheads Dream For A Campus Archive: Grateul Dead Archives Donated University of California Santa Cruz

by Jesse McKinley, New York Times 2/4/08

The Grateful Dead, whose songs celebrated personal freedom, American idealism and mind-altering drugs, will donate a cache of their papers, posters and props on Thursday to the University of California, Santa Cruz, which plans to use the musical miscellany as part of a research center to be known as Dead Central...

Wolfgangs Vault Expands It's Lock on All Thing Rock With Purchase of Assets From Tom Moffatt Productions

by Market Wire, August, 2006

Wolfgang's Vault, the world's premier online site for live rock concert performances and memorabilia, announces its acquisition of memorabilia and merchandise from Tom Moffatt Productions. Included in the purchase were all intellectual property...

Who Are You: Photographers, Poster Artists and collectors clash over copyright law

by Todd Inoue

To some dedicated music-history buffs, this amounts to rock & roll treason. To rabid collectors, this is a dream score come true. To memorabilia dealers, it's stiff competition. And to photographers, it's a gross cash-out they won't benefit from. The brouhaha brewing with the photographers is familiar to some old-school concert-poster creators, who went through a similar bout of shock when Wolfgang's Vault...

New Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition Celebrates Graphic Art Tradition of Hatch Show Print

American Letterpress: The Art of Hatch Show Print” will open at the Experience Music Project|Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle Oct. 11...

Punk Posters Paved The Way For Graphic Arts Career

by Erica Saelens, 10/11/02 Business Journal

Great article on Mike King, the unsung anti-hero of the thriving Portland Oregon concert poster scene.

Woodstock Museum Opens In Bethel New York

by 5/29/08

With the June 2 opening of The Museum at Bethel Woods, old hippies and a new generation of culture lovers will experience the grooviness of Woodstock in film, photos and a collection of memorabilia. The 6,728-square-foot museum features 20 films, 164 artifacts and more than 300 photo murals of the original 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair.

Saving Soul...Vinyl Records For Many Remain Ultimate Music Object

by Myra Mathis-Flynn, Free Press Staff Writers, 6/12/08

“Music has always been more than sound: image, style, attitude,” Grossi said. “With downloads, the physicality of music is lost...

Welcome, one & all, to my addiction. I collect, buy, sell & trade counterculture event advertisements from all era's in hopes of preserving some angles of history which would otherwise be lost. What I look for in a poster or ad is that it is actually a piece of history. Something that really gives a feel of the era. Something that was there. These are the posters, handbills, flyers and ads that the promoter used to promote the events. This niche is historically the most valid and time tested. When you read a book about say, Portland's Crystal Ballroom or the Fillmore East, look and see what they use for reference. Among interviews and newspaper ads you will find they also used the advertising posters, handbills and newspaper ads as historical documents for their research, often giving details and a feel of the event which would otherwise be forgotten. Not all, but the vast majority of my inventory and collection are advertisements for events. These are the standard 11x17 telephone pole posters, 8.5x11 flyers and 5.5x8.5 inch handbills, and original vintage newspaper advertisements, printed prior tothe show and used to advertise it. These are items that are printed and/or distrubuted by the promoter, venue, or group to promote the show. They are generally not printed as an art item, though many unmistakably and accurately reflect the moods and styles of the times. In most cases, this is material which would otherwise be lost, historical documents bound for the landfill.

So how do you know it's actually the real poster?

ConcertPosterArt.com guarantees eveything we sell to be original, as stated, for life. If information or credible doubts ever surface as to the authenticity of a piece we sold, we will glady refund the entire purchase price, whether it's one day after the sale or 20 years later.

I have collected over 50,000 different pieces from reliable sources over the past 15 years. Many pieces I collected directly off the street. For material that's "before my time" I use reliable sources such as promo people, promoters, artists, or others who collected at the time of the event. This website represents my life's work: a database of this material which collector's, archivists, and others are able to reference to for research. I generally keep one of every piece I sell in our permanent collection for reference, many are never offered for sale as we have only one, listed as "Not For Sale". The truth of the matter is that even with todays technology, you cannot clone a piece of paper. You can make a damn good copy, but even with a 50x magnifying glass you can see it is not as sharp as the original. Beware that some concert advertisements were not printed in a high quality format to begin with, though most are very sharp and crisp with nice even halftones. As such, the only way to truly tell is to reference to a first printing, collected at the time of the event...which is where my collection and others like it come in. I have no interest in discrediting the historical documents I have 1000's of dollars into by placing fraudulant posters into the market. I do have a collection of fakes(as well as the names of people they came from), so they can be documented as such.

The son of an antiques dealer, I was raised in Montana on punk rock and 1970’s AM Country, I rebelled during the late eighties and early nineties as a teenager in Seattle during the height of the Northwest Grunge Scene. I guess you always go back to your roots, and the Grateful Dead took me there…at age 16, I was “on the bus”. I began collecting concert posters in 1993.

In 1997, I launched ConcertPosterArt.com, one of the first concert poster and music memorabilia related sites on the web, to help connect with other collectors and begin selling and trading the excess material to support my habit and expand the collection; by 1998 it was a full-time job. In 2005, I opened Riverwalk Records in Montpelier Vermont, missing the face to face interaction with other collectors I so cherished in the pre-internet days. Currently this website represnts a small portion (currently over 4,000 documented pieces) of one of the largest concert memorabilia collections in the world with many pieces that simply do no exist elsewhere. Quite frankly, I have put every resource available to me on the table to work towards the preservation of the concert posters and music memorabilia represented in our database and, by extension, the vast culture it signifies. A work in progress I am constantly documenting more and more of the collection as well as aquiring new collections for documentation. ENJOY THE TRIP!

Jacob Grossi, ConcertPosterArt.com