Movie Poster Ads That Were Made In Omaha Could Fetch $15 Million At Auction. Will The Buffett Family Bid?

A unique collection of 20th century Hollywood newspaper advertisements is being sold at auction later this month, and is estimated to fetch at least $15 million.

The trove, believed to be the only one of its kind, features letterpress printed movie poster advertisements that ran in newspapers from the 1930s to the 1980s and comprises 12,000 films and 60,000 plates that were manufactured by KB Typesetting, a company located in Omaha, Nebraska.

Ads for movies designed by the art departments of all the major Hollywood studios would be sent to Omaha and carved into letterpress plates and blocks of wood, which would then be cut into column sizes and sent to newspapers.

The 12,000 movies range from “The Wizard of Oz” to “Jaws” and “Gone With the Wind” to “Star Wars.” Arlan Ettinger, President of Guernsey’s auction house in New York, which is conducting the sale, said he could not recall a movie from the five-decade time period that wasn’t included in the collection of letterpress blocks and plates.

“There was no more popular pastime in the 20th century than going to the movies in the United States and the way you learned about them was from the newspapers,” Ettinger said. “All the studios funneled their artistic efforts into this one little venue in Omaha.”

While newspapers would throw away the blocks, Loren Kelley, owner of KB Typesetting, kept each type of block and plate his company produced. When the practice of letterpress movie ad printing fell into disrepair in the 1980s and his block manufacturing company went out of business, Kelley sold the collection to Franx Antiques and Art shop, also in Omaha.

Remarkably, the collection remained in the backroom of the shop until 1998, when two women named DJ Ginsberg and Marilyn Wagner bought it for $2,000. The pair cleaned and conserved the plates, using vinegar to remove the white powder that had been formed from ink left on the boxes.

They have now put the collection up for sale via Guernsey’s, which is accepting sealed bids until June 27. Also included in the “From Movies to Mainstreet” auction are masters for adverts for The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix concerts as well as boxing matches featuring Sonny Liston and Rocky Marciano.

Film collectibles expert Rudy Franchi has appraised the collection as having a fair market value of between $18 million and $20 million. He wrote in his estimate for Guernsey’s of the collection which he describes as the “Holy Grail” of movie memorabilia: “In 1999 I did an appraisal that arrived at a value of 1.86 million dollars....close to 20 years has produced a ten times increase in value.”

He added: “Quite recently, several vintage movie posters from the early 1930s have sold at auction for over $500,000 each. One has traded privately for $1.2 million.”

Arlan Ettinger at Guernsey’s estimated the collection, which is only being sold in its entirety, would sell upwards of $15 million. Adding to its value is the fact that the buyer is free to re-use the letterpress blocks and plates by licensing them for subsequent commercial gain.

“This collection has legs and can live on in ways that most cannot,” Ettinger said. “There seems to be no limit to the ways these can be re-used. Even though these were made by the studios for famous films, the ads are not copyrighted. So if someone wants to put the ads in their completeness on T-shirts and greeting cards, they can do so.”

Guernsey’s previous sales include the ocean liner S.S. United States and artifacts belonging to Elvis Presley and The Beatles — both of whose multiple movies also feature in the movie letterpress ads collection. In 2014, Guernsey’s sold the complete Rosa Parks Archive to the Howard Buffett Foundation for a reported $4.5 million. Howard Buffett, son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, promptly loaned them to the Library of Congress for 10 years.

Asked if he would like the Buffett family, famous residents of Omaha, to buy the movie archive, Ettinger said: “On a scale of one to ten, with ten being a strong yes and one being an absolute no, I’d give it a 12!”

“Clearly the Buffett family always speaks glowingly about their roots in Omaha,” he added. “Warren Buffett is a lovely, generous supporter of the Omaha scene and it would be nice to imagine this collection staying in Omaha and being displayed somewhere forever or being used in good fashion.”

The Buffett family are known to be acquaintances of the sellers. Ettinger said of Ginsberg and Wagner, “They’ve lived with it for 20 years and had their enjoyment with it.”

In a short film about the sale entitled “The Collection,” directed by Adam Roffman and released this year, Marilyn Wagner commented on the millions she is set to make. “I don’t know what I’d do with a whole bunch of money, honestly. I have friends who have a lot of money and they don’t seem any happier. They just run around trying to hold on to it so I hope I won’t do that. But we’ll see,” she said.

Ginsberg and Wagner have made it clear their ultimate wish is for the collection to end up in a museum. The plates and blocks come with a 1938 letterpress machine and Ginsberg said she hoped the buyer would “set up the press and re-strike some of these pieces and everybody can take a little piece of 50 years of motion picture history with them.”