Because we happen to have both a a repro (below left) and a real one (below right) in our possession, and because we have the highest confidence in the provenance of the latter, we thought we’d share a few points of comparison. Some of these differences may have been corrected or may be absent from some of the fakes and repros, but others will likely prove much more difficult for bootleggers to correct or avoid.

The original is printed on good, industry standard poster stock: It’s not double thick (or double-sided) like some ’90s posters – including many from Buena Vista or other Disney subsidiaries – but the quality is obvious, especially in comparison to the repro, which has begun to wrinkle and crinkle along the edges almost as though water-damaged. When we put the two posters before an experienced collector, the differences in paper quality were a dead giveaway.

2. Printing Quality

The original Lucky Strike is a fine piece of Hollywood poster work. The repro has been improperly printed, so that a thin white strip appears along the lower left border, as visible in the side-by-side comparison image below. (As with the other comparison images, color contrast here has been heightened to make differences more easily visible.)

The original is approximately 1/8″ wider than the repro. We wouldn’t have been surprised to see an even greater difference, since preserving original dimensions while also achieving high reproduction image quality is a key problem for copiers, and since 1/8″ is said to be within normal tolerances for different authentic editions of the same poster printed in different locations. We don’t know whether the Lucky Strike was printed in different simultaneous “First Editions.” We do know that ours measures just about exactly 27 1/4″ in width.

4. Color

The colors of the originals will tend to be deeper and richer than those of reproductions. The illustrative photographs we’ve provided here may accentuate the differences, but they are still obvious in normal light at least when the posters are placed next to each other. The smaller inset in the photograph below is, we believe, closer to the differences that might be observed under normal conditions. The larger swatches were photographed under high magnification in very bright light.

Differences in image quality may be more subtle and difficult to pin down than differences in color, dimensions, printinq quality, and paper, but are worth looking for, especially when you don’t possess a verified original for comparison purposes. Some reproductions may be rather obviously distorted: Imagery that appears naturally curved or blended, or, conversely, edges that appear sharp in the original may not be so in a copy. If you look closely at the slightly enhanced photograph below, the smoke in the repro looks “scratchy,” while the smoke in the original curls smoothly. The difference is hard to locate at first, but, once identified, it’s undeniable.

Many of the most popular repros will show white flecks in and around Uma’s chest – a sign of very poor printing. When we first saw them on a repro, we thought they were wear marks. They include, in this case, a relatively large “smudge” of whitish discoloration visible at the lower right over the pillow.

This one can be checked fairly easily (though we’d be careful about presuming that it’s a universal giveaway, since different authentic 1-sheets may sometimes turn up with slightly variant “cuts”): At the extreme upper edge of the authentic Lucky Strike, there is a marbling feature that (to most people) resembles a little man (two little raised arms, two long legs, one very extended. On the repros, he appears as though beheaded at the shoulders. The poor guy’s little arms are also gone…

Testimonials and certificates of authenticity can be faked a lot more easily than posters. Some bootleggers apparently decided to go further, probably in an attempt to counter the suspicions that their own activities engendered in the larger collecting community: As a result, you may encounters versions of the bootleg that have a phony Miramax stamp on the reverse side, supposedly authenticating the poster as one of those withdrawn from circulation. Though we’ve never actually handled a poster with this stamp, we were alerted in 2007 to an eBay auction that included an image of it:

According to my scale, the authentic PULP FICTION Advance weighs 106 grams. The Teaser weighs 104 grams.

(Colin can be found as kymarfye on the NSFGE poster forum.)