Coming soon: Film critic Leonard Maltin's rare movie posters expected to fetch thousands

Imagine this: today, you go out and decide to pick up one of the hundreds of movie posters that get printed all the time, and 50 years later, you sell it for tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars.

That’s exactly what longtime film critic Leonard Maltin is doing with his vintage movie poster collection. He's putting a couple dozen of his rarest movie posters up for auction Thursday and Friday, November 29 & 30 at Heritage Auctions in Dallas, Texas.

Maltin began collecting as a 12-year-old. He bought his first poster for 25 cents, launching a life-long obsession which he later shared with his wife, Alice.

“I would buy posters not for investment, and not for the fame, or celebrated nature of the film,” Maltin said. “I just bought things I liked.”

Maltin’s collection includes rare lobby cards of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Three Stooges posters. The Stooges posters are already getting some top bids.

“That’s the greatest irony,” Maltin said. “If I were to have been buying for investment for eventual re-sale, the last thing that I could have predicted is that cheaply-made poster for the Three Stooges: Short Subjects in the 30s and 40s would end up being more valuable than posters for some much more famous and much more so-called important feature film.”

Bidders will also get a chance to nab super-rare prints from such movies as King Kong (1933), and The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine (1968).

But before you go break open your piggy-bank and start looking for planet tickets to Dallas, take a look at some of the current sale estimates :

• A 1928 poster of Mickey Mouse has a current bid of $26,000.
• A 1931 poster from classic horror flick Dracula is expected to bring in upwards of $40,000.
• How about $18,000 for a 14-inch-by-36-inch movie insert of Casablanca?
• That King Kong poster? It’s expected to sell anywhere from $80,000 to $100,000.