Show edition, variant and artist proof: gig poster editions

Two copies of the same poster are lying on the table. Same artist, same band, same night. One is numbered 48/211 in pencil. The other says AP, is signed, and the paper is a shade whiter. Which entry on ctlgs do they belong to, and why is there more than one?

What one print run gives you

A screen printer pulls the whole run in one session. Most of the sheets become the regular edition, numbered and sold at the show or by the merch company. A few are set aside for the artist and marked AP, for artist proof. A few more go to the printer, marked PP. They came off the same screens on the same day, and a printer will tell you they are the same poster.

Collectors treat them as separate editions, and this is why. Munk One's 311 Chicago 2017 was a show edition of 211 on white stock. The artist proof is 35 copies on the same white stock, signed and numbered by the artist. The AP reached buyers by a different route, in a known quantity, and anyone sorting a drawer wants to know which of the two is in it. Printer proofs get the same treatment once there are more than a copy or two. PP editions have run as high as 50.

Variants

A variant differs in the printing itself. The ink colours change, or the paper does, or the material. Tyler Stout's Django Unchained prints came in a regular edition, a variant with a different colour scheme, and an edition on wood panel. The wood one is plainly separate, and the two paper ones look nothing alike side by side.

Foil stocks are the common case now. The same 311 design was printed as APs on four foils, among them a rainbow foil of 35 and a bubblation foil of 7, and as a grey ink variant of 30 on white. That is seven entries from one design. Chuck Sperry's Widespread Panic at Madison Square Garden in 2013 goes further, with a show edition of 450, an AP edition, and then six more papers, from silver hair and dappled slate through parchment, copper and blue linen to a wave foil of 15. Each paper is its own entry.

A second printing counts too. Hapshash and the Coloured Coat's Pink Floyd poster for London in 1967 was printed twice, and the second run has slightly darker red and yellow and a smoother fade across the split fountain. Two runs are two entries even when the design is the same.

How the sale splits a run

Collectors go further than printers here. The same numbered sheets reach buyers in different ways, and each way becomes a version people look for. The Django Unchained prints were first sold on Oscar night. Later the artist was allowed to sell a small number of the standard and variant prints himself, signed, at a different price. Later still his APs of all three went on sale. That is eight versions in circulation from three print runs.

Bands do it as well. 311 and Primus are known for signing a portion of a show run and slipping those copies at random into the stacks on the merch table. Those signed copies exist in a known quantity and collectors hunt for them, so they are a version of the poster. A copy you had signed at the tour bus after the show is a different thing. That signature belongs to your copy alone, and it goes in the notes on your copy.

The collectors who ran Posterogs settled the rule. yamar3, who had been cataloging gig posters for fifteen years, wrote that "separating editions on Posterogs is not about value. It's more about establishing how many editions/versions exist." A split records a real difference in what is out there. Todd Slater is the case that goes the other way. He has signed and numbered entire runs of 150 to 200, sold part at the show and the rest himself. A show copy and a mail-order copy are identical, so that is one edition and one entry.

Handbills and wildcards

Mark Arminski printed a handbill alongside each poster, same image on the same stock at a smaller size, five to a sheet. Now and then one of the five was a wildcard in an alternate colourway, or a different piece of art entirely. His Who poster for Phoenix in 2000 and its handbill are both in the catalog, and the notes on each mention the wildcard. The handbill is its own entry with the type set to Handbill. The wildcard is a colour variant of the handbill and gets an entry of its own, linked to it.

Entering them on ctlgs

Start with the main entry, usually the show edition, titled by headliner, city and year like the rest of the catalog, with the version in brackets. Give it the artist and printer as credits, the venue, the date, the technique and the edition size.

Every other version is a new poster entry. In its Variant of field pick the main entry. In Variant name say what makes it different: AP, PP, Rainbow foil, Grey ink, Artist-signed web sale, Band-signed show copies, Wildcard. There is no separate signed or proof field, so the name carries that. Give each one its own edition size. Where the number is unknown, as it often is for APs, leave it empty and say what you know in the notes. Paper stock, the number of colours and how the copies were sold all belong in the notes too.

Once the links are in, the main entry's page lists every variant beneath it, with its name and technique, and each variant's page points back. The seven 311 Chicago entries came over from Posterogs with nothing joining them. A Variant of on each of the six, pointing at the show edition, is all it takes to bring them together, and anyone signed in can add it.

What stays on your copy

Your edition number, a signature you got yourself, a frame, a tube curl and the grade all describe your sheet rather than the run, and they go on your copy. Catalog your gig poster collection walks through adding copies, and variants and limited editions covers where the line between entry and note falls in every catalog. Twenty years of gig posters hold an exception to almost everything above. When your case does not fit, ask on the forum and say what the poster says about itself.