A movie poster, like most other means of marketing, seems like a given nowadays and few people stop to think about how it all started. Turns out, the first promotional movie poster was created in 1895 for the French short L’Arroseur Arrosé, which was the earliest known fictional comedy film. In the olden days, cinemas would only have one screen to show a single film, so putting up posters outside was pretty integral to getting the audience interested.

If done right, a movie poster can become just as memorable and iconic as the film itself. We’re certain that clear poster images pop into your head when you hear titles like Titanic, Harry Potter, or Avengers. This makes it so fun to see the designs from these contests as you wouldn’t normally imagine Babe the pig in the place of Marley from Marley & Me.

When talking about truly old and iconic movie posters, it can be surprising to hear the value they now have. The collectibles market in film posters is thriving and the first auction solely by a major auction house took place on December 11, 1990. The record price for a movie poster was set in 2005 when a poster of Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis totaled $690,000.