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How to date a concert poster

The show date says which concert a poster advertised, not when that copy was printed. How to read the printing under a loupe, the small print in the margins, the weekday, the venue's name and the paper, and how to read an edition number on a modern screen print.

Updated 25 October 2026

A concert poster carries a date, but it is the date of the show. Popular posters have been printed again, sometimes many times, and a later printing repeats the show date and often the copyright year too. Dating one means reading everything else on the sheet: how it was printed, the small print in the margins, the paper, and whether the details fit the year.

The short answer: the show date and the copyright year are the earliest a poster can be, never proof of when your copy was printed. Look at the printing under a loupe, read the printer's credit, any series number and any union label in the margins, check the printed weekday against the calendar, and compare the size and paper with a record of the first printing. For a modern screen print, read the edition number and the marks beside it.

The show date is a starting point

The dates and venue on a poster say which concert it advertised. They are the earliest the design can be. They are not the date your copy came off the press: when a poster is printed again, the printer copies the sheet, dates and all.

The Victoria and Albert Museum catalogues later printings as such. It holds Wes Wilson's 1966 Fillmore posters for Bill Graham that came from the Smithsonian's Cooper Hewitt museum, and records some of them as "Second Edition" (V&A, V&A).

How it was printed

A loupe or your phone's macro lens shows how the ink was put on the paper, and that rules some printings in or out.

  • Offset lithography. "Most posters are still printed lithographically with a mechanised offset process," says the V&A: the image goes from a metal plate to a rubber roller, then to the paper (V&A). Photographic areas and blended colours are made of dots. The Wellcome Collection's cataloguing guide starts its print checks with "a regular pattern of dots or squares under magnification", and offset lithography is one of the processes that makes it (Wellcome Collection). Full colour is usually built from four inks, cyan, magenta, yellow and black (Getty).
  • Screen printing. Ink is pushed through a mesh past a stencil. The V&A says it suits "large, flat areas of colour", uses "a thick ink", and usually needs a separate screen for each colour (V&A). A paperboard maker's handbook says it lays down "a much thicker layer of ink" than other methods (Iggesund).
  • Inkjet. Digital prints are made of "tiny droplets of ink" sprayed from nozzles (Getty). The Getty thesaurus files pigment prints on fine art papers under inkjet too (Getty).

The process has to fit the poster's history. The V&A notes that San Francisco's "Big Five" psychedelic poster artists of the 1960s "largely continued with lithography" (V&A), and its records for Fillmore posters give the process as "colour offset lithograph" (V&A). A 1960s Fillmore poster that turns out to be an inkjet print is not from the 1960s.

The small print in the margins

The margins of a poster often hold the most useful words on it. The V&A transcribes them in its records, such as "© BILL GRAHAM 1970- No 237 ... TEA LAUTREC LITHO - SAN FRANCISCO" on a 1970 Fillmore poster (V&A).

  • The printer's credit names the shop. A later printing by a different shop names a different one.
  • A series number. Bill Graham's and the Family Dog's posters are numbered. Some later printings add the printing to the number: the V&A records a 1966 Family Dog poster printed "No.14(3)" and catalogues it as the "3rd of 3 editions" (V&A).
  • A union label. A small round mark, the "bug", shows the poster was printed in a union shop. An archivist's history of union labels explains that the bug names a region with a shop name or number, and "the number is permanently assigned when the shop is organized", so it points to one shop (Lincoln Cushing, Docs Populi). The same article warns that bugs are "often quite small or smudged", and that similar items can be printed "by different printers or by the same printer at different times".
  • The copyright line. Under US law, the year in a copyright notice is the "year of first publication of the work" (US Copyright Office, Circular 3). A later printing can keep the first printing's year. Notice was required on US works first published before 1 March 1989 and has been optional since, so a newer poster may carry none. Our guide to reading a tour shirt's back print covers the same rule on shirts.

Some reprints are marked by whoever printed them. Wolfgang's, a poster dealer, says the reprints of one 1966 Fillmore poster it made in 2018 and 2021 carry its own notation in the margin, "W 2021" on the later one (Wolfgang's, a collector reference).

Check the weekday and the venue

Two simple checks can rule a poster out.

  • The weekday. Many 1960s posters print the day as well as the date. The V&A's record of a Fillmore poster reads "March 3, 4, 5 / Fri Sat ... Sun" (V&A). 3 March fell on a Friday in 1967 and in no other year from 1966 to 1971. Look up the year on any calendar: a weekday that doesn't fit the year is a problem. A weekday that fits proves only that the design is right, since a reprint copies it.
  • The venue's name. Venues are renamed, and a name can only appear once it exists. The V&A records that in 1968 Bill Graham moved to a larger hall "which he named Fillmore West", which closed in 1971 (V&A). A poster that says Fillmore West is from 1968 or later.

Size and paper

A later printing often differs from the first in size and paper, but only a record of the first printing tells you what to compare. For the numbered San Francisco series, the detailed records are kept by dealers and collectors. Classic Posters, a dealer, describes the first printing of one 1966 Fillmore poster as on vellum, about 14 by 20 inches, with a union label in the lower left, and its second printing as about 13 by 20 inches on three different stocks, with "Printing by West Coast Lithograph Co. SF" in the right margin (Classic Posters, a collector reference). It records a Family Dog poster whose second printing added "No. 1-2" in the corner, and whose third changed the Family Dog address in the credit line (Classic Posters).

Measure your poster edge to edge, note the paper's weight, finish and back, and compare.

A UV torch, carefully

Optical brighteners are added to some papers and glow under ultraviolet light. A study of 1,804 dated photographic papers, published by the American Institute for Conservation, found none from 1896 to 1949 and the first in samples from 1950 to 1954 (Messier and others, JAIC, 2005). That research is on photographic paper, not poster stock; the same article calls the date for the wider paper industry "largely undocumented". It also works one way only: for photographic paper a glow is "a clear indication of post 1950–55 production", but a paper without one tells you little, because many later papers never had brighteners and they "can also fade with time" (Messier, AIC Topics in Photographic Preservation, 2005). Other materials can look bright under UV too. So a glow can only raise a question about a poster said to be from before the mid-1950s; it tells you nothing about a 1960s poster, and no glow proves nothing.

Signed and numbered prints

Many gig posters made since the 1990s are screen prints sold in small numbered runs. A trade magazine described the modern concert poster as "part ad, part merchandise, and part fine-art print", "produced in small quantities, signed and numbered by the artists" (Screen Printing magazine, 2005).

  • The edition number. Tate explains that "an edition of twenty-five will be numbered 1/25, 2/25, etc." (Tate). The bottom number is the size of the run (Getty Research Institute).
  • AP and PP. Proofs "identical to the edition" are made for the artist, marked AP, or for the printer or publisher, marked PP (Tate). You may also see E.A. or H.C. (International League of Antiquarian Booksellers). The Getty thesaurus notes that artist's proofs are "numbered separately from the edition" (Getty).

Checklist

  1. Treat the show date and the copyright year as the earliest the design can be, not the print date.
  2. Look at the printing under a loupe: dots, solid ink or inkjet, and check it fits the poster's era.
  3. Read the margins: the printer's credit, any series or printing number, any union label.
  4. Check the printed weekday against the calendar for that year, and the venue's name against when it had it.
  5. Measure the poster and note the paper, then compare with a record of the first printing.
  6. Use a UV torch only one way: a glow raises a question about paper said to be from before the mid-1950s; no glow proves nothing.
  7. On a modern screen print, read the edition number and any AP, PP, E.A. or H.C. mark.
  8. Photograph the margins and the number for your records and for anyone you trade with.

Post yours to MerchVice and see others: posters on Explore, and posters from the 1960s. Our guide to storing and framing posters covers looking after them.

Sources

Museums, libraries and reference works:

Conservation research and law:

The print trade:

Collector references, for individual posters' printings:

Every page was read on 25 October 2026. We name no product to buy.

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