by Marcella Ortega
Daily Lobo
Louie Torres doesn't just sell movie posters. He sells memories.
"Some people buy movie posters not because they really like the movie, but because certain movies bring back certain memories for them," he said. "Maybe at the time they saw the movie, they were going through a divorce. Or maybe they had just fallen in love with somebody and had gone to see the movie with them and that was their first movie together."
Torres, owner of the poster store Louie's Rock-N-Reels at 105 Harvard Drive S.E., opened his store in 1994. He said he owns more than 10,000 posters.
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"Eighty percent of them are actual original movie theater posters," he said. "The other 20 percent are going to be either music posters, movie store posters, commercial posters like the kind you buy at Wal-Mart or reproductions."
Torres said he gets his posters everywhere and anywhere he can.
"I buy, sell and trade," he said. "So, I get people walking in off the street with stuff."
Torres started collecting posters in 1976 after he saw a "Star Wars" movie poster made out of Mylar plastic.
"It just grabbed my attention," he said. "I remember asking the manager if I could have the poster and him laughing at me, telling me how many people had asked him for that poster. So I said, 'How can I get one?' He said the only way you can get one is if you work at a movie theater."
Torres said he started working at a movie theater in Gallup
soon after.
"There was a basement in the theater," he said. "My manager told me if I went down there and cleaned up the basement, I could have anything that was down there. That's where I started my collection at 500 or 600 posters, and now I have over 10,000 of them. So, that's how I got started."
Torres said his most valuable movie poster is worth $1,000.
"It was for the third movie, 'Return of the Jedi,' when it was called 'Revenge of the Jedi,'" he said.
Torres also sells VHS and DVD movies, press kits, vinyl posters from movie theater lobbies and lobby cards - portrait-sized cards with movie stills on them.
"They don't make lobby cards anymore," he said. "They discontinued them here in America in 1986, about 20 years ago. They used to put them next to the movie poster, so when you looked at the poster and the lobby card, it was supposed to give you some idea of what the movie was about."
Torres said movie posters are valuable because they are made to promote the movie and are not for the public.
"You can go to 7-Eleven and buy a comic book or baseball cards, but you can't go to 7-Eleven and buy an original movie poster," Torres said.
Roman Maldonado went to the poster store Sunday to buy a "Rocky Balboa" poster. Maldonado said he was buying the poster for his employees at T-Mobile.
"It's to inspire them to do better," he said.
Maldonado said he likes oversized posters of album covers.
"I got a Natalie Imbruglia poster here four years ago," he said.
Torres said he likes older posters from the '30s, '40s and '50s better than modern posters.
"In the old days, it was the poster that got you in," he said. "They paid a lot more attention to the posters back then, and they made some really beautiful posters. Rarely anymore is there any imagination in what goes into a movie poster. Nowadays, it is just a photograph or the stars."
Torres said he plans to keep selling and collecting posters because it is his passion.
"I'm one of the few people who is lucky enough to do something that they enjoy," he said. "I love movies, and I love music. So, all day long, I get to talk about movies and music with people."
