Handbills & Flyers
Handbills and flyers serve as exciting “miniature posters” for collectors, which can usually be had for a much lower price than their larger counterparts. (The two terms are interchangeable, so here we’ll just use the term “handbill.”)
In the most traditional sense, handbills were “handed out” by street-corner hawkers to draw customers to an event. In more recent times, they were stacked on a countertop or, less often, posted one at a time in high-traffic areas to attract the most eyeballs. But generally speaking, posters were designed to be observed, not taken; handbills were intended to be taken away by potential customers, one at a time.
In some cases, handbills were produced when a concert promoter didn’t want to pay for more-expensive posters. But oftentimes both posters and handbills were used simultaneously for the same concert. Besides size, handbills were also cheaper to produce because they were always made out of paper, not cardboard.
Speaking of size, some experts consider 11x17” the smallest size that qualifies as a “poster”; anything smaller kicks into the handbill category. But like most aspects of this hobby, there are no hard and fast rules, just some general consensus.
Enjoy the images on this page of some fun handbills from the past, all measuring 8x10” or smaller. Feel free to submit other interesting examples that we can share. And as always, I will pay top dollar for vintage handbills and flyers of this nature.
