THE FINEST SURVIVING ORIGINAL-RELEASE POSTER FOR THE HOLLYWOOD CLASSIC OFFERS A SPECTACULAR LARGE-FORMAT PORTRAIT OF CINEMA HISTORY
By Jesse Hughey | August 18, 2026
When Heritage Auctions rounds up the usual suspects for its August 28–29 Movie Posters Signature® Auction, one large-format showpiece will stand especially tall in the lineup: the best original-release poster for the greatest film of all time. What’s more, this linen-backed six-sheet poster for Casablanca is in the best condition of all the examples of its kind that have ever come through Heritage.
“This shouldn’t exist,” says Zach Pogemiller, Associate Movie Posters Director at Heritage. “Very few of these posters have survived because they were pasted to walls and then scraped off after the movie’s run or covered over with the next one. Theaters bought them and cut them up to make displays. There was no reason to keep a poster for a movie that people could no longer see.”
Released in 1942, ‘Casablanca’ emerged from the crowded wartime studio system as an unexpected box-office and critical success. This rare six-sheet poster for the classic film headlines Heritage’s August 28–29 Movie Posters Signature® Auction.
Of course, more than eight decades after its original run, people can and do still watch the film that won the 1943 Academy Award for Best Picture and has consistently been ranked at or near the top of best-of lists ever since. Pogemiller calls the film “an ambassador to classic black-and-white movies” for modern audiences, the first such picture watched and beloved by many a budding cinephile — himself as a teenager included.
One watch is all it takes to understand why the film has endured as a touchstone of cinema. The performances led by Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henreid are indelible, the dialogue is crisp, the romance smolders, and the moral and political conflict is timeless. Every frame is as beautiful to look at as the poster. And don’t forget the underrated humor. Rick’s wisecracks are as dry as the Moroccan desert, and Captain Renault’s windy “I’m shocked! Shocked to find that gambling is going on here,” immediately followed by a croupier’s “Your winnings, sir,” is as effective at getting a laugh as any gag from any comedy from any era.
Only a handful of the original-release six-sheet promotional posters are known to exist, and this is only the second Heritage Auctions has offered. A previous example set the American auction record for a non-horror movie poster when it sold in 2020 at Heritage for $384,000. Pogemiller says this one matches its quality and, in fact, set a record price itself in the early 1980s. The vibrant, unenhanced color shows this poster has held up nearly as well as the film’s legacy. For one serious movie lover, this relic from the Golden Age will be the beginning — or culmination — of a beautiful collection.
