Like many Ball State students, Nick Collins spent his time between classes perusing the overwhelming number of posters that were for sale outside of the L.A. Pittenger Student Center.
"It's the perfect time for something like a poster sale because everyone has just moved in and they are looking for things to decorate their walls with," said Collins, a senior exercise science major.
After sifting through the thousands of choices, Collins picked up a few posters for his apartment.
"The poster sale is really convenient because I don't have to go looking around for all the posters I want; they're all right here," he said.
The sale is run by The College Poster Sale Company, and every year a traveling truck filled to the brim with posters makes its way across the country, giving students the opportunity to buy posters ranging in price from $7 to $30.
Ball State's Fall Semester poster sale was held last week outside the Student Center, and a Spring Semester sale is typically held in the Art and Journalism Building in January.
Touring the Midwest with posters in hand is Martina Mahnke, a German student who recently received her Ph.D. Mahnke spends her summers in the United States helping with the poster sale for free in order to travel the country.
"This is the fifth year that I've been helping with the poster sale," Mahnke said. "I had a friend who was helping out The College Poster Sale Company, and she asked me to help her out in exchange for being able to travel during my summer."
This traveling poster sale, which began at Ball State, continues through the end of September, reaching more than 100 universities.
The seasonal travel sale of posters has been running for 35 years. Every year there is a different trend in the types of posters sold, Mahnke said.
"This year the biggest seller was definitely ‘The Hangover.' Posters of ‘Inception' and Lil' Wayne also sold a lot," she said.
Mahnke said portraits of famous celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn saw decreased sales when compared to years past.
Mahnke said they will have sold about 5,000 posters over the course of the week, which is one-third of the number of posters that they bring with them. In order to cope with the high number of sales for specific posters, Mahnke and her coworker restock the posters every night.
"We sell from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and then we refill the posters that have been selling a lot before putting everything in the truck overnight," Mahnke said.
Another trend Mahnke said she noticed is the distinction between the posters that are sold at state schools versus those sold at private schools.
"At Ball State and other state schools, there are a lot of college humor and fun posters, while at private schools, a lot more art posters are sold," she said.
This is Mahnke's second year working the poster sale at Ball State, and she said she's noticed the students care about the quality of the posters (making sure they are not ripped, torn, etc.) and that they are patient to wait in long lines, which typically appear on the first day of the sale.
"Sometimes people just throw the posters on the ground if they don't want them or if the line is too long, but I haven't seen a lot of that here," she said.
Before the traveling sale starts, Mahnke and the other workers spend a week preparing for the tour.
"The first week, we get thousands of posters shipped in that are organized by publishing company," she said. "We take all the posters out and separate them by category before we start selling them."
The company Mahnke works for is run by Erol Liguori, which is headquartered in New York City.
"The on-campus poster sale is actually a very small portion of our business," said Liguori, adding that The College Poster Sale Company is the largest publisher and importer of posters in the United States.
"Our seasonal travel sale only lasts a few months out of the year, and the rest of the time, our main business is the publishing of posters. Most of the collection we bring to the colleges are our own prints, but there are still some that we import."
After spending a week in Muncie, Mahnke said she felt as if there weren't a lot of options for her free time besides spending her mornings at the MT Cup, and she's excited to see more of the country.
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