b'The scale down and closing of NSS warehouses in the early 1980s to 1999 caused millions of posters to again become available. The movie poster hobby basically owes its existence to the National Screen Service.NATIONAL SCREEN SERVICE NUMBERING SYSTEM In an effort to control the number of materials going through it, the NSS instituted a date and coding system. The NSS had regional offices set up throughout the country. All movie materials distributed through the National Screen Service normally carried the NSS number. There were four years that were exceptions to this rule. During the first two years that the numbers were used (1940 and 1941), some additional numbers were added to indicate the month. The other two years were 1946 and 1948. For some reason, they started the numbering system around 5-600.Until mid-1977, the NSS number consisted of two digits, then a slash (/), and one to four numbers. The first two numbers indicated the year of the release, the slash was a divider, and the last four digits represented the sequential order of the movie for that year. For example, an NSS number of 65/100 indicated that the movie was released in 1965, and was the 100th movie title coded by NSS for the year 1965.When the change was made, the same numeric breakdown was used, but the slash (/) was eliminated. The first two digits of the number represented the year the poster was released. The last digits represented the sequential order of the release for the particular year. NOTICE: on the right showing two posters from 1977 - Greased Lighting (on the top) had the old number system while Alice Sweet Alice used the new number system.The NSS number is usually found on the bottom border of the one sheet poster, normally on the right side, but occasionally found in the lower left corner. The NSS numbers were in different locations on other poster sizes.'