Collector, dealer, bootlegger
Dan Abbott, Monterey International Trips Festival 1967 , 17 x 24 inches, flat and metallic inks on paper, copyright Nigel Mentzel, 1987. Nigel Mentzel (c.1946-2016) was a British poster collector who, through his home-based dealership, also printed and sold copies of original and reproduced posters from the 1960s and 1970s. Specialising in popular British and American pop culture and music posters, he issued sales lists on an irregular basis from the late 1970s through to 2015. These lists featured the work of artists and collectives such as Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, Big O Posters and the San Francisco Poster Company. In recent times, and especially since his death in 2016, it has become clear that many of the posters sold by Mentzel were bootleg copies or later reproductions of the 1960s originals. They were often sold to collectors at exorbitant prices as originals. Others were offered as reprints at lesser prices, though still relatively expensive and with no deta