Friday's Top Lots: Rare & Important Travel Posters

Friday’s Rare & Important Travel Posters sale was a tremendous success, and a host of new and returning collectors came out in unexpected force to bid on the scarce and desirable lots.

White Star Line / Titanic (detail), New York, 1912.

The top four lots all set auction records with their very strong prices. A White Star Line / Titanic poster from 1912 advertising third-class tariffs on the ill-fated ship’s return voyage sold for $72,000.

Montauk Beach, New York, circa 1929.

Montauk Beach, circa 1929, a poster by an unknown designer, marks the development of Montauk in the late 1920s as a destination for the wealthy, and evokes the spirit of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel The Great Gatsby. Friday’s sale was the first time this poster has been seen at auction, and it brought $31,000.

Gert Sellheim, Australia / Surf Club, Melbourne, circa 1936.

Gert Sellheim’s modernist Australia / Surf Club, circa 1936, doubled the previous record for any poster promoting Australia, selling for $24,000.

Tom Purvis, Cruden Bay, London, circa 1925.

A golf poster designed by Tom Purvis, one of two posters Purvis designed for the Scottish golf destination, sold for $18,000. Cruden Bay, circa 1925, set a record for any poster designed by Purvis sold at auction.