Collecting Travel & Tourism

’Tis the season for travel and tourism, even in the collecting world. If these are areas of interest, three upcoming events should be on your itinerary.

1) Vintage travel posters will cross the auction block at Swann Galleries on August 4. Advertisements for resort towns and beachy locales—visit Antibes, fly to Hawaii, cruise to Bermuda—appear in dazzling designs. Travel posters have become increasingly popular amongst collectors over the past decade or so, pushing up prices from the hundreds into the thousands at auction.   

2) The next Biblio virtual book fair, which runs August 4-7, focuses on “The Great Outdoors,” so booksellers will be listing books and ephemera featuring travel, exploration, mountaineering, sports, and other outdoorsy pursuits.

3) At PBA Galleries on August 11, a selection of guide books and maps meant for tourists will be sold. If the West Coast is your destination, there’s Colton's Traveler and Tourist's Guide-Book through the Western States and Territories (1857); Crofutt's Trans-Continental Tourist's Guide of 1873; a 1915 map of San Francisco; and a 1923 motor map of Northern California. On the East Coast, you’ll find a scarce 1901 tourist’s guide to the East and Hudson Rivers. And for international travel, offerings include a “pleasure map” of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) from 1951 and an automobile guide book from 1973 that takes its readers through Moscow and into western Ukraine.

As it happens, just as we were about to post this, a “Travel” catalogue arrived in our inbox from McBride Rare Books.