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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Monday, August 3, 2009

Vintage Hawaii travel posters up for auction


Advertiser staff

Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

This TWA Hawaii travel poster by David Klein is one of six original posters to auctioned this week in New York

Courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries

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Six vintage travel posters encouraging Hawaiçi tourism will be auctioned this week at Swann Auction Galleries in New York.

Each poster is an advertisement from an airline: TWA, Pan Am, United, and are estimated to fetch between $600 and $1000 each.

The auction will begin at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday and will continue after a lunch break at 2 p.m.

“All of the posters we offer are originals,” said Swann Galleries’ president and poster expert Nicho Lowry.

“There are tourist shops and frame shops that sell reproductions of these posters for decorative purposes. But a first run, original is always going to be more valuable,” Lowry said on what makes the posters so valuable at auction.

“Even if it is the highest quality computer-generated reproduction it will still have no value … collectors only look for originals,” he said.

Lowry said the posters are not hand signed; meaning, the artist did not take out a pen and sign them. Some of the work, however, is signed, meaning the artist’s name does appear printed on the poster.

The posters can be viewed at swanngalleries.com. To make arrangements to bid during the auction, contact Gwendolyn Rayner at 212-254-4710 ext. 53, or e-mail grayner@swanngalleries.com.