According to Collectors Weekly, these rare and unseen travel posters where found by a college student in his aunt house. To seek advice and find out if the collection was worth something, he called appraiser Rudy Franchi, consultant to Heritage Auction Galleries and professional purveyor of mass-produced printed art since 1970. Turns out nobody, even Franchi, experts from Victoria and Ablert Museum or even the Ogaki Poster Museum in Japan had seen these posters before, and even better! some of these pieces were worth more than $1,000 dlls.
In the 1930s Japan railway propaganda were distributed in low numbers (less than 2000 posters where printed). These ads were distributed only inside the country so that’s one of the main reasons no one had seen them until today. Japan was expanding, with a growing economy and territories that included Taiwan and Korea, which was a popular destination for Japanese tourists. These posters were created to encourage tourist to get by train to different places using powerful and beautiful images of nature, landscapes and seacoasts.