Ski posters - alternative investing I can (almost) afford

Sadly, I’ve not been able to afford one, but in recent years one of the most affordable but quietly successful forms of stylish art has been vintage ski posters.

The distinctive prints produced during the golden days of travel have become hugely popular and some have delivered returns of 1000% over the past ten years.

For those hoping to buy, the big event of the year has traditionally been Christies’ annual ski poster sale, but now poster afficionado and London lawyer Russell Johnston has set up the first online gallery exclusively selling vintage ski posters online.

Russell contacted me about his East Street Gallery after reading one of my previous posts about the Christies’ sale. And his website www.originalskiposters.com is worth visiting for a look at the posters on offer.

The historic posters originally produced for the walls of travel agents and station platforms can now fetch thousands of pounds, although many can still be purchased for £500 or less.

Now if I was going to buy an alternative investment, I think this is where I’d start.

Alternative investing is one of those things that sounds great in theory but rarely delivers the goods in practice. Who wouldn’t want to indulge a passion for wine, art, classic cars or racing while seeing their wealth grow (hopefully)?

Unfortunately, for the common man alternative investing rarely means being able to enjoy your indulgence and taking the plunge is a bit daunting.

For a start there’s a reason why alternative investments are alternative – they’re expensive.

• Want to invest in art – what’s good and at that price do you dare put it on the wall?
• Fancy investing in wine – forget drinking it.
• Classic cars – no point owning one if you don’t drive it, but then come the maintenance costs.
• Racehorses – an investment that needs feeding and housing; are your kids not enough?

And this is where the problem lies. If you’re going to get involved in an alternative investment you need to be able to enjoy it, and that’s hard if you aren’t seriously wealthy.

If you aren’t going to enjoy it, but want to be a bit different, just put your money in a fund that invests in something like pork. (Pigs are a good tip, believe it or not China has a shortage.)

However, if you like the mountains then ski posters represent an affordable art investment that can be enjoyed and indulged as a hobby.

Russell’s collection was begun by his father Robert, who was a skier in the British Army during the Second World War and built up the bulk of it as he travelled Europe between 1944 and 1955. Russell himself was bitten by the bug in the 1990s and the first poster he bought in 1996 is now worth £1,600.

His favourites are those by Martin Peikert, who exclusively produced Swiss posters and Russell harbours an ambition to perhaps one day write the first biography of. Like me, he also likes the stylised industrial look of some of the French posters glorifying cable cars and railways.

Russell says: ‘On a ten-year view the kind of poster you could buy then for about £500 is now worth £5,000 to £8,000. Prices now, as with many things, are at an all time high so those rises may not continue, if you want a poster you should buy it because you love it and if it goes up in price that’s brilliant.’

And there’s the key. If you like the images you could just buy a reproduction for a fraction of the cost, but buy a real poster and it may go up in price.

However, don’t forget prices can go down as well as up, and what people call ‘alternative investing’ during the good times tends to just be labelled a hobby when the money disappears.

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

Useful links:

www.originalskiposters.com

The latest investing news and advice

Special report: Alternative investing

Soaring food prices can be your cash crop