Land sale posters were public advertisements used by auctioneers before newspaper 'real estate pages'. The posters promoted upcoming sales of newly subdivided land, and often contained exceedingly complimentary descriptions of the local area. The originals are usually lithographs, and can be black and white or colour.

You may notice writing on some of our posters; this indicates that they were 'working copies' used by auctioneers to keep track of which pieces of land had sold. The posters in our collection mostly date from the 1900s to the 1920s, when the growth of local industries such as cedar-getting and dairying and the construction of the railway made moving to the area attractive to newcomers and lucrative for landowners.