An English lady who was paying me a visit in Portugal, pointed the interest of hotel labels with sporting scenes and particularly mentioned golf. I was quite unable to grasp her reasons, but have had to review my opinion after several readers asked me to post images of thematic golf labels from my collection. I shall let the visitor decide whether they are particularly interesting.

About two thirds of the labels illustrated below are quite rare. One of them is, according to my experience, the rarest of them all. To sparkle the interest of this rather boring page I will let you guess which one... the proverbial clue is hidden somewhere and the answer is at the end.

So, which label is the rarest?

.......most pre-1930 Portuguese hotel labels are quite rare because, at that time, there were no collectors in the country and tourists were relatively rare. The rather naïf label for Hotel Paris in Estoril was printed in a short run around 1930 and is so rare that I have never seen another copy. Otherwise (and this was the clue) I would not keep, in my collection, a badly stained copy of a label from my own country!!!

Go to the index of pages on hotel luggage labels

uploaded Apr. 08, 2001

reviewed Dec. 03, 2002