Newbie Questions On Postcards

Hello Folks,

I recently started getting into vintage postcards due to my interest in history, geography, and architecture. I've been checking completed sales on eBay trying to get a feel of what is out there and what is in demand.

A few questions:

1. Any good books or websites with information on postcard collecting?
2. How big a issue is condition? Do they have to be pristine to be collectable?
3. Are some subjects better than others. I've heard that streetscapes, birds-eye views, disaster scenes, postcards of small towns, and vintage cars/trains/ships/and airplanes command a premium.
4. What is the cut-off for being collectable? 1960's or 1970's?
5. Any good price guides like coin & stamp collecting or are completed auction sales the best way to go to determine value/demand.

Thanks,
Joe2007

Hello. This is a UK catalogue, but I'm sure there are US ones. It gives an idea of the prices for various categories of card

http://www.prinz.co.uk/catalogues/1...edition.html

This is an excellent site

http://www.metropostcard.com/index.html

Anything is collectable if you're interested in it. Most cards, like most stamps, are worth virtually nothing in monetary terms. But if, say, you want pre-WWI sports cards, you will probaly have to pay high prices.

Hi joe, and welcome to the forum. I notice that you live (somewhere) in Ohio. Please check with this website: http://judnick.com . It is the website of the Heart of Ohio postcard collectors club, and on the site it gives answers to most if not all of your questions.

Peter

Thanks for the quick responses.

Though I do not agree with everything she says, there are worse places to start than to read:

The Encyclopedia of Antique Postcards: A Fully Illustrated History and Price Guide to More Than 100 Collecting Categories from Attwell to Zodiac by Susan Brown Nicholson

Just like stamps:

- you can purchase individual cards from established dealers, or

- you can browse dealer stock at postcard shows, or

- you can buy lots (usually more piles than collections) at auction.

Just like stamps - unless you are collecting at "a very high level" - you are best off if you figure-out how many hours of entertainment you are getting for how many dollars you are spending, and compare that with dinner-and-a-movie (etc), and content yourself with that.

Just like stamps, The Conditionistas are brutal, especially when its your turn to sell.

Just like stamps, you can direct yourself to Genuinely Postally Used or fresh-off-of-the-rack ... you can target topics or geographies or chronologies ... you can buy some optical gear and learn how to distinguish different printing techniques (and combinations of same) ... you can albumize or sleeve'n'box ... you can go down the rabbit hole, and feel great about it.

Unlike stamps, the universe of postcards is darned near infinite - you can publish your own for a few bucks - so Completionism is less of an issue, though it arises in certain niches.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Thanks Peter for website suggestion! I'm in the Cincinnati area.

Thanks ikeyPikey!

I recently bought approx. 1000 postcards at an auction. It was a deceased antique dealers stock. Really fun to go through. I think I'm going to focus on Ohio postcards. Plenty of variety in the state from large cities to small towns.

Within Ohio, Joe2007, you can collect postcards of all of the post offices, all of the covered bridges, all of the town halls, all of the town postmarks, all of the train stations ... the more you browse, the more Ohio sub-topics you will find.

Q/ Did I mention the rabbit hole?

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Lol, and it's quite the rabbit hole! I collect a very small section of California, Humboldt and Mendocino counties as part of my Redwood Empire Postal history. For the years 1900 to the 20s, the collection is 95% post cards. Has to laugh last evening as I was contemplating an ebay purchase, I checked my files to see if I had the town and year, mostly the postmark. Laughed when I saw that I have 81 post card from 1910.

Id just like to add my 2 (Euro) cents.
I have been interested in Irish postcards for about 35 years but I initially saw them as secondary to Stamps....essentially 1,900 unposted souvenirs of places I have visited.
More recently, I have become interested in posted cards from the Golden Age 1900-1922. From an Irish perspective, this is a period when British stamps and "English-language" postmarks were used.
I have gathered together about 75 such cards. There are easy enough to obtain at stamp and postcard fairs.
From the perspective of a person interested in History, there is the "message" as much as the picture/image, stamp, postmark etc.
Reading these messages can feel voyeuristic, literally reading mail addressed to another person. They were the "texting" of a century ago and there is a sub-genre for example young women who often seem to be daughters of religious ministers or schoolteachers sending these cards to each other....and quite often police officers seemed to send cards to a fellow officer in the next town or village.
Pricing CAN reflect all these things.
Some publishers are sought after and may be rare.
Likewise a Dealer might have a mark up because the village is quite small and the postmark might be "different".

A little bit of everything in my first postcard haul. Here are some of the Ohio cards.

Love the vehicles on Main Street, Akron. Are they postmarked from the pictured side?

Joe2007, Greetings:

Nice haul.

I like zoos, and set aside zoo cards from all over the world.

http://goscf.com/t/43840 ... Magical Mystery Postcard #5

Your "Superior Street Viaduct" card hits lots of buttons: trolleys, rail, bridges, rail bridges, urban transport, urban bodies of water ... and, surely, somebody collects active smokestacks.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

It appears to have some inked lines on the font of the card. Postmark on the back is from Feb. 1942 (Akron).




I think I got a few more somewhere. One from the Toledo O. Zoo featuring a lion.

Thanks for the feedback!

I'll post some more cards shortly.

A few more .......

New Union Station Dayton O.