Collection Of Nazi Postcards Included In Postcard Auction I Was Winning Bidder Ten Years Ago?

About ten years ago I attended an auction that included a lot of collectibles from coins to cash registers. I have been collecting stamps/covers/postcards since 1967 but at the time I was particularly interested in early Christmas cards and in the auction there was an item that included about 10,000 post cards. On the top of the box was about fifty Christmas postcards including some rare Victorian Green Santas and that is what convinced me to bid. The starting bid was $100 and there was no reserve and it was the second to last item and out of about 200 attendees by then only five of us remained and so I was the only bidder. So I got my rare Santa post cards for a fraction of their real value and everything else was a bonus. That's about 9550 bonus post cards lol.

So...

I made a cursery look through the rest which actually took me about a week and I didn't find anything interesting so it all went into a box in my bedroom closet until this week and low and behold I find about 150 or so post cards which all turn out to be from nazi Germany. Some are in mint condition and some are postally used and some have stamps affixed but no post mark. I found some similar ones on a google search and I have identified them all as being various kinds of propaganda post cards. Nearly all have nazi images of some sort, most with photos of Hitler or other top nazis. All the stamps on them were easy to identify as nazi stamps since all have either a Hitler image or other nazi symbols like the swastika. Most have typical slogans you would expect any country to have during wartime. Some specifically mention Jews.

I'm not sure what to do with them. One thought was I would sell them on ebay though I am not sure if they would violate their terms of service by their very nature. I don't know if people legitimately collect these but I didn't see any like them on ebay so I don't know if just nobody collects them or if ebay bans them or if they are so rare that I won't likely find them on ebay. I'd thought about donating some of them to museums.

I invite opinions, thoughts and suggestions. I hesitate to post images as many would be seen as offensive to a large segment of the population.

I'm just at a loss for what to do with them though I will not entertain suggestions to destroy them.

philnut59,

There are folks who collect these, and there's no prohibition on posting them on ebay.

I don't actively collect them, but I do have several catalogs that cover them. If you'd like more info on individual cards, feel free to post photos and I'll see what I can find. Because of my collecting area, I post a lot of Third Reich materials on here, and no one's complained, so don't let that stop you.

If you're looking to unload them en masse, I recommend contacting Matt Roth at MAR Historical. This is his wheelhouse.

Thank you PostmasterGS for the info. I will check it out. I would not mind selling some of these. Good to know about ebay. I'm not interested in keeping the unused ones but I do have other postally used covers in my collection so I'm planning to keep some of those. Though frankly if any are in the "ludicrously valuable" catagory I'd likely sell so I can concentrate in acquiring things that interest me more.

If you sell on ebay, be aware of their rules. They are very strange.

I once put some on ebay and I had covered the Nazi symbols. They promptly got removed.

Their reasoning: I covered the symbols up, therefore I knew the material was wrong and they got removed.

As always with ebay: my question about 100.000 other stamps and objects with Nazi symbols clearly showing on ebay was left unanswered.

If you put them up for sale. mention that it is not for ideological but reasearch purposes. This is mandatory in some countries.