Glitter Cards: A Little Razzle Dazzle

I'm surprised this topic hasn't been posted yet, because I know there are a lot out there. Glitter postcards, aka tinsel, were quite popular in the "aughts". They were hand-made, no doubt by underpaid girls who quickly applied lines of glue and added mica, metal filiings or ground glass to give the card some sparkle. But the post office hated these cards. The glitter would easily flake off and jam cancelling machines, sometimes even injuring postal employees tasked with fixing them. I'm not sure when the PO banned these cards (can anyone provide USPO regs?), but it didn't take too long before they could only be sent enclosed in an envelope at the letter rate.

Here are a couple I picked up recently. I don't collect these specifically, but I bet nearly everyone has a few in their albums. Unfortunately, the glitter doesn't show up so well in my scans.

From the USPostalBulletins.com website:

Postal Bulletin #8224, dated February 20, 1907:


It seemed to take quite of bit of defining and redefining during 1907:

Postal Bulletin #8233, dated March 4, 1907 (Note section 1e as the beginning of permitting a message on the divided address side), (sorry, poor image):



Postal Bulletin #8280, dated April 27, 1907:


Postal Bulletin #8345, dated July 15, 1907 (sorry, poor image):


Skipping forward ... the 1913 volume of the Postal Laws and Regulations was next compiled edition in hard-back form. Section 403.4:


Here front/back of a glittered card marked "unmailable":



And a postmarked glassine which likely contained a glittered valentine, postmarked at Louisville, Ohio, on February 13, 1909, the second day of issue of Scott 367.


And lastly, a 1914 Christmas card with stamped/postmarked glassine (Unsealed and with minimal writing so accepted as single-piece 3rd class, thus rated at 1 cent.) :

This is great information, John -- I appreciate you posting it. AND the announcement in Postal Bulletin #8345 lays out the divided card design, so Aug. 1, 1907 is officially the end of the Undivided Back era. Very nice!

John's post reminded me I had one more -- also marked "Unmailable." In fact, I thought it was the same card at first, it was so similar. The date is Sept. 12, 1907 so this had to be an early application of the new regulations on glitter cards!

Fascinating. Eerily similar. Same type of building (with glitter), same scarce-ish commemorative stamp for postage, both with "Unmailable" in purple. This could be the start of a new topical collecting topic of "twins".

One is postmarked, the other not. Neither has a return address. How do you suppose these got into the hands of collectors? No DLO markings. Were they retained at the origin post office in the General Delivery pile? Was a courtesy postcard sent with postage due for 2 cents (first class) and if paid then the postcard was forwarded inside a protective envelope? Was undeliverable mail back then just thrown in the trash, or sold off at auction, rather than being destroyed?

For comparison, glitter cards were not banned in the UK, but were charged at the letter rate (1d for internal mail) instead of the halfpenny postcard rate. Any bearing just a halfpenny stamp were liable to be taxed at double the deficiency (1d).

Here is one currently for sale on the Bill Barrell website.




Phil

Very good questions! One of the 1907 regulations was that undeliverable postcards were not returnable (since most had no return address). But the last one I posted did get cancelled, so one presumes it got delivered, while John's card must have been intercepted before cancellation so maybe it was handed back to the sender.

But I've always wondered how mail from the dead letter office got into collectors' hands. Were there regulations regarding this?

I came across another glitter card buried in an album. This one is hand-dated 6/10/07, so a few months after the no-glitter regulation took effect. It is stamped, addressed and has a short message, but ... no cancellation. Perhaps it was pulled aside, to keep it out of the cancelling machine, or it was handed back by a postal clerk as unmailable.

Glitter cards are fairly common before the regulation of the spring of 1907, and for cards mailed afterwards, consider that the glitter is on the back side and not necessarily noticed by clerks as they face and cancel quantities of mail either by hand or machine. I suspect a considerable percent passed through the mail without being noticed. And many have since lost their glassine envelopes. making full interpretation problematic. The lack of return addresses typical of postcards and the lack of auxiliary postal markings beyond "unmailable" suggests to me that many of these were delivered. I have not looked further, but would not be surprised to find additional clerk instructions published in the Postal Bulletins.