In January 2022, NPR did a show on a Pennsylvania man collecting postcards for 80 years. He is over 90 now and has hundreds of thousands of postcards. My collection is far from that. Our one commonality was that he was hooked when he saw a group of his grandmother’s postcards. The postcards were from places he had never seen, exciting new places.[i] My experience was something like that.
Many of us have one or more collections. In the fifth grade, each girl in my Girl Scout Troop was tasked with starting or adding to a collection and bringing it to show at one of our meetings. It was for a badge about hobbies. One of my friends had a collection of interesting ink pens. I remember it because she had mounted them on a piece of cardboard covered in a deep red cloth, and they were framed. At ten years old, I thought it was elegant. My mother helped me start a postcard collection. It was her suggestion, and I loved it. My mother had coin collections and stamp collections. She also had five or ten postcards from when she, her sisters, and her mother traveled as adults. My maternal grandmother had scores of cards from her travel and the travel of relatives and friends. She gave them to me for my project. I thought they were beautiful and still do.
Over the years, I have added to the collection. At times they were put away for a few years and almost forgotten. I would connect with them again when I received a card or purchased cards on a trip. I asked friends who traveled to pick up postcards. Sometimes they mailed them. I picked up postcards on many of my travels. On a few occasions, I looked for them at flea markets. My postcards are connected to me in some way. Even those selected from a flea market were chosen for a reason.
I have over 800 postcards and expect to collect at least a thousand. I have more traveling to do. The majority, or 574, are from the U.S. They are from every state in the country save one. I requested help from a friend to find one from Delaware to complete the collection. I have been to Delaware but failed to get a postcard. Forty-four countries are represented in 218 of my postcards. I have a small handful, ten or so, that are art cards not representing a particular geography. Most of my postcards depict landscapes and buildings. For example, when I worked at the Arkansas State Capitol, I had a poster frame filled with state capitol buildings from 26 states and the U. S. Capitol.
Here are a few of my favorite postcards:
Virginia. I have a dozen or more older postcards. They were different. The surfaces were
matte, the card was printed on a linen texture paper, and the images were more like a printed engraving than a photo. They were more formal in some way. There is a great description of how to age postcards on the Chicago Postcard Museum website. Unfortunately, most of the postmarks on my cards are illegible. On three cards, my mother had simply scribbled the dates of a trip to Virginia in 1952. I recognize her handwriting. The cards were picked up on three successive days. Only recently have I realized the value of simply noting the date when a card is acquired on the back and possibly adding a note of the friend's name who brought the card back for you, if it wasn’t mailed.
Expo 67. This card was sent to me by a classmate and friend while still in middle school. Looking at it, I realized that people like me could travel out of the country. At that point in time, I had never been anywhere but to relatives’ homes. Those were located in states contiguous to my home state, Arkansas.
Louisiana State Capitol. This card has three things going for it. It’s old, a night scene, and a state capitol building all in one card. I have several cards that are night scenes. I find them interesting because probably 90% or more of my cards are bright, sunny day settings. I visited the Louisiana State Capitol long after this card was printed. The card is also part of my state capitols collection.
L’Arc de Triomphe. The postcard most valuable to me is the card from my Uncle when I was born. My Uncle was stationed in France and sent a picture of the Arc de Triomphe with my name on the address. The postcard has been framed in my office for many years. My mother had saved it and shared it with me once she deemed me responsible enough to value it. Without being overly dramatic, I felt some compulsion to visit this monument. It encouraged me to take another journey. Finally, in 2022, over six decades after receiving the card, I stood on the Champs-Elysees to view this site in person.
My postcards are treasured. They inspire me. They remind me of things about my family. They planted the seed that limited income and family challenges don’t have to constrain your outlook on the world. My mother’s father died during the depression when she was ten. My grandmother was then tasked with raising four children during the depression, a time when women were rarely wage earners. Despite that, as young adults, they went places and did amazing things. They contributed to my realization that people who traveled saw things I hadn’t seen and therefore knew stuff I didn’t know and understood things I didn’t understand. Postcards are one way of capturing memories of places I have been and preserving the experiences shared by friends and relatives.
[i] Freja, E. “A Collector was ‘bitten by the postcard bug’ 80 years ago; see some of his favorites.” NPR. January 9, 2023. https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2023/01/09/1133372930/postcard-collector-donald-brown-amassed-hundreds-of-thousands-over-eight-decades
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