Posts Tagged ‘pictures’

Vintage Postcards

Saturday, January 23rd, 2010

Postcards have been popular for some time, more than a hundred years by some counts. Postcards have been a popular medium for so long due to a number of points. One such reason these days is the free printable postcards that you can find online have helped expand their reach. And collecting postcards is the third largest hobby in the world after stamps and coins. Many people like to collect souvenir postcards from places they visit as a wonderful way of creating a momento of their travels.

Postcards started becoming popular in the late 19th century when many countries across the world started printing postcards with photos and images of their country?s most famous places and landmarks. The first Eiffel Tower postcard was printed in 1889.

These days you are able to collect a myriad of postcards from all over the entire globe. Whether you are traveling to England, Paris, Austrailia or South America, you can buy souvenir postcards from there which have pictures or even events of those places.

Some of the souvenir postcards may be worth a lot of money because of where they originated; the older the postcard the better its worth. There are people who narrowly focus their postcard collecting to only a particular region; some prefer a particular style of postcard, some would rather be collecting postcards of a particular theme whereas others collect souvenir postcards from around the world in a number of different styles.

If you travel a lot then collecting postcards should not be difficult for you as you can get souvenir postcards from every destination you visit. But if you are not much of a traveler but still have a hobby of collecting postcards, you can easily get them online. One o the best online source for postcard collectors is eBay.

Souvenir postcards include images or photos of old buildings, expositions, vintage cars, trains, celebrities and sports personalities, historic figures and many other things. Some of the postcard collectors have a huge variety of things from long long ago which can fetch a lot of money.

People interested in collecting postcardsshould be very very careful when preserving old postcards and make sure there is no damaged caused to them because of any environmental issues or rough handling. They should not be exposed to chemicals which could damage the post cards for ever.

Postcard collectors are often referred to as deltiologist (It comes from a Greek word which means collector of small pictures or writings).The turn of the 20th century saw a great splurge in postcards. Over a billion postcards were sold in a year in the United States alone.

You can find souvenir, antique or vintage postcards in many places such as auctions, antique stores or even in flea markets. You can also search for ads of postcards in classifieds in the newspapers from postcard collectors who want to sell their postcard collection to make some quick bucks. You may also find this resource handy if you are in search of free Christmas postcard templates this holiday season.

Most postcards are printed on cardboard but you can find some vintage and old postcards printed on metal, leather and wood. These can be real keepers!