SEND A POSTCARD
To modern collectors, vintage postcards are a beautiful window into the past. A way to peer back into a former world, and a chance to see things that don’t exist any more.
For the first collectors, though, picture postcards were new and exciting.
Postcards themselves weren’t new.
Early mail services always had a few folks who would scribble something on a card and send it through the post, but at first, they were homemade one-offs and not a standard postal offering. The first official postcard, in fact, was a hand-painted design a British writer mailed to himself in 1840, using a penny stamp.
(Fun fact: the design is a caricature of postal workers, and experts believe the creator, Theodore Hook, intended it as a joke. Nobody’s laughing now; the piece recently sold for more than 31-thousand pounds.)
Cards showed up in the U.S. a few years later, and initially, they were mostly for advertising. Soon, greeting cards became a thing, too, as the cost of printing dropped. Many vintage valentines and Christmas cards are in postcard form.
While souvenir cards were printed for big events several times in the 19th century, the experts date the first true picture postcard to 1893. That’s when the enterprising folks at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exhibition took government-issued penny postcards and printed images of World’s Fair buildings on the blank side. They charged twice the price and sold boatloads of them. In fact, they’re still around, and still viewed as the first collectible postcard.
And the party was on.
Soon, most destinations had postcards, and people were happy to snap them up and send them off with a “Wish you were here.”
The timing was great; postcards became widely available just as the burgeoning middle class was starting to have the money and time to go places. And what better way to celebrate the visit, and spark a little friendly envy, than to send a postcard home?
When the postcards arrived, they were often too special to just read and discard.
Some people kept them in boxes, but many put them in albums.
And few folks were above mailing themselves a few nice postcards for their own album.
A postcard collection was a real status symbol, a statement that you’d been places and seen things, and had friends who’d done the same.
It’s no surprise that Ella Shane has a carefully curated one. If anyone would want to keep a record of her travels and not incidentally her prosperity, it’s our Lower East Side orphan made good as an opera star. Ella’s especially fond of the more exotic cards – San Francisco, the desert, Europe.
Like many others, though, she also cherishes ones from friends and family, even if they just show a generic Staten Island beach.
So when she sits down with the Duke to look through the album in A FATAL OVERTURE, they’re doing a classic courting-couple activity…but there’s a lot more in the room.
For Ella, that postcard album is a record of where she’s been and how far she’s come. And they’re pretty too.
Got a #ThrowbackThursday idea? Drop it in the comments!
For the first collectors, though, picture postcards were new and exciting.
Postcards themselves weren’t new.
Early mail services always had a few folks who would scribble something on a card and send it through the post, but at first, they were homemade one-offs and not a standard postal offering. The first official postcard, in fact, was a hand-painted design a British writer mailed to himself in 1840, using a penny stamp.
(Fun fact: the design is a caricature of postal workers, and experts believe the creator, Theodore Hook, intended it as a joke. Nobody’s laughing now; the piece recently sold for more than 31-thousand pounds.)
Cards showed up in the U.S. a few years later, and initially, they were mostly for advertising. Soon, greeting cards became a thing, too, as the cost of printing dropped. Many vintage valentines and Christmas cards are in postcard form.
While souvenir cards were printed for big events several times in the 19th century, the experts date the first true picture postcard to 1893. That’s when the enterprising folks at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exhibition took government-issued penny postcards and printed images of World’s Fair buildings on the blank side. They charged twice the price and sold boatloads of them. In fact, they’re still around, and still viewed as the first collectible postcard.
And the party was on.
Soon, most destinations had postcards, and people were happy to snap them up and send them off with a “Wish you were here.”
The timing was great; postcards became widely available just as the burgeoning middle class was starting to have the money and time to go places. And what better way to celebrate the visit, and spark a little friendly envy, than to send a postcard home?
When the postcards arrived, they were often too special to just read and discard.
Some people kept them in boxes, but many put them in albums.
And few folks were above mailing themselves a few nice postcards for their own album.
A postcard collection was a real status symbol, a statement that you’d been places and seen things, and had friends who’d done the same.
It’s no surprise that Ella Shane has a carefully curated one. If anyone would want to keep a record of her travels and not incidentally her prosperity, it’s our Lower East Side orphan made good as an opera star. Ella’s especially fond of the more exotic cards – San Francisco, the desert, Europe.
Like many others, though, she also cherishes ones from friends and family, even if they just show a generic Staten Island beach.
So when she sits down with the Duke to look through the album in A FATAL OVERTURE, they’re doing a classic courting-couple activity…but there’s a lot more in the room.
For Ella, that postcard album is a record of where she’s been and how far she’s come. And they’re pretty too.
Got a #ThrowbackThursday idea? Drop it in the comments!
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The most valuable postcard is PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973). “EL CIEGO”, Barcelona, 1903 at $95,000, YIKES!!
I get a kick out of the early British bawdy postcards.