A Brief History of Postcards

Postcards have been a great way to communicate for over a hundred and fifty years now. 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 available online have helped to increase this popularity. What many don’t realize, however, is that postcard collecting is one of the largest hobbies in the world. Many people like to collect souvenir postcards from places they visit as a memento of that place and its landmarks.

Postcards initially started gaining followers in the late 1900’s, or thereabouts, when many countries around the globe started printing postcards with photos or images of their country’s most popularly visited places and landmarks. It was in 1889 when the first postcard featuring the Eiffel Tower appeared.

These days you are able to collect a myriad of postcards from almost every country around the world. Whether you are traveling to England, Paris, Austrailia or South America, you can collect souvenir postcards from all of the places you visit, commemorating your trip and reminding you of places you have seen and visited.

Some of the souvenir postcards can be worth a lot of money because of where they are from; 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 prefer 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 historic buildings, expositions, vintage cars, trains, celebrities and sports personalities, historic figures and many other things. Many of the people who collect postcards have a diverse variety of collectables from long long ago which can fetch a lot of money.

Those serious postcard collectorsshould be very very careful while 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 also 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 antique, vintage or souvenir postcards in a number of places such as auctions, antique stores or even in flea markets. You can also look for advertisements of postcards in classifieds in the newspaper for postcard collectors looking for a buyer of their collection, or a piece of their collection. You may also find this resource handy if you are in search of Christmas postcards this Christmas season.

Most postcards are printed on cardboard but you can also find some vintage, older postcards printed on different mediums, such as metal. These are more rare and very unique!