Antique postcard collecting takes on a life of its own
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Peter Keyes holds an early 1900s postcard he came across at a sale years ago that got him hooked on collecting postcards. It features a photo of the house in Newbury that he owns and lives in, seen in the background. Stefan Hard |
Toolbox
By Steven Pappas
Staff Writer - Published: November 30, 2008
It started for Peter Keyes the same way it does for many postcard collectors: with just one._ The Newbury resident, a retired high school history and economics teacher from Massachusetts, was attending an antiques fair in the 1980s, leafing through an album of vintage postcards depicting scenes and buildings from his neck of the Vermont woods. Within that collection, he found an image of the very house in which he and his wife lived.
That was that.
What started as nostalgia's hook reeling Keyes in has turned into a 30-year collecting quest turned journey through time and history. He has compiled an impressive chronicle of Vermont, including many one-of-a-kind glimpses, that spans generations - one of the largest collections of its kind in the state. Keyes, the owner of Oxbow Books in Newbury, has more than 15 large albums filled with clear plastic sheets, each one designed to hold several postcards.
"I was interested in the social history," he says. "I think that part of (collecting) is very important."
That ripple effect - from nostalgic tug at the heartstrings to finding postcards of other buildings around town and expanding outward to places in the county and, eventually, across the state - is the very trend that has made postcards the third most popular collectible in the nation after coins and stamps. That and what some collectors say is a renewed appreciation for community and local history.
To hear collectors and dealers talk about it, the search for antique postcards can become all-consuming.
"Yes, it can become like an addiction," says Bob Bogdan, a professor emeritus from Syracuse University who now lives in Orwell. Bogdan should know. He has written several books about specific genres of "real photo postcards" and has a regular column in Postcard Collector Magazine.
Dealers in antiques and books have added postcards to their inventories because they are hot sellers. They buy them up at auctions - sometimes purchasing entire lots to get them. They scour flea markets, fairs, estate sales and even each other's stores, sometimes not going themselves but sending out unrecognizable "pickers" to browse collections. Many postcards come out of inheritances or estates.
It is serious stuff.
There are postcard clubs that meet in each state and region, and even national meetings. (One in Pennsylvania earlier this month attracted more than 90 dealers from across the nation and at least two foreign dealers.)
But it is not surprising that the fastest and easiest way to find some of the oldest known photographic images of our communities now is the Internet. On any given day, for example, tens of thousands of postcards are for sale on eBay, the massive online auction house.
A search of eBay for real photograph postcards, or RPPCs - not mass-market reproductions like we see today but actual images reproduced on thick postcard stock - last Monday yielded nearly 12,000 options. A subsequent search on "Vermont" brought up more than 425 postcards.
"You can find something on just about every subject," Bogdan says.
Some are in mint condition (never written on or mailed); many others have been mailed; a few showed signs of damage, but most collectors agree: Damage rarely comes from the U.S. Postal Service or the sender. It usually occurs because the postcards are not stored properly - sometimes for generations, thrown loosely into closets or drawers, stuck into scrapbooks or shoved into boxes.
People's photography
In collecting, real photograph postcards are where the money is.
That has everything to do with about 40 years in American history, when the fledgling postcard industry was in the hands of everyday citizens.
"From Teddy Roosevelt to about Franklin Roosevelt," Bogdan says, or about 1905 to 1930. (Other experts agree that the fad struck before World War I, but they put it back closer to 1890.)
Two notable inventions hit Main Street America during that period: the car and the camera.
"You could call it postcard mania," Bogdan says, detailing how people getting their hands on their first cameras were taking pictures of everything in their communities, including old buildings and each other.
Images that might seem campy today - store delivery wagons in front of shops or busy streetscapes or buildings (which have since been destroyed) - were photographed and then developed and mounted and sometimes mailed. But usually they were added to family scrapbooks. (Only about half of the postcards made in that 40-year span were ever mailed, collectors agree.) In many cases, certain postcards are one of a kind.
In addition, Bogdan points out, newspapers had not yet converted to using photographs, or could not afford them, so postcards were not just a novelty but also a means of getting visual information back and forth to family and friends.
Then add automobiles into the mix, and people began driving out of town to see (and photograph) the world. Some photographers whose skill was better than others were able to supplement their incomes by making copies of certain images and selling them in racks at local stores, Bogdan says. (This was an expensive venture: It took about 1,000 postcard sales to pay for the cost of a printing plate.)
"It is the most documented period of our history," says Bogdan, who has written a book on the subject. He refers to the time as the "People's Photography."
As a result, the images of that time are among the most sought-after.
Postcards, however, are not traded like baseball cards and other notable collectibles. In fact, postcard collectors tend to be secretive, never really tipping their hand about valuable cards in their collections or that they might be seeking.
"A lot of it is luck," Keyes agrees.
Can't keep up
Ben Koenig, owner of The Country Bookshop in Plainfield, knows exactly how popular postcards can be. "I can't get enough of them," he says.
Koenig, a postcard collector himself (mostly of images from his central Vermont village), says he is always on the lookout for postcards, which have been carried across the threshold of his shop in shoeboxes and family albums, as well as loose.
Most buyers are either looking for a specific kind or browsing through the boxes looking for images or places they recognize.
Koenig says he has had out-of-staters walk in and ask whether he has images from the place from which they came.
"'That's where we're from,' they'll say," Koenig recalls.
Stephen Smith of Foundation Antiques in Fair Haven has learned to play to that yearning for home.
He studied the collectibles market over time to figure out where in the country the demand was the greatest for real photo postcards. He pinpointed five states and focused on postcards from those areas, which have proven to be good sellers for him online.
In a matter of years, he has amassed an inventory of more than 100,000 postcards.
Because the U.S. dollar is so weak worldwide, Smith also is looking into foreign markets, where postcards also can do very well.
Something for everyone
Keyes, the Connecticut River Valley bookseller, points out that postcards offer a variety of points of interest: nostalgia, history, art, photography, oddity or curiosity.
Take, for example, Halloween postcards. They are a collectible within the genre themselves - mostly in their capacity as original greeting card. "Halloween cards are always popular," Koenig says. So are postcards with images of Santa Claus.
Other collectors go after religion-related postcards, including images of churches and postcards containing religious messages or greetings. There are even series with cute animals or pretty women.
In fact, collections are built out of just about any genre.
Several Vermont collectors and dealers interviewed for this article could point to collections focusing on very specific - almost hyper-local - subjects, including the marble industry in Vermont, in the communities of West Rutland and Proctor; quarrying in general; gold mining around southern Vermont; the state's mercantile giants around the turn of the 20th century; Civilian Conservation Corps projects around Vermont (a bit later in the real photo genre); celebrity visits (including presidents and Babe Ruth); and deer camps in the Northeast Kingdom.
Others collect disaster photo postcards. (Several books have been published about the Vermont flood of 1927.)
Historian Allen F. Davis, a Hardwick native who in 2002 published the definitive "Postcards from Vermont: A Social History, 1905-1945," donated his vast collection to the Vermont Historical Society. Between him and several other collectors around the state, every town in Vermont is chronicled in one image or another, agree historians, dealers and collectors.
Not just the pretty
And then there are controversial or strange postcard collections: A book published two years ago depicted real photo postcards and photographs of lynchings in the deep South. Similarly, there are collections of Klan rallies and meetings, including some in Vermont.
"They may not be something we want to think about or know about," Bogdan says, "but it all is part of taking note of our history. It can be ugly."
Bogdan, one of the nation's leading experts on real photo postcards, got his start through the same ripple effect that snared Keyes. A sociology professor at Syracuse, he always was fascinated by disabilities and mental illness. When he came upon old photographs and postcards of insane asylums (often photographed because they were the largest, most interesting buildings in rural communities), he began collecting.
That collection grew, and a side collection of postcards of people with disabilities formed. From there he began collecting postcards with images of people who appeared in freak shows. All of those collections have yielded books on the subject, as well as "Real Photo Postcard Guide," which he co-wrote with Weseloh Todd.
Delivered
So is postcard collecting a worthwhile investment?
Most collectors agree it is more of a sentimental hobby. It doesn't require deep pockets, unless searches become refined and rare; most postcards won't sell for more than $10. It can be time-consuming, between driving to shops and scouring online auctions.
(Incidentally, experts are divided over whether a postcard is worth more if it has a personal note written on it. Bogdan maintains it often can offer additional insight to the place and time, which enhances worth. Other collectors say the message doesn't matter. Everyone agrees a postcard without anything written on the back likely was mass-produced at some level and may be worth less than those one-of-a-kind postcards.)
"Start with something you are interested in, and let it grow from there," Keyes recommends, adding that you can't necessarily predict where a postcard hobby will take you.
As for postcards today, they are mass-produced and really are not worth much - truly serving only as a dispatch from a vacation spot.
Asked whether they are surprised postcards have persevered, nearly all of the collectors and dealers agree postcards do serve a purpose even with the advent of e-mail and the Internet: It's still fun to get mail that isn't bills.
When asked when he had last sent a postcard, though, Keyes pauses - a long time.
"I don't know," he says with a chuckle. "I honestly can't remember."
Steven Pappas is deputy editor at The Times Argus. He can be reached at steven.pappas@timesargus.com.