How to Collect Vintage Holiday Postcards

Collecting vintage postcards is a fun hobby for anyone who loves art, history, paper, ephemera and/or has the time and money to invest in a relatively inexpensive hobby. One way to start is to pick a theme or type of postcard you would like to collect. Vintage holiday postcards are colorful cards that were usually designed in sets or by popular illustrators of the day. Vintage postcards can be embossed, glittered, or be novelty cards such as the popular Victorian "squeaker cards." Some cards were made of fabric, linen or balsa wood.
Collecting holiday vintage postcards is a good way to start. While Halloween vintage postcards in good condition are rare and therefore demand a high price, other holidays like Valentine's Day, Christmas, New Year's Day and Thanksgiving seem to be plentiful on the vintage postcard market.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy
Instructions

Things You'll Need:
Love of vintage postcards
Vintage postcard resource book
Time
Money
Acid-free postcard sleeves
Postcard storage
1Welcome Spring vintage postcard

Because there are so many varieties of vintage postcards, most collectors choose a theme such as holiday vintage postcards to begin a collection. While Halloween postcards are the top collected vintage postcard they are also the most expensive, so to start a holiday collection you may want to start on the low end with a less popular collectible such as New Year's Day, Easter or Thanksgiving. Some collectors collect illustrators, themes, or series.
2Vintage Easter postcard

Because vintage penny postcards were so plentiful and popular there are a lot of vintage postcards in the collectible market. But for the same reason, many of the cards are not in very good condition. When choosing cards look for clean cards that have no creases, stains, or damages. Postcard collectors use a grading system for collectible vintage postcards.
3Mother's Day postcard

Look for cards at flea markets, garage sales, antique malls, and on online auction sites. If you're serious about collecting it's a good idea to buy a reference and a price guide. Postcard prices can be as low as .05 and as high as hundreds of dollars for rare or highly desirable cards. Buying postcards in bulk or in auction lots is the best way to get a collection started. You can then trade or sell the cards that don't fit into your collection.
4The most popular postcard is a vintage Halloween postcard

Store vintage postcards in acid-free postcard sleeves.

About collectable post cards on Ebay

There's a very common oversight that means most people selling vintage postcards on eBay end up selling way below their products' potential value. It happens because they omit one word from the description of their postcard in their eBay title, but that one word can deter fifty per cent of buyers from placing their bids. Let me tell you how to avoid this very common problem.

That missing word typically plagues people selling topographical view postcards on eBay, the type that depict places from bygone years, such as villages and towns, cities and even whole countries.

The reason fifty per cent of people who desperately want to bid on a particular topographical postcard don't even see it on eBay is because the seller copies the caption directly the card and ignores the fact that many places have changed their names or their spellings have varied across the decades.

So the place where I live and for which I collect vintage postcards, called 'Monk Hesleden', is often featured on postcards under its old name of 'Low Hesleden' or even 'School Hesleden' as it was known in the early 1900s. And that means if I search for 'Monk Hesleden', I'm going to miss postcards for my home village bearing one of its earlier names in eBay titles.

Also, people wanting collectibles for places like Persia are more likely to search for 'Iran', or vice versa, and others collecting topographical postcards of, say, 'Middlesbrough', will miss listings for the alternative spelling of 'Middlesborough'.

It won't take long to search Google or other major search engines for alternative spellings and names for views depicted on postcards you're selling on eBay and the effort can double or further increase their value.

Most Expensive Collectible Postcards

How to Start a Postcard Collection

My very own postcard collection was launched when my Great Aunt left me her boxes of hundreds of postcards from the early 1900s. Over the years, as I ran my collectibles business, I picked up postcards from other dealers or markets and estate sales I scouted. Postcard collecting is fun, easy and costs very little to start and maintain.

Instructions

Things You'll Need:
access to family scrapbooks
a nearby flea market or yard sales
information on postcard collecting
1Ask your relatives, especially the seniors, if they have any old postcards they'd like to contribute to a collection you are starting. Many older relatives are happy to divest themselves of what they call "clutter" and what you call "collectible." If your friendly relative gives you access to scrapbooks or boxes of old greeting and postcards, you are on your way to assembling a postcard collection.

2.A few cards from my 1940s old California postcard collection

If you have no older relatives or they have not older postcards, and the idea of collecting postcards appeals to you, you will want to locate the nearest flea market or estate/yard sales in your location. Flea markets generally offer a wide variety of fun and interesting postcards to collect. I would steer clear of the booths that feature postcards, as their cards are likely to be priced higher than those cards found randomly in another booth. A beginning collector would do well to collect by location (say you live in Oklahoma or Maryland)or by holiday. There are many cool antique cards celebrating everything from St. Patrick's Day to July 4th and the obvious Christmas and Thanksgiving. Halloween cards are the hardest and most valuable - snap them up if you find them.

3Once you've started your collection, say with 20 cards or so (pay no more than $1 each), you are ready to get more serious about what subject matter you want to collect. Some people collect for the art (antique postcards are great framed). Some people collect for the subject matter (I've sold every train postcard I came across). Some people already have an interest in a collectibles area (say, Black Americana or Hawaii) and actively seek out antique postcards that reflect their other interests.

4.Once you've gotten more serious about collecting, search the internet for free guides on how to identify and value postcards (if you care); how to care for them; how to frame them, and so on. If you are an artist, you can use old postcards in mixed media work (and even sell it on sites like Etsy). Of course there are replicas of the more famous old postcards, but for the most part, copy cats stayed away from copying postcards since there was little money in it for them. But always check the reverse side of your postcard for copyright information. Also check the paper content of the card to determine if it is truly authentically old.