Featured Spent the day listing postcards on the 'bay.

I'm digging into my Aunt's postcard collection and listing by categories. Covered bridges and then trains. Boring, but necessary. I have to start decluttering.

 

Also dead easy to photograph and ship.

 

I have over 2,000 covered bridge postcards. Collecting for 40 years.

 

That is very impressive. Is there a big one that's still gotten away?

Debora

 

I keep a list of the ones I already own so if I come across any I can check. It’s rare anymore that I find one I don’t have. The rppc’s are my favorites.

 

Wow!!

 

That must be so fun to pull out occasionally and enjoy.

And how many have you visited?

 

More than I can remember, mostly in New England but also a few in the midwest and west coast and also Germany, Austria and Italy.

 

I see a couple that I have.

 

I have looked at stamps too. I found two so far where the stamps are worth more than the cards. I've worked at it for two days and only have 50 listed. It's a lot of work. Looking at what I've done and what I still have, there are way more than 300 cards! It's too bad that no one else in the family wants them. Everyone knew that Aunt Willa collected them so lots of them are from my parents, aunts & uncles and cousins. Most are from her collectors club members. I am keeping a few like this one.

 

It might be fun to see if they did any recordings. The music is probably 20s Awful, but hey. Music.

 

I'm going to contact the Manchester Historical Society to see if they have any info. I'm a member and I've donated quite a few items over the years.

 

Make sure to check for any real photo cards. Also railroad stations, trains, cars, motorcycles, occupational, and sports can be very collectable.

Make sure to take good photos when listing. Also separate out the good stuff from the less desirable. There may be lots of cards that only have sentimental value.

I recently purchased a collection from auction. 4 shoe boxes full. About 10% I'll be keeping for my personal collection, about 20% will be set aside for future resale, and the rest will either get sold in bulk to a dealer for pennies or donated to a thrift store.

 

I’ve got thousands of postcards. A good portion of them are good/desirable. I can’t frickin stand listing them. For anything that’s worth less than $7-$8 or so each it may be worth putting them into small lots. Or whatever your personal cutoff is for time vs. profit. Postcards are so easy to photo/ship that I don’t mind selling them for $8-$10 each. Much less than that though and I feel my time is better spent elsewhere. I’ve basically just become a postcard collector because I don’t feel like listing all the postcards that I’ve bought. Sometimes I pull out a few decent ones and list them but I can’t do marathon listing sessions of them. The professional postcard sellers use scanners vs. cameras and swear they can list like 50+ per hour. I’d be lucky to do that many in a week I think.

 

They probably have those feed-through photo scanners, and just list them with templates and no details. The grind is definitely a killer. I have cards and I only list them in lots unless they're rarer.

 

Definitely on the auto feed scanners. Minimal details other than the listing title, era, and condition I believe. Which for postcards is really all you need for the most part. I just don’t have the discipline or attention span. Listing like items is by far quicker than listing random things one after the other but random things keep my interest better usually.

 

For me, part of it is reading the messages. Some are between my two aunts or other family members. Many are from members of the Postcard Collectors Club that Aunt Willa belonged to. Her name was Willa Beatrice Richards and she went by Billie so the cards are addressed to variations on her name. No one else in the family wants them and I've been holding onto them for over 20 years. I'm saving a few that are more meaningful. The "wish you were here" or "having a great time" are going.

 

I don't know enough about postcards to tell whether I have one that's worth $1 or $10! I'm just hoping I can sell some of them. I'm trying to get a little slush fund for my next trip - 2025 Croatia

 

Now that's perfect -- Billie's travel hobby paying for a bit of her family member's travel!

 

I love reading them too. They are often very standard and boring but even those can be fun to read. So many are, “we are having fun, the weather has been good or bad, we saw the castle, we will be home soon, hope you’re well”. Sometimes you get some more interesting ones though. I have a collection all bought by the same lady on an early 20th century “grand tour” type trip. She must have been very wealthy. So they mostly aren’t written on but it’s neat to see everywhere she went. She bought literally hundreds of cards on the trip. She did send some and ended up with some of them back from the family members she sent them too. Then I also have many of the cards she received over the years. Gives you a real look into her life. I’m sure you felt the same about the ones from your family.