Hobbies And Interests
Things You'll Need
Instructions
Ask 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.
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.
Once 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.
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.