GENERAL INTEREST
16
POSTCARDS by Nick Fletcher
If you think an old picture postcard couldn’ t possibly be worth very much, then stand by for a shock! One single old postcard has been sold in a London auction for £ 31,750.
Of course this was a very rare postcard, sent in 1840, just as the postal service was starting and thus one of the oldest in existence. But even so, it’ s quite possible for some old postcards dating back just a hundred years or so to fetch anything from £ 15- £ 50, and some more specialised examples can fetch a few hundred pounds each.
The practice of sending picture postcards became well established in Britain around 1870, aided by a very cheap postal service, and by the 1890s it began to reach almost epidemic proportions and it maintained a peak until after well the end of the First World War.
At that time, postcards were often used as a form of immediate communication – postal efficiency in those days meant it was possible to post a card in the morning telling a friend you’ d have tea with them that same afternoon and for them to get the card in time!
Many people collected the cards they were sent and put them in albums which would be shown to friends rather like we show holiday snaps today. This was of course a period when camera ownership was still limited to the wealthy. Even at the time, people collected on themes, perhaps animals, political figures, royalty, pretty girls, even buses and ships, and literally hundreds of other subjects.
During the fist world war the postcard was a cheap form of communication for troops in the trenches, many of them having a military theme.
And then of course there is the seaside postcard. The right to a public holiday became law in the 1870s, and so the souvenir postcard industry was also booming with both scenic and comic cards extremely popular.
Today, all postcards are collected to some degree, though values will vary. Of course the vast majority of postcards are worth perhaps just 50p £ 1 each, but certain subjects and certain categories attract much higher prices.
Essentially there are two basic types of postcard, the photographic and the artist-drawn. Photographic cards are simply photographs in postcard form. General landscapes or views tend to be the least valuable, but ones showing people, street scenes, clothing, transport and buildings can be of greater