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