postcard.co.uk

Reading Postcard Fair is being held on July 1. Note that a nearby road will be closed for resurfacing:


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Just to clarify that it appears the closure will affect drivers trying to access the centre from the west, under the Cow Lane railway bridges that have been notorious bottlenecks for decades.

I spent three hours at this event, my first visit to any fair for nine years .

As always, it was very well organised and I think that an innovation since my last visit was the placing of table numbers on dealers' badges, which encouraged me to dot around the hall one stand to another, depending on how busy there were (or weren't), rather than work progressively along the rows.

It seemed to me that it wasn't quite as busy as a decade ago - but then it was a very hot day - and there were some new dealers, as well as familiar faces from the past, a couple of whom were of a certain age and must be about to find it very hot work moving their stock back into their cars. (I write this 20 minutes before the fair is due to close.)

I was happy enough with the half-dozen cards that I purchased. I thought that prices for the choicer items had edged up a bit, but for routine material were much the same as ten years ago. However, there was one dealer whose prices were incredibly low - about one-third of what would have been very reasonable prices; where was he twenty years ago when I first started collecting? My overall impression confirmed my belief that too many eBay vendors are asking over the odds for average cards.