Postcard Pages

Collecting Modern Postcards - Brian Lund.

A few thoughts on contemporary cards and what defines them taken from:
'Postcard Collecting .. a beginners guide..' a booklet published by
Reflections of a Bygone Age, Keyworth, Nottingham. (1994) ISBN 0 946245 27 4 Price 1.50 (pounds)

In the last few years, collectors in Britain have begun to collect contemporary cards in huge numbers, following a trend established in France in the early 1970'S. What is in effect happening is a revival of the pre-1914 craze for collecting postcards, though the fashion for sending them in huge numbers has not yet been rekindled. So when hobbyists of the mid-21st century discover 1980'S/1990'S postcard collections, they may well find most of them postally unused.

This revival has been encouraged by a mushrooming of superb postcard designs,on sale in High Street shops all over the country and - in the case of limited edition cards - through the specialist postcard hobby retail outlets.

Cards published today are a mixture of modern designs and nostalgic images posters, film stars, transport scenes going back anything from twenty to a hundred years, and sometimes overlapping the 'Golden Age' (1900-1914).While these nostalgic cards are fine when reproduced from other media, I wouldn't encourage anyone to collect items which are simply reprints of older cards.

To a certain extent, people who buy postcards today are looking for the same subjects as their Edwardian predecessors: royalty, personalities (though today it's pop, in 1905 it was music hall), artistic cards, transport, political, special events, current social issues and so on. Street scenes and viewcards are not quite so highly regarded by today's buyers as collect able items, though the general public of course buy them in huge quantities: but neither were they rated by Edwardians, who preferred to collect subjects in their albums.

One brand new collecting fashion concerns postcards issued as a part of the hobby itself - as souvenirs of fairs, as personal advertising, or as club promotions. France,Britain and the U.S.A. are the chief sources of cards like this, and the collecting of them has become truly international.

Leading international firms who have published cards encouraging the growth of postcard sales in the High Street include Athena (art and contemporary design), Art Unlimited, Reflex Marketing(pop), and Classico. There are, though, literally hundreds of superb publishers whose postcards can be picked up at basic prices, and the standard of production and quality of design rivals the 'Golden Age'. Among publishers who produce cards in smaller quantities aimed more specifically at the collectors' market are PH Topics (commemorative), Headline Post-cards (current events), Enterprise Postcards (royalty), and Leeds Postcards (political and social comment). Additionally, many localities are now serviced by publishers who are producing excellent topographical cards.

It's fascinating to speculate which of the postcards being published today will be most popular and collectable in fifty years time. It's hard to make comparisons with the Edwardian cards that are currently most in demand, but in that case topographicals, art nouveau, transport, special events, and poster advertising are well up on many collectors' shopping lists. It is tempting to consider that images of the 1980's - Margaret Thatcher, the Falklands war,the miner's strike, nuclear weapons, green issues, and the social history of the decade - will before too long be immensely collectable. But whatever you go for, the massive range of contempor ary cards currently available give an excellent and varied selection of subjects or artists from which to put together a collection.

One of the problems of defining 'modern cards' is what time limit to set. Cards published in the last five years? Last decade? Since World War 2? From 1940? Arguments have been advanced for all these, and many collectors retain a resistance to any cards published since the second world war, especially the larger (150 x 700mm or more) issues. However, there is an increasing trend towards building up collections spanning the whole spectrum of postcard publishing, and a recognition that current issues can be as valid as any produced in previous decades.

It is likely that for the next few years at least, modern cards will be distinguished from pre-1960 ones chiefly by their different size, though it might be more sensible to have an ongoing definition that specified 'the last two decades'.

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