Are 1920s-1930s cards cheaper?

[Moonraker]

Given that the heyday of the topo and "special events" cards was the 1900s and 1910s, should such cards of later decades be the same price?

Recently an eBay vendor listed a PC of the Packway, the main road through Lark Hill Camp in Wiltshire, with a starting price of £25; it had a 1934 postmark and a 1930s look to it. There were no bids, and afterwards I emailed the vendor and pointed out that PCs of the Packway normally went for £6-8 and if he cared to relist it with a starting price of around that level I might be interested in bidding; he replied that his price reflected what he had paid for it and he thought it was a nice card.

I have to admit that post-1920 cards of the Packway are quite rare (compared with the number that exist of the Great war era), and I had wondered whether this might have influenced the seller's starting price.

At Woking PC fair last week, I spotted a great card showing a West African chieftain with an attendant holding a ceremonial umbrella behind him in the Salisbury Plain village of Shrewton in 1937. The price was a reasonable £18; had the scene been 20 years earlier I would have thought it would have been worth quite a bit more.

(What we might also debate is how much does a modernish postmark detract from the value of an early PC; the worst example I saw was of a 1916 PC (of a building on the Packway) that had been used to enter a late 1990s competition.)

[MichaelDay]

You're correct the heyday of of topographical and event cards was the 'golden age', but good photographic cards (particularly from smaller photographer/ publishers )from the later periods are often more difficult to find. This is not necessarily reflected in the price though.