CardCow Vintage Postcard Blog

In Miami last week - grabbed breakfast at Denny's in Coral Gables and noticed they had quite a few prints from vintage postcards hanging up, most of which I have originals of:  Coral Gables Postcards

I had the opportunity to visit Ebay in San Jose yesterday. There are definitely more vintage postcards on their web site than at their corporate office. Lots of other collectibles adorning employee's offices though!

I was at Disney World again last week, and hidden in one of the old stores on Main St. Kodak has an exhibit of photography, featuring a lot of postcards and travel emphemera. First we have a Kodak folding brownie camera. Note the NY City Central Park Postcard (not a real photo, so I'm not sure why they have that behind the camera). Next we have another Brownie camera, and a few miscelaneous postcards. Postcards as part of a 1933 Chicago World's Fair Display: And finally we have a nice 1940's/50's roadside display:

I was down in Burbank and was happy to see some ephemera and other items displayed in the lobby. Only a couple of postcards, but some nice airmail cancels and such. The terminal hasn't changed much in the past 50 years - this postcard is from the late 1950's or early 60's when it was called the "Lockheed Air Terminal":

I took my brother to the railroad museum in Sacramento last weekend. I've been there before - it's one of the best museums I've ever been to. They have some amazing displays and exhibits that rival the Smithsonian and the Henry Ford. They have a number of old cars you can walk through, and one of them is a mail car which probably transported millions of postcards across the country. They had few old postcards on display which didn't really have much to do with the railroad - displaying some RPO (Railway Post Office) cancels would have been better. I have a number of RPO cancels on postcards and I can't help wondering if any traveled on this car...

Went to Alcatraz last weekend. The postcard display in the gift shop was the best part! There were only about 20 different views, but they reprinted them and stuck them on posterboard in this large display. I wonder if any prisoners actually sent any of these older cards from "the rock".... See more postcards from alcatraz here.

Not postcard related, but I had to post this image from the toy store in Ginza. Found a lot of bad translations last week, but this was the funniest. "When you lean on a display and ride a load, please very stop it because it is danger."

Spent last week in Tokyo. I wanted to go to Jimbocho where I heard there are a lot of old book stores and antique shops, but I didn't have a chance to go to that area. There was just too much other stuff to see, and unfortunately this wasn't a postcard buying trip. I did find a few tourist shops selling modern postcards though: Most of the modern cards I found were selling for around 80 Yen - around 75 cents. Lots of nice wood block prints, printed on nice paper. Much nicer than typical glossy, scenic cards found in the US (although there were plenty of views of Tokyo to be found as well).

I was at the Mt. Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, NH not too long ago and along with many nice historical prints in the lobby and halls, they also have a huge framed postcard display: I think this is the largest single group of framed cards I've seen on display.

I spent most of last month in Milwaukee. One place I visited was Johnson Controls. You've probably seen their products - they've been making commercial thermostats for around 100 years. They have a little museum in their lobby that shows some of their products over the years. On one wall of the lobby they had this display of postcard images mixed in with images of their products. I'm not quite sure what they were going for here since there wasn't a description, but I'm guessing the old postcards represented buildings that had installed Johnson Controls products. They had quite a few cards from the early 1900's and some Chromes. Kind of a neat way to display them though - as you can see it has a 3-D look, with each of the cards suspended off the glass behind it.

I was in Milwaukee for most of last month. I stayed at the Ambassador hotel downtown a couple nights. It doesn't look like much on the outside, but step inside and it's a time warp to the 1930's. I have a few cards of the Ambassador from the 40's and 50's myself, but it was great to see a framed collection of cards displayed prominently in the lobby. I like how they have the back of one of the mailed cards showing the message. I get a lot of requests for duplicate cards so folks can display both sides of the card. Most view cards, especially hotels, have some descriptive text on the back (owners, phone numbers, rates) so they make for nice front & back displays. I think of postcards as works of art - so framing them as such makes perfect sense to me. Of course many topical (Oilettes for example) and Artist Signed cards were in fact prints of original artwork, but even Linens and Chrome cards have a level of artistry not seen in many modern cards.