CardCow Vintage Postcard Blog

At Disney World in Orlando last week I had lunch at the Old Key West resort one day, and what do you know - the walls were plastered with framed old postcards from Key West: And my favorite, this tri-fold panoramic postcard:

The Territory Ahead used several of my cards in their fall catalog. Order a free copy and check out the postcards and the clothes.

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.

Wall Street certainly hasn't changed much in the past 100 years. Nostalgic for the good old days of the stock market crash of 1929? Well here are some views:

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).