Postcard photos worth 1,000 words and can cost you a pretty penny
In the early 1900s, young lovers couldn’t set up a romantic rendezvous by text message or over social media, so they turned to the tools they had, postcards.
“Postcards were Instagram, they were the Internet,” said Win Boyd, chairman of the Toronto Postcard Club (TPC) on Sunday. “They used to have twice-a-day mail delivery in Toronto and people would use postcards to set up dates. I’ve seen cards that say ‘meet me at such and such a place tonight.’ ”
Now, 100 years later, those long-lost love notes and the cards they’re on are the fuel for the world’s third-largest collecting hobby.
On Sunday at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre near Eglinton Ave. E. and Don Mills Rd., postcard collectors from across the GTA gathered for the TPC’s 35th annual show and spent hours digging through close to a million cards for pieces of buried gold.
The phrase “got it” was uttered almost automatically, but every once in a while eyes would light up and a card would earn a closer inspection — it could be treasure.
What’s considered “treasure” varies by collector. Some search for military machinery or scenes from certain cities.
Others are so specific it’s strange — one former TPC member collected left-facing cows and another cards showing working elephants.
For Boyd, treasure is places he’s been, like his hometown of Owen Sound, Ont., or Banff, Alta., where he spent his younger years hiking through the backcountry. With his knit cap and coarse white beard, he looks more like an explorer than a card collector, but to Boyd they’re very much the same.
For the past 30 years he has scoured flea markets and sorted through shoeboxes to fill out his 3,000-card collection.
“It gets to be like a scavenger hunt,” he said, explaining that it’s not uncommon for cards to fetch $60-80. He even saw one of an unfinished railway station in Alberta go for $450 after two club members got into a bidding war.
The old saying about a picture being worth a thousand words seems to apply directly to modern postcards, which usually have only a small space for writing, but the cards weren’t always shiny pictures of bikini babes or banners blaring “Wish you were here!” with Niagara Falls as the background.
Boyd explained the first cards were plain and used for commercial purposes. Over the years, as camera technology advanced and the government permitted the inclusion of images on cards, they developed into the glossy pictures we see today.
In fact, according to Boyd, early photos taken for postcards make up more than half the images in Canadian history books. “In Europe, their history is paintings, but there was nobody here painting in 1867, so most of our history is wrapped up in postcards,” he said.
Alison Dalton and her brother John inherited their collection of more than 50,000 cards from their father when he died.
Many of their childhood memories include trips to shows and flea markets in search of an elusive card and it’s a passion they continue through their collections. “I like European art-deco cards, costumes, Halloween cards, places I’ve been or ships I’ve been on.” she said.
Alan Gertner and Emily Thring were first-timers at the show.
The 31-year-olds said they had meant to do a quick lap of the tables, but got caught up sorting through cards and reading the messages on the back. Although they doubt they’ll become collectors, Gertner said he can see why others are. “It’s such a fascinating look into a world that we no longer live in,” he said.