Collecting Vintage Postcards

Many postcard collectors like to collect vintage postcards. You can find some really unique cards that were produced before 1950 such as wooden and leather postcards. We will take a look at the different types of vintage postcards below.

Wooden Postcards

Postcards made from wood fall into three different eras: the early era, the vintage era and the modern era. Many different wooden postcards were made especially for the St Louis World's Fair in 1904. Most of these cards were humorous with puns on woods that are associated with wood. Other wooden postcards commemorated the Lewis and Clark Exposition as well as the Jamestown Exposition in the early 1900's. When shopping for vintage wooden postcards, you need to be aware that some postcards of the early era might be advertised as wood even though they are probably made from heavy cardboard.

Wood burning was a very popular hobby during the golden age of postcards. Therefore many wooden postcards were made at this time and the buyer would burn them after purchase. Most of them were burned over designs or copied from patterns. Some were burned onto the wood by the manufacturer. Flemish Art was the most well known pyrographic postcard manufacturer of the time.

Leather Postcards

Leather postcards were also popular during this period and were actually more common than the wood cards. They sometimes had a printed or burned design often used to depict buildings. Brown ink was often used which made the postcard look very similar to a burned design. Since these postcards were not made from stock paper, they had to be mailed at letter rate which was 2 cents at that time.

Letter Card

The letter card was pretty much confined to use in Canada. It was made by Folkard which was located in Montreal. A letter card was a letter sheet which was pre-printed and then it was folded closed and glued so it could be mailed as a postcard. To read the postcard, one would tear off a perforated edge and open the letter back up.

Moonlight Effect

At the time when moonlight effect postcards were popular, the technology was not there to photograph by moonlight. Therefore postcard manufacturers devised a way to shoot the photo during the daytime being careful not to catch any shadows in the picture. Then they would darken the sky and paint in details such a moon in the sky and a candle burning in a window.

Multi-fold Panoramic

This type of postcard was printed in a horizontal format and usually was of a panoramic view of some city. The postcard was folded for mailing.

Sunken Center

This unique vintage postcard was a real photo card that was made with a wide border which was raised with embossing which gave the appearance of the photo being framed.