Postcard Show! 2023 Edition

For the fourth time – but the first since 2019 – I attended a somewhat-local postcard show that pops up once a year. I always have fun at these shows, even though I generally don’t buy a whole lot when I’m there. It’s just a generally fun experience just to look through the many thousands of postcards there.

Most of my readers are sports card collectors, so let me tell you what it’s like to attend a postcard show.

When you first walk in, a postcard show looks similar to a sports collectibles show.  You’ve got dealers behind folding tables, and on the tables are cardboard storage boxes somewhat like monster boxes.  You’ll see customers standing or sitting in front of the boxes, thumbing through cards.

When you walk up to a table, however, you’ll immediately notice a difference in organization.  Rather than being divided by year or by sport, postcards are most commonly divided into two major categories: Location and Topic.  Within those categories they’re subdivided into countless sub-categories.

“Location” is pretty much what you’d expect from postcards… They’re generally those postcards which represent a particular landmark or city, and dealers usually have them organized by state and city/town (or by country if they offer up international postcards).

“Topic” boxes are organized based on what appears on the postcard… It could by types of artwork, U.S. presidents, churches, different types of animals, railroad stations, advertising, airplanes, restaurants, celebrities, holidays and so on.

The thing is that there’s no standardized method of organizing so different dealers will organize their inventory in different ways. Let’s say I decided to collect places I visited on school field trips as a boy on Long Island, and today I’m specifically looking for postcards of Sagamore Hill, Teddy Roosevelt’s former residence which later became a national historic site. I might look for postcards like this under Locations > New York > Long Island, but you could also find these postcards under Topic > Presidents > Theodore Roosevelt. I think the postcards would be more likely to be filed under “Presidents” but there’s a decent chance that the cards could show up under either or both. It’s best to talk to the dealer when you are looking for something specific… or even to generally discuss what you’re looking for.  I’ve found that dealers are often very accommodating if you tell them you’re new to this hobby.

Another good reason to talk to the dealer is because many of them also have collectibles which aren’t postcards.  While chatting with one dealer I mentioned that I collected baseball cards and she brought me their “sports binder” which was full of all kinds of interesting ephemera – ticket stubs, wire photos, pogs, stickers, etc.

That same dealer also had an impressive inventory of View-Master reels, which was awfully tempting (but the last thing I needed to do is start ANOTHER collection).

If you’re going to a show for the first time it’s good to get an idea of what you might want to look for when you get there.  There’s often plenty of sports-related postcards to look through, but it’s just fun to look through the various categories.

One thing I did before this show was to look through my non-sports cards as a way of categorizing where my interests might lie. I’ve got plenty of cards with cars and trains on them, so this time I went looking for similar postcards.

You can also do what I always do, and that’s to just visually scan the dividers in the boxes to see what might look interesting.

Another hint, one I overheard from another collector, is to expect that cards might be inadvertently misfiled and to look in nearby categories to see if anything interesting got misplaced.  Dealers do try to keep their inventory organized, but if you’ve been to any sort of collectibles show then you know how this goes.  I was looking for postcards in the “Sports – Winter” category and all of a sudden I was looking at cards which had international currency depicted on them.  After a moment of confusion I reealized that someone had taken all of the “Stamps and Coins” postcards – the category alphabetically after “Sports – Winter” – and put the postcards back in front of that category’s divider instead of behind it.  I told the dealer about it, and she was very appreciative that I had. Someone else coming after me could have come looking for Stamps and Coins postcards and found a divider with nothing behind it.

Finally, keep in mind that what you’re looking for could fall under multiple categories. There are often different sections for “Sports” (depicting the games and the athletes) and “Stadiums/Ballparks”.

OK, with all of that said, let’s get into what I got this year.

I bought a number of baseball postcards… Most of them are from the same set and will be featured in another post coming soon, but I got this postcard for my Cal Ripken Jr. binder. When I got home I looked it up on TCDB and found it’s a 1993 Barry Colla postcard.

The other sports-related postcard I’ll share in this post is a card for my cricket collection, but also one which made me snicker like a 9-year-old.

After looking through sports I started looking through the “Autos” section while not really having anything specific in mind.  I found out that there are postcards to highlight specific models that were current at the time, it seems like it was there for dealers to have on display, maybe along with the printed brochures.

I bought two which featured cars that had been in my family in the 1970s.

My dad used to commute to work in a Ford Pinto, though I can’t remember if it was a 1971 like the car in this postcard, but it pretty much looked the same (except Dad’s was chocolate brown). That Pinto was also the car that my older siblings used when they learned how to drive a stick.  I never learned myself;  I’m the youngest and I think my father had had enough of teaching the manual transmission by the time my turn came (and I didn’t care enough to object).

My mom drove a 1976 Ford Granada which became *my* first car when I graduated college.

The postcard shows a 1977 model, but if there’s a significant difference between this 1977 and my 1976 I can’t tell. My car was very similar to this postcard representation, a red sedan. The two main differences were that 1) my car had a red vinyl roof on it and 2) my car had a smashed driver’s side turn signal in the front (not my fault, I promise you).

Lately I’ve been doing a little chasing after 1955 Topps Rails and Sails cards, and a blog post by Nick Vossbrink inspired me to look for postcards of trains.  This pair of locomotives from the New York Central line wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but it was good enough for a start. For the record, this was filed under “Railroads”.

I was hoping to find some baseball Exhibit cards and struck out, but I also looked for celebrity Exhibit cards (“Movie Stars” at one table, “Famous People” at another). I was surprised to find one of Arlene Francis who may have been included for her stage and screen acting, but I got it because she’s easily my favorite panelist from watching many re-runs of “What’s My Line?”… The original Sunday night version hosted by John Charles Daily, not the pale imitation daytime version which followed.

If you watch any videos of “What’s My Line?” where the Mystery Guest is a baseball player, Arlene was often right on them… She was a New York Giants fan and knew the players well.  Go find the episode from 1954 where Willie Mays was the Mystery Guest, she makes quick work out of identifying him.

A side note… as part of a last pass through the show I found an Exhibit of Mary Tyler Moore from around the time of The Dick Van Dyke show. It wasn’t a great picture and I decided to pass for several reasons and now I kind of regret that.  I’m finding that, for me, postcard shows result in more “I should have gotten that” regrets than “Why did I get this?” regrets…  Something I’ll keep in mind next November.

If you’ve read my prior posts about postcard shows (and if you haven’t you can read them all here) you’ll know that after baseball my biggest postcard chase involves the 1964 New York World’s Fair, which I attended as a baby – I have photographic proof! –  but obviously don’t remember first-hand. My memories are of the various structures which survived the years and became part of pop culture (most notably these days in the first Men in Black movie).

If you’ve seen Men In Black you might recognize the observation towers from the New York State Pavilion. These used to intrigue me when we drove past the site while going to visit relatives in Astoria, Queens.

Just like I enjoy baseball scorecards which have been used, I also enjoy postcards which were used for their intended purpose. This one was mailed to Roanoke, Virginia and while the message on it isn’t all that exciting (“This is really a big place”) the 4 cent Lincoln stamp and the postmark are cool.

The Unisphere, a stainless-steel sculpture representing the globe, was the centerpiece of the World’s Fair and also still stands on the former fair site.

This postcard features a sculpture called “The Rocket Thrower”.  I don’t remember this one specifically, but it apparently still stands as well.  This postcard has a scalloped edge, although my scanner software tried to crop it out.

This postcard (also scallop edged) shows the fair’s Monorail which – I just found out – was built by American Machine and Foundry (AMF) who are now more famous as the company that makes bowling alley equipment.  The Monorail was taken down after the fair so I don’t remember it, but this is just too cool and “1960s Futuristic” to leave behind.

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On the way out of the show I grabbed a bunch of flyers for upcoming shows, not because I had plans to attend but because I wanted to share it with anybody who might be curious to check out one of these shows.

• Postcard & Paper Show – Phoenix, AZ – January 12, 2024
• Stamp & Postcard Show – Nashville, TN – March 9-10, 2024
• Postcard Show – Lancaster, PA – March 22-23, 2024
• Postcard & Vintage Paper Show – Greenwood, IN – April 6, 2024
• Antique Advertising, Books, Comic Books, Postcards, Photography & Paper Show – Allentown, PA – April 27-28, 2024 (For what it’s worth, one dealer I was chatting with spoke highly of this show – “Worth the trip” she said)
• Stamp, Postcard & Coin Show – Huntsville, AL – June 1-2, 2024

I suspect there are more shows than these, but I don’t know of a good online show directory to point you towards.

If you’ve gotten this far in my post then I’m thinking you’ll find it worthwhile to attend one of these shows… Maybe you wouldn’t want to travel as far as I did, but if it’s local to you then definitely go check one out.