Over the past year and a bit, I have not received any postcards other than local ones from my amazing daughter and 1 from my father. My favourite way to collect postcards to receive them by mail. During the pandemic, I found a few ways to get postcards mailed to me – usually by paying, but also with my wife requesting people send me some for a recent “milestone” birthday. Lately, I have not been able to find any sources of ways to get postcards in the mail.
I have also collected via my own travels both locally and internationally. But at my last trip, a cruise down the Mexican Pacific coast, I found zero places in our various Mexican destinations and L.A. that sold even one postcard. (I won’t call the medium completely dead yet, but it’s close.)
I have never liked buying other people’s postcards. Even though the messages can be enjoyable mini-mysteries, I always felt like this was cheating. So, over the past year I kinda gave up on my postcard collecting (going forward at least, I still love the Collection.)
But lately, I’ve been reading some books on postcards both as a form of collecting and as a communication medium. This encouraged me to join a local postcard club last month. I then attended my first postcard club meeting (which I greatly enjoyed) a few weeks ago and then last week I went to my first ever postcard show (sadly, held only once a year).
I loved the show and the prices were surprisingly reasonable (not always the case). Moreover, it restored my love of postcard collecting. I bought quite a large number – most of which are being sterilized in the freezer at the moment.
In reading about postcards lately, I’ve found a whole bunch of genres/categories I don’t have a sample of. So I have a new quest for my collecting.
One of these genres is “silks”.
Silk postcards were originally hand embroidered with silk thread and then had a backing glued on. They were popular for World War 1 soldiers to give their loved ones back home. I have quite a few postcards made or containing various non-paper items but no silks before.
Then I saw this one at the show for a reasonable price:

Postcard caption:
“Swiss National Costume. Luzern…”
The postcard was never mailed, which is common for silks as many people (rightfully) feared the postal systems would not be good for the delicate threads. Judging by the condition of the postcard, I suspect this isn’t very old so not an original antique era silk. But an awesome specimen nonetheless.
I still find buying other people’s postcards not the best way to collect. But one’s gotta get there fix somehow!