Since I found and blogged about some old postcards of my grandparents, I’ve become a little obsessed with them. Last weekend I went to the yard sale at the Salvation Army offices in Fairfax, Virginia. My favorite booth was there and this time she had a stack of vintage postcards. I went through them sorting, yes, no, yes, no. I had to have the ones from Boston since we used to live near there. I posted pictures of them on my Facebook page. Some of them tugged at my heart because of where they were from, some because of the colors.You can click on the pictures to make them bigger.
I finally realized I’d better ask how much she wanted for them. A dollar apiece. When I told her I’d put some of them back she (I really need to find out her name, she’s a lovely woman) asked me how many I had. I counted — twenty-five! I’ve bought quite a few things from her over the past several months so she sold them to me for $10.00 or 40 cents apiece. (Relationship building is important even in the world of garage sales.)
These are from something called The Arcade in Cleveland. Two of them are stamped Cleveland Public Library on the back. It looks amazing and I’ll have to do some research to find out more about the building.
I also bought a few from Luray, Virginia. I love the color on the top one.
I don’t really have any connection with Rhode Island and have only been there a couple of times but bought these anyway. The bottom two of the first photo are actual photos. I loved the colors in the second set.
I don’t have any connection to Ocean Grove, New Jersey but fell for this postcard too.
These last two are my favorites. First is a globe from the Pan American Terminal in Miami.
And this last one is from the Worlds Fair in New York City in 1939. It has such a modern feel.
So now I’m on a quest to find vintage postcards from everywhere I’ve lived. I looked on eBay but that somehow feels like cheating. I’ll search for a bit but if I don’t have any luck I’ll go back to eBay and buy some there.
Readers: What do you collect?
If you’d look at my house, you’d think I must collect paper. So much paper. And dust bunnies. Alas, I don’t need to actively choose to collect these things. They seem to appear out of thin air. And fat air, too.
Ha! Paper is a bane!
Paper is a bane, but it is an irresistible bane! Send me a list of the places you’ve lived, Sherry. I can check with my mom and dad and see if they come across in their antiquing travels.
Thank you, Shari! I will send you a list!
Books, but I’m thinning them down to couple of thousand.It seems that I also collect stationery supplies, there are desk drawers full! Over the years we have collected so many things they got ahead of us. I have had to just STOP and thin out.
I know that post cards are huge! My sister was working Ebay for a while and sold a number that were around the family, (whereas I probably would have hoarded those, too.) but since you are in the DC area, I don’t know if you know The Enchanted Forest” that was in MD…do you? I stumbled across a postcard from there not long ago in all my ‘treasures’.
I just heard about The Enchanted Forest recently! Very interesting Tonette!
Those postcards are fabulous. I was recently in Colorado and found vintage postcards from Mount Vernon Estates (circa 1950s).
Wow! Isn’t that amazing that you found Mount Vernon in Colorado! That is fabulous!