Certain Vintage Real Photo Postcards Bring High Value to Collectors

One of the most pricey and highly collected types of vintage postcards are those called Real Photo Postcards. Some real photo postcards on eBay net sales in the hundred-dollar range.

If your family has a photograph collection that dates back to the early 20th century, you may have stumbled across them. You may have found a photo of your great uncle Joe and noticed that the back is printed an official looking postcard stamp and address area-- ready for mailing. As antiquarian book and paper dealers, we are always pleased to find an old real photo postcard in excellent condition.

These real photo postcards were a popular trend from the very early 20th century to as late as the 1950s, as the Playle Postcard Dealer's website http://www.playle.com/realphoto/ indicates on their dating chart for these cards. This was the same era during which the portable family camera flourished in popularity. Negatives of family photos would be sent out to photography houses which would print them up as postcards. Thus, they could be mailed to distant family and friends.

If you're looking to buy, sell or collect these postcards, it is of utmost importance, as all postcard dealers know, that one be able to identify the real real photo postcards from other published postcards and from re-issued reproductions. As the following postcard dealer, The 2Buds describe on their website: http://www.the2buds.com/rp.htm: The easiest way to tell if a postcard is a real photo or not is to look at it with a magnifying glass. Postcards that are NOT real photos are made up of many small dots. If you look at a real photo postcard, the image is solid (no dots). What distinguishes real real photo postcards from other kinds of published postcards, is that they were printed on real photography paper. Photographs which are printed on photography paper do not have a dot pattern when viewed under a magnifying glass. Thus, in true real photo postcards, one will not see a dot pattern-- such as one finds in printed matter made by commercial means of reproduction. But the matter gets a bit complicated because some postcard companies took real photo postcards and made further reproductions of them where dot patterns do appear. These reproductions do not have nearly the value that many real photo postcards may have. As J.L Mashburn notes in The Postcard Price Guide (Colonial House, 2001, 4th Edition), collectors must be careful not to get stuck with reproductions.

The real photo postcard trend was not limited to family photos. In the early twentieth century free-lance postcard photographers roamed the world taking photos of all kinds of places and things and were paid by postcard publishers for their negatives. Some of these photographers had their own small postcard publishing businesses. These commercially-sold real photo postcards often have white hand-written captions identifying their subjects. The white writing is part of the photograph (the result of the photographer's using a black marking pencil on the negative, which gets reversed and becomes white in the positive print).

Though family portraits are probably the most common type of real photo postcard that one can still find in old personal photo collections, the most valuable real photo postcards contain images of unusual and uncommon glimpses into early twentieth century life: People engaged in occupational activities such as working on roads, in blacksmith shops, on ships, or in any walk of life. Other sought after subjects include people in uniform-- particularly military; unusual images of animals; images of early farm equipment such as tractors; images of transportation including horses and buggies, early cars, boats, trains and airplanes; images of post-disaster damage including famous tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes; images of sports including teams, players and game being played.

In many, though not all cases, older real photo postcards are more pricey. If the card has been postmarked, stamped and written on, it is easy to determine its age. If it has not been posted, commercial real photo postcards can often be dated by identifying the symbols-- the publisher's trademark, found in the stamp box area on the back of the card. There are guides to identifying these marks and thus the publishing dates. The best guide I have found is at Playle's Online Auctions: http://www.playle.com/realphoto/.

But, as with all collectible postcards, condition is of also supreme importance when determining price. The cards should be flat, without creases, significant stains or marks, and with square corners.

Perhaps the best resource for understanding the full scope, availability and current up-to-the-minute pricing for real photo postcards is to search and browse eBay. As with any collectible item, successful buying and selling is based on both knowledge and luck, and the competition for finding these postcards grows larger every day.

Sources:

The Postcard Price Guide (Colonial House, 2001, 4th Edition)

Playle's Online Auctions: http://www.playle.com/realphoto/.