It started in Austria-Hungary in 1869 and rapidly became an international phenomenon.
These days the ability to send and receive short, cheap, ephemeral messages often including an image is something we take for granted but the invention of the postcard gave the public an early taste of what was to come.
And they adopted it in their droves. In the UK postcards were launched in 1870 and by the following year 75 million were sent. One of the attractions was that it cost half as much to send a postcard compared with sending a letter; the time required to write one was much smaller, too.
With the arrival of pictorial postcards from commercial publishers, which were permitted from 1894 onwards, volumes increased to over 800 million a year by the end of King Edward VII’s reign in 1910.
Global phenomenon
The excitement was not confined to the UK. According to the book Postcards: The Rise and Fall of the World’s First Social Network by Lydia Pyne, “some estimates suggest that in the first two decades of the 20th century 200 billion postcards were in global circulation”.
Pyne adds that the rise of the postcard even saved the US Postal Service from bankruptcy. In 1909 the US post office made a loss of $17 million. Two years later it made a profit of just over $200,000. The number of postcards sent by Americans during that time roughly doubled. Postcards weighed so little that they were a very profitable line of business that took off at just the right time.
Accompanying the surge in popularity and variety was the emergence of what became known later as deltiology – the study and collecting of postcards. Specialists magazines, catalogues and organisations began to appear. In 1896, for example, the first issue of Der Postkartensammler, Organ des Centralverbandes für Ansichtkarten- Sammler (The Postcard Collector, organ of the Central Association for Postcard Collectors) was published in Leipzig.
As time marched on, the postcard’s advantage waned. In 1968 the British first and second class stamps system removed postcards’ cheaper rate and more recent advances in technology have enabled us to send quick messages with images via mobile phones and computers and share them on social networks.
Postcard collecting is a less popular hobby than it used to be – just like stamp collecting – but plenty of postcards are still offered at auction and specialist fairs take place regularly around the country (see listing).
A few examples can achieve an impressive price at auction, though the motivation may be the subject or a signature as opposed to the item simply being a postcard.
At Lay’s in Lanner, Cornwall, a notable photographic postcard was offered on March 7, 2024. Sold as a separate lot but part of a group called The Antarctic Letters, this postcard was written by Reginald Koettlitz (1860-1916), the physician and botanist on Scott and Shackleton’s first trailblazing 1901 expedition
The card featured ‘Mount Erebus, from summit of Harbour Hill, October 1902’ and Koettlitz noted its importance: “Fairly unique, being the first card of the kind ever sent from so far south and so remote a part of the world.” Bidders at the auction saw it the same way, taking it to £9500 hammer (the estimate was £800-1200).
Taylor-made future?
Here we show examples of old postcards, the purpose they served at the time and what they make at auction these days. We also state what they have been replaced by in the modern era.
As for new postcards, the usage has moved on. These days many postcards are produced and bought without the expectation that they will ever be sent. Some are souvenirs, others are small-scale pieces of art.
According to the Postal Museum in London: “In 2019 we sold 3241 postcards to visitors young and old. This is nothing compared to the National Portrait Gallery which in the same year sold 67,000 images of their permanent collection. The family of Tate galleries across the UK went even further, selling an astonishing 1.2 million postcards.”
Even pop icon Taylor Swift has got involved. A £200 ticket to one of her concerts comes with various items including a “collectable” postcard set. Will today’s Swifties will become tomorrow’s deltiologists? Answers on a postcard please…
Campaigning
Women’s suffrage movement postcard from 1909, sold for $450 (£378) at Early American History Auctions.
Postcards were used to support the women’s suffrage movement on both sides of the Atlantic. This example shown left, from 1909, printed by the Dunston- Weiler Lithograph Company of New York, reads I love my husband but – OH YOU VOTE. Unused and in fine condition, it sold for $450 (£378) against an estimate of $200- 300 at Early American History Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) in Winchester, Virginia, on July 16, 2022.
The UK examples above, sold as a foursome for £170 at Loddon Auctions (19% buyer’s premium) on March 21, 2024, include one of ‘Miss C Pankhurst’. Christabel Pankhurst (1880-1958) was the daughter of movement leader Emmeline Pankhurst and was later appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire “for public and social services” in the 1936 New Year Honours.
Today: you might get a campaigning leaflet through your door or, more likely, an unsolicited email; you might also spot a message emblazoned on the side of a bus.
Promoting a newspaper
The Daily Graphic-sponsored a hot air balloon flight in 1907 carried 15,000 promotional postcards addressed to destinations all over the world, with many sent on by a Swedish schoolmaster after it crashed, such as this one sold for £95 at Loddon Auctions.
The Daily Graphic was a mass circulation newspaper in the Edwardian era. As an advertising venture it sponsored a hot air balloon flight in 1907.
A coal-gas filled balloon, called Mammoth, took off from Crystal Palace, London, at 5pm on October 12, 1907, in an attempt to set a long-distance ballooning record. It had a crew of three; also on board were 15,000 promotional postcards addressed to destinations all over the world. The balloon drifted for 20 hours crossing the North Sea and Denmark, eventually crash landing near the village of Brackau, in southern Sweden.
The crew escaped unhurt but the balloon careered on for a further 30 miles, scattering its load of postcards over a considerable area. Some cards were found and forwarded to the addressees from Tosse, where the balloon eventually came to rest, but the majority were recovered over a period of several weeks by a schoolmaster, Mr Mickow, who had played host to the aviators when they arrived at his door after the balloon’s crash landing.
Mickow even signed some of them before sending them on, without affixing stamps – The Daily Graphic’s stipulation was that the addressee, who had provided their details in order to receive the postcard, should be responsible for paying the postage.
The postcards occasionally appear at auction, mostly with UK addresses but addresses from countries including Australia and South Africa have also been seen.
A recent example postmarked for October 14, 1907, sold for £80 at Loddon Auctions on January 17, 2024. The example pictured, featuring the message ‘love from AV Mickow, Mellerud, Sweden’, took £95 at the same auction house on November 29, 2022. It was posted on December 3, 1907.
Today: newspapers use social media to promote digital subscriptions.
Sharing holiday memories
Postcard sent from Channel Island of Sark to Hampstead in north London in 1909 sold for $78 (£61) at Mynt Auctions.
Sending postcards to family and friends used to be part of going on holiday.
This example shown above sent from the Channel Island of Sark to Hampstead in north London in 1909 sold for $78 (£61) at Mynt Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) in New York on February 1, 2024. The sender noted that it was a “very rough crossing”.
Donald McGill British seaside postcards that were part of an album that sold for £45 at Warren & Wignall.
Other holiday postcards used different illustrations. Donald McGill (1875-1962) was one of the artists who provided designs for British seaside postcards – some of them of the saucy variety – including the ones pictured here that were part of an album that sold for £45 at Warren & Wignall (21% buyer’s premium) on January 31, 2024, shown above.
Designs considered too risqué were subject to local censorship with different towns making their own decisions on what was acceptable in their locality. In 1954 a trial was held in Lincoln with McGill accused of breaking the Obscene Publciations Act 1857. He was found guilty and fined, a decision that dealt a heavy blow to the saucy postcard industry.
Today: the holiday postcard has been largely replaced by the WhatsApp selfie and as for the modern version of the saucy seaside postcard, we shall leave that one to your own imagination. You can, however, visit the Donald McGill Postcard Museum in Ryde on the Isle of Wight which opened in 2010. Ryde had been the scene of police censorship raids on five shops in 1953 when 5000 postcards, most of them by McGill, had been seized.
Promoting a celebrity
US postcard from c.1935 featuring Betty Broadbent, $200 (£164) at Bray & Co.
This US postcard from c.1935 features Betty Broadbent (1909-1983) who was one of the most renowned tattooed attractions of the 20th century. Broadbent, whose real name was Sue Lillian Brown, exhibited her art with the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
Estimated at $75-150 at Bray & Co (23% buyer’s premium) in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the postcard sold for $200 (£164) on September 24, 2023.
Today: modern celebrities run their own Instagram pages (or employ an agency to do it for them).
National propaganda
One of a group of 18 political propaganda postcards that sold at Dominic Winter for £190.
Subscribe to the war bond for U-boats against England urged - in German - one of the postcards in a group of 18 political propaganda postcards that sold at Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) in South Cerney on October 6, 2021, for £190.
Some of the others featured the German point of view on the Polish corridor question (giving Poland access to the Baltic Sea after the end of the First World War), one having been sent to the US, while others promoted the western Allies’ opinions on German territorial ambitions.
Today: some countries use online fake news promoted by rogue social media accounts.
Promoting a film
Postcard to promote film about the Mount Everest Expedition of 1924, sold for £14 at John Taylors.
The Mount Everest Expedition of 1924 was set to build on lessons learned from a similar expedition two years earlier but was beset by financial problems.
Captain John Noel, who had accompanied the 1922 expedition as official photographer, proposed buying all the photographic rights to the 1924 outing, both for film and stills, as well as lecture rights, in return for £8000, what was then a vast amount.
To fund the purchase, Noel set up a company, Explorers Films, and invited friends to contribute with the expectation that they would recoup their outlay when the film and lecture tours were undertaken.
The challenge was how to sustain interest in the expedition – in an era before television broadcasting – so that the public would still be keen to attend the tour some months later. Noel’s solution was a postcard. It would be sent from the mountain and youngsters would nag their parents to take them to the film or lecture with the postcard serving as a memorable souvenir.
Noel took out a newspaper advert to gather addresses of people who wanted to receive a postcard; they come back by the sack load. He had to engage an agency to put all the addresses onto the postcards which were then packed for transportation.
At base camp an Indian stamp was added and the postcards sent. They included the promotional line: ‘The Film of this great Exploit will be shown throughout the country; commencing at the Scala Theatre, London, November 1924.’
Examples of these postcards emerge at auction occasionally at auction, typically selling for well under £100. The most recent one surfaced at John Taylors (18% buyer’s premium) on April 16, 2024, and was snapped up for £14.
Noel’s promotional plan worked. While later lecturing in the UK and Europe, he was often approached by eager youngsters brandishing their souvenir.
However, Noel’s official film of the expedition The Epic of Everest: The Immortal Film Record of This Historic Expedition, caused a diplomatic controversy later known as the ‘Affair of the Dancing Lamas’. A group of monks was taken clandestinely from Tibet to perform a song and dance act before each showing of the film. The 13th Dalai Lama and the government of Tibet felt that the film and the pseudo-religious performances required of the monks ridiculed Tibetan culture. As a diplomatic protest they banned future Everest expeditions until 1933.
The 1924 expedition itself had ended in tragedy. On June 8, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine had set off for the summit, never to return. There has been subsequent speculation that they reached summit though it has never been proved. Mallory’s body was found in 1999 at a height of 8156 metres.
Today: movie trailers are all part of the cinema experience.
