Guest blogger: Old Postcards on collecting vintage images

The craze for postcard sending and collecting began in the very early 1900s and literally millions were produced between 1902 and 1918 - termed 'The Golden Age' in postcard circles. People sent them by the hundreds and more often than not used them as a form of communication rather like we use the telephone or email these days.

Because they were more or less guaranteed to arrive at their destination the next day (sometimes with more than one delivery!) they were often used just to say 'Meet me off the train at 12.30 tomorrow' or suchlike - difficult to imagine that, nowadays! They were, of course also sent as souvenirs from holidays just like today. They were avidly collected and stored in albums, carefully looked after and preserved. Some of them have really interesting and amusing messages on them, going back over a hundred years.

They are of special historical interest if they show a scene long since disappeared. Here's one of the old Convalescent Home in New Brighton - it was located in Rowson Street, and now demolished.

Old postcards afford wonderful opportunities to search out vintage views of places you knew, still know, or even lived in. Sometimes it is possible to get vintage cards of your very house in times gone by, if you are lucky.

Did anyone reading this live in one of these houses? It is entitled Aigburth Road and Eastfield Drive, Liverpool - note the tramlines and the wires overhead!

Postcards of suburbs are more keenly sought after than those of city centre locations - particularly if the scene or building has vastly changed. Here's one of Potters Barn, Crosby Road, Seaforh, posted in 1909. The barn was built in 1841 but is now the site of a public park.

So.... What should one look for when collecting postcards? Well - the first and main thing is to collect the area or subject in which you are most interested. One important point which is often not widely known by people outside the hobby is that just because a card is old, it doesn't mean to say it is worth a lot of money.

In the next part of the blog tomorrow, I will explain more about the different types of postcards and how their production process plays a big part in determining their value. Plus more local cards from Liverpool, Wirral and Cheshire will be featured for you to see. You'll be amazed at some of the views and how they have changed over the years.

All the postcards featured here are currently for sale in our store.nOur Wirral cards are all to be found in the Cheshire section of the store; Liverpool postcards are filed under Lancashire. When allocating cards to their various sections in the store, the older county names are used rather than the more modern (and not as well liked!) metropolitan districts or boundary changes which came into effect in the 1970s.