Why What One Person Considers A Rare Postcard May Not Be A Rare Postcard At All
Certain topographical postcards are of necessity much less common than others, examples being one-off events such as disasters, military parades, royal visits.
It stands to reason, a church that changed little over hundreds of years could be depicted on thousands of different days and rarely changed from one resulting postcard to the next. But if that church has a royal visit, lasting ten minutes, or someone very famous stands waiting for the bus for just five minutes outside the church and never visits this area again, these are the makings of rare cards for anyone fortunate enough to photograph or otherwise depict the scene (as a drawing or painting from memory, for example).
But this doesn’t make all cards rare because they depict royal visits to churches or famous people waiting at bus stands. That royal visit to a city church, for example, is likely to have been well-documented and promoted in advance, to thousands of people, many of whom turn up with along photographers or their own cameras.
Even if not well promoted a major city location probably has thousands of people pass by each day who might alert photographers or take photographs themselves. Conversely, a royal visit to a tiny church that has not been well-publicised, or a visit that was kept secret for security reasons, will find far few uninvited people and possibly no photographers arriving at the event.
Consequently, the city church may be depicted on millions of postcards and be very common and even worthless compared to the photograph of the tiny village church that some passing photographer chanced upon by accident.
So rarity comes not always from the event itself but from the number of times the event can be depicted on postcards and how many copies of those postcards are likely to have been printed and are still available for collectors today.
Avril Harper is an eBay PowerSeller and author of BANK BIG PROFITS SELLING VINTAGE TOPOGRAPHICAL VIEW POSTCARDS ON EBAY which you can read about at: www.sellpostcardsonebay.com and MAKE MONEY TEARING UP OLD BOOKS AND MAGAZINES AND SELLING THEM ON EBAY which you can read about at: www.magstoriches.com. She has produced a free guide - 103 POWERSELLER TIPS - which you can download with other freely distributable reports and eBooks at www.avrilharper.com
