Penny Post Card from Brooklyn

Penny Post Card: Pony Cart Ride, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY

Barbara Stone of THE LIST OF BUDDHA LISTS, The Eightfold Path passed me the link to a great website (Thanks, Barbara!), Penny Postcards, A USGenWebArchives Website.  It houses a collection of pictures of penny postcards issed before 1940 and organized by state and then county. 

I thought collecting post cards was an eccentricity. Turns out in the U.S. collecting post cards is the fourth largest hobby, after collecting baseballs, stamps, and money. World wide, it’s third after stamps and money. Obviously, it’s not that much of an eccentricity after all.  The technical name for this delightful obsession is deltiology.

This is pure entertainment for me, so I don’t have any technical knowledge.  My guess is that serious post-card collectors – as with serious stamp collectors – generally look for items in “mint” condition. No tears, marks, postmarks and so on. Although, often it would be hard to tell the date of a post card without a postmark.  

Much of what I look for in cards is whether or not they are from or to Brooklyn, especially to addresses I might know.  I love the step-back in time, especially slower time, but I also have some cards of historic significance. I have cards sent home by soldiers during World War I and World War II.  Then there are the bridge cards like a 1909 card of the Bridge Crossing at Bronx, New York.  There’s a 1910 card with a picture of the Chamber of Commerce building in Buffalo, New York sent to Erie County asking the recipient to bring eight pounds of potatoes with him when he comes to visit. There’s a post card with a sweet picture of a lady in a suit with a long skirt, a straw hat, and gloves feeding a baby donkey and dated February 7, 1910.  Leontine is the sender and writing from Illinois to a child, Ellis, in Manhattan. Leontine is telling Ellis all about Central Park and encouraging her to visit the park and the Bronx Zoo as well.

Some cards might inspire a story. If  you are a writer, take the writerly challenge and play “what if” with this one circa 1926, which had to have seemed rather odd even in its day: “Dear Sir: – I wish never to see you again – after last night’s experience.  I have taken a solemn resolve to be an old maid, and to bring my children up the same way.  I hate all men.  I tried so hard to please you, even rolled my stockings ‘n everything, and let you kiss me even taking a chance on getting germs.  But that’s all over now.  Your box of candy is unopened, and I’ll never eat it. Oo-Lou.”  Oh my!  :-)

So, you see the attraction.  These little peaks and insights into people and places long gone are rather fun and interesting. What is especially pleasurable, though, are pictures of old Brooklyn and old New York, of much-loved places when life wasn’t so busy and bustling with so many people and buildings.  

~ by brooklynmemoriesmostgreen on February 17, 2009.