Need Advice: Collecting Vintage Postcards

[Chris-Counts]

I've been slowly collecting old stadium postcards over the years, which seem like one the best bargains out there — you can pick up several nice postcards for the price of one pre-war card. I've paid as much as $30 or $40, but most have been $5 to $10. Most of the nice ones seem to come from the tobacco card era, when many were produced in Germany, and the 1940s, when the colorful linen postcard era peaked.

As for early postcards of players and teams, they can get a bit pricey, depending on what they are. The team postcards from the tobacco card era show a remarkable diversity of teams. It seems like every small town in America had a team — and a postcard of it — in the years that immediately preceded WWI ...