Real "Cards" & Your Thoughts!!!!

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Posted By: E, Daniel

Well Dan and JK, if I'm the one who's made assumptions, exactly what course have you both taken? What facts apart from some albums you've seen suggest widespread collecting of Postcards with specific interest, eg. not just ephemera and lovely pictures, but collections taylored to sporting interests through the years 1900 - 1945. That some baseball related PC's have survived at all is not exactly a great story to tell.....

In fact, while I may seem to be just posing worthless theory in your minds, what proof of any kind has survived of widespread baseball related PC collecting? And that the collectors of the day indeed saw them no differently to the other formats baseball cards were released in? Please enlighten me. You can't take pot shots at my assumptions without supplying reasonable explanations of your own.

But again, I'm the only one who's making the assumptions here .
And I never said people didn't collect things, in fact I think I was clear that people in large numbers collected various things. But why not a known set of stories to shed light on the early times of PC collecting which in Dan's opinion was HUGELY popular, and the evolution of baseball specific PC's being aquired. Clearly one of the most popular pastimes of the era would be reasonably or somewhat documented, or stories available via collectors down through the ages, much as the more classic baseball card collectors we know through our own hobby lore. How many baseball PC's did Carter or Nagy keep? Tell me that the old time collectors thought of Postcards as baseball cards, kept them in their own collections, traded them, etc., and the argument is much more interesting and compelling. As I understand things, that is not the case here.

But, I do absolutely want to learn what you know to be true, so instead of just saying I'm making assumptions that most probably are flawed, how about supplying some of your own facts that present a better case rather than your own assumptions?

Some facts:
Population of the USA in 1900: 78 mill plus a little
Took until nearly 1920 for the pop to reach 100 mill.
At the turn of the century, three in five in the United States lived in a town having a population of less that 2,500 - how many of those in rural community living took up the rather expensive past time of collecting baseball related PC's, blithely ignoring their utilitarian usage?
Circa 1900 - 1910, the average workweek was twelve hours a day and six days a week. In the United States there was no income tax, and no social security, unemployment insurance or public housing for the aged or disabled. Families were obliged to take care of their aged and their handicapped, and grandmothers baby-sat the children of their sons and daughters.
Typhus was prevalent, and tuberculosis was rampant.
In the first decade of the century, fresh beef was around 13 cents a pound, equivalent to about $30 a pound relative to 1990 dollars. Soap was 5 cents a bar, equal to $11.50 in 1990 dollars.

Yes there was wealth and success being created, and sure there were people able to collect what they wished. But I always wish people would look back on history as it was - rather than apply todays conditions and market largesse (not to mention almost disgusting levels of consumption for consumptions sake) to times of yesteryear.

These times we live in are not your great-grandfather's times, and it always helps to remember that.




Respectfully
Daniel



Not everyone who kept postcards was collecting, some were personal, some had business meaning, some were just aesthetically pleasing, etc.





Dated 1920