Posts

Along the Malibu: The Color Serigraphs and Art of Paul Dubosclard

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  Just received a copy of this book.  If you're a collector of California postcards, or you've looked through southern California cards at a show you've most likely seen some of these serigraph cards . I had always thought the artist was Margaret Sheehan, since most of the cards are identified as "Published by M. A. Sheehan, Topanga California" on the back. But these distinctive cards are actually attributed to Paul Dubosclard. Although many are unsigned, a handful have a P. Dubosclard name or stamp on the front:     Many cards also have hand-written titles in pencil, presumably by Dubosclard. The bulk of the book is a catalog of all known works by Dubosclard, highlighting details about many individual cards and the series (US Presidents, State Flags, and Zodiac).  So this serves as a "checklist" for collectors, but also shows a beautifully artistic compilation of different variations of the same serigraphs, as well as showing other similar postcard view

Then and Now Postcard Views via Google Street view

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 It's a lot of fun to see what the places on old postcards look like now. We added gallery page of old & new views to highlight these views via Google Street View. Have a current street view for a card to share?  Click the "Ask a Question" link on any detail page to submit a street view link.

Searching Partial City & Town Names on Postcards

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We just published this tool for doing partial match searches for US City & State Names: https://www.cardcow.com/city-lookup/ This is especially useful for postcard collectors and postal historians for identifying locations when you might have a few letters from a postmark or maybe the writing is unclear. This comes up often in the Photo Postcards RPPC Unidentified Images  Facebook group.  This week a member posted this unidentified real photo card: Not a lot to go on, except the sender writes that one of the buildings is the "First National Bank".  That doesn't narrow it down much. Luckily, they also posted the back of the card: This gives us a few more clues.  Maybe Wisconsin?  Or related to Mammie Miller? At first glance, the postmark doesn't look decipherable, with only 3 or 4 letters and no state: Is it WAPO?  NAFO?  NARO?  Hard to say. But, the A is most likely in the middle of the word, and there are most likely only 4 or 5 letters on either side of the A. 

"Same Sky" Postcards

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Interesting little documentary on "Same Sky" chrome postcards from Dexter Press.  We probably have a ton of these in here somewhere.   You can see some earlier "photoshop" type manipulation of the original photos in the postcard production process - we don't have much from chrome-era though.

How to Fix Your eBay Saved Searches for Vintage Postcards

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Ebay made some major changes to the Postcards category this month.  Here I show some of the changes and how to update your saved searches to filter the correct state, country or category.

J. Gilbert Smith Orchard, Los Altos, CA

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 Nice display at the Los Altos History Museum featuring fruit crate labels, vintage photos and a Linen-era postcard of the orchards in Santa Clara county.

"Rare" 1c George Washington & Benjamin Franklin Stamps on Postcards

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We get a lot of folks that tell us they have a collection of postcards with "Rare Stamps".  Usually they're referring to stamps like these:        These are usually common  Washington–Franklin Issues , issued from 1908–1922,  Benjamin Franklin 1902 series issued from 1902-1917 and US Regular Issues issued from 1922-1931. Most of these stamps were printed in quantities that reach into the billions, so they are definitely not rare by any account.  Just because something is 100+ years old, doesn't make it valuable.  Scarcity and collector demand make things valuable.   "But I just Googled these stamps and they're selling for $50,000!" you say? Perhaps you see something like this: First, it's doubtful that any of those stamps have actually sold for that much.  You need to look at SOLD prices [ebay.com] , and even then many of those sales for common stamps may not actually be real.  There may be a few of these there that sell for more than $1, but for