Spring has sprung! Our little pond is full of frogspawn; a couple of magpies are making an untidy nest in a precariously elevated position; and the bright yellow of daffodils coming out is as welcome as the sun, after the gloom of winter. Yes, I know we’re about a month behind ‘down south’, after a visit to relatives last week, but it has invigorated me enough to get on with a big job I’ve been putting off - sorting a large carton of modern postcards I bought as a ‘job lot’ before Christmas. So, from my analysis of early cards, last month, it’s up to date with some thoughts on modern cards.

• Why can’t they stick to a standard size? There are albums and boxes designed to take the continental size modern cards, but I’ve yet to find anything suitable for storing the oversized, elongated panoramas and novelty shapes. I could see these becoming the rarities, in years to come, because no one knows how to store them adequately. Any suggestions welcome.

• Blu Tak and similar ‘supposedly’ clean adhesive methods for sticking cards up for display, do leave a stain which can come through to the picture side.

• It seems that some views are used more often than others, and no doubt this has always been the case, explaining why certain views become scarce. Unsurprisingly, scenic or interesting views are certainly more popular for postal use.

• For anyone trying to catalogue modern cards, the big headache must be the way so many publishers have changed hands. There were numerous cases of the same picture with a different publisher logo on the back as companies were taken over.

  Card of the Month

  Embossed chromo-litho approx 1906 printed in Germany

  

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