It started with a letter from a collector in Picture Postcard Monthly asking how he could remove the stamp from a card without damaging it. Since I was due to send off my annual subscription and having seen enough cards ruined by people trying to steam or soak stamps off, I dashed off a note at the same time offering my tried and tested remedy of Stamplift. This has other uses like removing paper that has stuck to the front of a card or softening bent corners enough to turn them back without breaking off. I thought no more about it until the day my letter was publisher in the next edition, when I had a sudden increase of traffic to my website (was I being Googled?) Three offers of original collections followed and a further batch came by post with a note asking whether I could use them since they were a bit tatty, but with my knowledge of restoration…

Then came a phone call asking if I would endorse another product and a further offer of an old collection. What next - a slot on a daytime talk show to demonstrate techniques? Perhaps, for a quiet life, I should follow the Yorkshire motto of ‘Hear all, see all and say nowt’, but I’m very pleased that my gesture has brought in so many new cards to add to my website when one of the main complaints in the trade is a lack of fresh stock. I’m a bit behind schedule on that project, but with a new faster computer/scanner arriving next week, we hope to crack on apace over the Summer. Because of this I may not be able to answer e-mails for a few days next week.

Card of the Month

A bit of research can often bring up some interesting facts about a card. At first glance I’d assumed this summery boat trip to be Barry in South Wales, but it had an Ilfracombe publisher and postmark. I tracked it down in Andrew Swift’s booklet ‘Ilfracombe on Old Picture Postcards’ published by Reflections of a Bygone Age as Paddle Steamer Barry - later renamed Barryfield and used as a troop carrier in the Dardanelles evacuation of WWI; returned as the Waverley, until WWII where she assisted at Dunkirk as HMS Snaefell and was sunk in a bombing raid off Sunderland.