When was the last time you sent a hand written letter or card to a loved one? Unprompted by a special occasion or holiday, simply just because you want to. Have you ever wondered where to find old postcards?

Maybe you’d like to find a message you sent to a friend, or a postcard they sent to you from a special vacation.

I have an old postcard tucked away in a memory box from when my best friend went to Disney. It captures a special moment of receiving a surprise card.

These little rectangle pieces of paper also contain a lot of valuable genealogical information.

Names, locations, dates, pictures, and relationships!

Read on to learn more!

| Related Article: What is Genealogy?

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Postcards in your Home!

The first and easiest place to look for postcards is in your own home.

Start with where you keep souveniers from vacations, places you’ve traveled to, and gifts from friends and family.

You may have forgotten a time when a postcard was mailed to you.

Also check anywhere that you store mementos like pictures received, save the date cards, little notes, or other miscellaneous scraps of paper.

Postcard Album:

Sharing this postcard photo album on Amazon for preserving your collection!

Lastly, check old family items such as story books, bibles, keepsake boxes, journals, and photo albums.

Often times postcards are tucked in between pages for sake keeping or used as a bookmark and then forgotten about.

Only to hopefully be discovered many years later.

This was the case in my family. My grandfather found a postcard in an old book, picturing a church in France where his ancestors came from.

Always be sure to ask family too if they know of any saved postcards. You never know if someone may have collected them.

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Small Businesses

A place or event that you may overlook is a small business in your town, or vendor fairs.

The next time you shop local or go to a craft/vendor fair, look around for booths selling vintage postcards.

There may be a person, or a few, that provide these types of items.

Boutique type stores also may have a collection of postcards. Featuring either cards of their own shop or town, or random old postcards that someone contributed for sale.

Just ask an employee and they might be able to help you or refer you to another store.

That leads us to the next place where you can find old postcards!

| Related Article: Start a Family Tree

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Antique Stores!

It is very common to find postcards, old and new, at antique stores.

This is also not limited to just certain geographical areas.

Antique shops across the United States feature collections from all over.

I once found New York images and letters from my area, during a vacation in Maine.

Postcards are usually mailed to other locations after all.

| Related Article: 1950 Census Records

Where are postcards in an antique store?

Depending on the type of shop you are visiting, the structure and layout of the items do vary.

But typically whether it is one store owner or multiple vendors in one building, there is an area of postcards.

I have visited many locations and usually there are several boxes of postcards, or in some cases decorative bowls.

If you are lucky, they are organized in some way. By either state, town, or type of imagery (landscape, building, people, animals, etc.)

Ebay

Ebay is surprisingly a very useful source for finding postcards available for purchase online. 

While some of my postcards I bought in person at stores, most of my collection has come from ebay orders.

The good thing with ebay is you can spend whatever you are comfortable with.

The one risk is being outbid by another person interested in the same item.

But personally I have not really experienced this problem. I think it’s because it is usually a specific place that not a lot of people are looking for. 

What I love is being able to “save searches” so it only takes a few minutes to check for any new postcards listed for that topic / place / person.

Since these orders are coming from other sellers online I do tend to use visa gift cards for payment methods to protect my bank information. But that’s just my personal preference. 

You can also use Paypal services as a middleman, so to speak. 

I also always check reviews on the seller’s profile. 

Overall, I have grown my postcard collection so much thanks to ebay and haven’t really had any issues.

| Related Article: Cemeteries Help Family Tree Research

Local Historical Societies

One extra place to check for postcards from a particular area is local historical societies or genealogy groups.

They may have some on display or in storage with notations of where they are from or who the people are that wrote letters on the cards.

While you may not be able to purchase and keep these, it is still a family reference point of information and you might be able to take a photo.

Conclusion

I hope these resources can help you in your search for more postcards!

If you would like to share some of your collection, send me a message or connect on Pinterest at RLS Photogenic.

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