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Sell Vintage
Topographical View Postcards on eBay
People all over the world collect postcards and they are often
prepared to pay very high prices for new items for their collection.
Just recently I’ve seen postcards catalogued about 30 pence fetch
hundreds of pounds on eBay.
Not every postcard offers such spectacular mark-ups but with careful
planning you can guarantee that every postcard you buy will sell at
a profit, sometimes just a few pounds, sometimes £20, once in a
while many hundreds of pounds.
These tips will help you get a head start in this profitable market:
* Of a great many different collecting themes within the overall
postcard collecting hobby – called ‘deltiology’ – it’s far easier
for newcomers to make money selling topographical postcards, namely
views of geographical locations, large and small.
TIP: Start selling view cards, preferably pre-1939, of small towns
and villages. The smaller the place, the fewer people visited those
places so the fewer cards were created of the area, and the rarer
those cards are likely to be compared to postcards depicting larger
towns and cities with high tourist traffic. So a postcard of a tiny
village in County Durham is likely to fetch much more on eBay than
an everyday view of London, Glasgow, Edinburgh.
* Two words guarantee everyone interested in buying your postcard
will find you through eBay’s search engine. Those words are
‘Postcard’ and the name of the area depicted.
* Apart from place name, collectors also like to know about age,
whether card is postally used, publisher name, condition, production
process such as photographic or artist drawn. If space permits in
the title, after ‘Postcard’ and place name, the date is the next
most important feature.
* You should avoid buying ‘unknown location’ postcards, that is
without place name clearly indicated, unless some other clue exists
to the location, such as shop and street names, publisher address,
message from the sender, postmark area. Many cards long ago were
posted locally so the place on the postmark is often also the
location of the view. Much the same goes for publishers who were
usually local.
* Carry a magnifying glass with you to auctions and flea markets,
often the sides of a photograph blur a little or margins become
stained and place names are invisible to the naked eye but can be
clearly seen through a magnifying glass.
Article
adapted from Avril Harper's
Bank Big Profits
Selling Vintage Topographical View Postcards on eBay
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