Postcard Mania

Here's how David Gregory started collecting:

Postcard collecting, or deltiology, just seems to have happened to him, creeping up without his even realising it was happening.  Following his father's death, he found an old postcard of the “Queen Elizabeth”.   His parents had crossed the Atlantic to New York on the ship in the late 60's and it had been marked to show where their cabin was.  So David kept it, added some others and eventually put them in an old photograph album, and Bob's yer Uncle, a deltiologist was born.

Nowadays he has about 4000 cards, most of which can be seen on his website  Postcards of the Past.  Originally he had intended only to have postcards of Stratford-upon-Avon on the site – but since then towns and villages near Stratford crept in and eventually it grew to such an extent that it now covers most of Europe and a few places in the Canada and the States.

What David finds most gratifying to learn is that other people enjoy the website; furthermore, there must be a lot of them because of the number who send images of postcards to him through the ether.  This is great for two reasons, because firstly, he doesn’t have to buy them and perhaps more importantly, it saves him time processing them so they're suitable for the site.  As usual, the best way to grow a site, is to do a little and often - every journey starts with a single step and all that, but as he learns more about site building and arranging pages and images, he finds himself having to make mods, which can take time.  He'd love to know of any old cards you think would make good additions to the website, and even better, if you have time to scan them,  receive the images and add them – with of course an appropriate acknowledgement.  Click on the link to his website above, and he can be contacted there.

As with any hobby, deltiology can be cheap or expensive as you wish - it's your hobby.  Perhaps your starting point is holiday postcards sent to you by friends / family.  You'll find that you can soon build up a collection, although obviously, these cards won't be very old.  However, as we all know(!), time soon passes, so in the meantime, keep your eyes open in charity shops, car boots etc, you'll be able to pick up older postcards at bargain prices.  Quite frankly, the sky is your limit with deltiology, there's millions of old cards out there – why not have a blimp in our store and see what you can find there.  It really is just a question of looking.