Has anyone here ever sent a postcard? As a millennial, I normally use electronic media to send messages but recently in my travels I’ve started buying paper postcards from shops. Some are very funny and often have the name of the local area on them. It’s realy fun to write and send them in my limited experience.

So what do you all think about them?

Old school, but still cool.........

__________________
dd884
JMHO-YMMV

I am from the generation that routinely sent them. I have a running gag with an old girlfriend that the postcard I sent her from Ocean City, MD must have been tied to a fish because it was waterstained when she received it.

Down in the basement, I still have a pile of 3 cent postcards, with adverts for the then-new 1946 Packard Clipper.

__________________
de minimus non curat lex

I have sent a lot of postcards, but quite a few years ago.

Don't send them but I collect old postcards with fishing themes. Some of them are a riot.

The only reason I've ever mailed postcards.... to provide proof to the co-workers; I was really there!

My Grandfather sent nothing but postcards because they were cheap. If you had to say more than could fit on a post card you were blathering.
I've sent quite a few but not for many years.

__________________
Foster Positivity.

The cornier the better!
Who doesn't like personal mail?

I still send them: my 11 year old granddaughter loves it.

Postcards rock!! Still send them.

Before the internet and cellphones I used to send them to Ruthie to prove that I actually was on the road.

__________________
Music/Sports/Beer fan

I used to send and receive them routinely. I have probably not sent one in the past five to ten years though.

There is an interesting medium (?) now, between email/text and snailmail, whereby there are apps that allow you to chose a picture, write a message — either handwrite or type — pay a fee, hit send and on the other end your photo and message gets printed up as a postcard or card in an envelope and mailed off snailmail.

Two of these are Postsnap and Felt. I have used these a few times with family, and recipients seem to enjoy them. (I think the receipt of a nicely printed up personal photo is appreciated as these days few of us ever get hard copies of photos.)

To you millenials out there, there was recently an NYT article that was about how much people simply appreciate receiving snailmail these days precisely because it is so rare. So a simple thank-you note, or get-well or sympathy card, etc., has an impact, as snailmail, well beyond the words written.

I still have elderly relatives who don’t do e-mail and “social media”, and who love picture postcards.

I must admit that I have to hope they don’t inspect the postmark too closely because frequently, I don’t get around to actually write and mail the “We visited this spectacular whatever today ...” postcard until I’ve been back home for some days

I used to send them to clients and potential clients. Photograph on one side and my contact info on the other.

Was nice to make a call on someone and see your cards up on their wall.

__________________
Isaiah 41:10

I still have one that I received from my 6th grade teacher, Mrs. Little, in 1953. She mailed it to me from Italy one summer while she was on vacation.

Have a blessed day,

Leon

When I was young and free I got around quite a bit and used to send them from places I went to. Have not sent any for a long time but then again, I have not been young and free for a long time.

Before personal computers, the internet, digital cameras, and phones with unlimited calls for one low price, I sent many hundreds of post cards from far flung locales.

Still have some old leftover cards slipped into the pages of photo albums.

When your grandchildren are looking through your stuff after you've passed on, it's going to be awfully difficult for them to scroll through your old, dead smartphone to see pictures of your travels and things you did in your youth.

If you have anyone in your family who is into family history, hardcopy rules.

I remember when postage was a penny.

I have some postcards I bought abroad when I was in the Navy. I didn't mail those..

Had this one for a while
Dick

Last time I sent a post card was from Pisa Italy in 1962 where I spent a couple days fixing an F86 from our base in France. The card and stamp were something like 35,000 Lira, (I think about $1.50).

__________________
H Richard
SWCA1967 SWHF244

In collecting, I have come across many at yard sales, estate sales, etc. I usually only buy them if they are over 100 years old. For some reason, I get a 'kick' out of the writings and messages; also, I like the photos, locations, etc.

A few that stick out to me are the ones talking about 'we never hear from you anymore' or 'work on the farm has been slow, we decided to travel' or the ones (which is most of them from this time period, 1900) that just have a persons name, city and state on them. No address, no zip code. I actually have one that says something to the effect of 'don't forget next year we are going to start requiring zip codes'.

I have sent them, but the last time was the late 90's. Last one I received was around 2006.

__________________
Rather be outdoors

Yep, and I still send Christmas cards too.

When my son was in the Navy I went around to junk shops, thrift stores, etc., and collected a stack of really awful old unused picture postcards from "scenic" locations all over the country. Most were from the '40's or 50's. They had bad photographs of things like a railroad bridge outside Akron, downtown Omaha in 1952, etc.

I then invented an extremely countrified and dim redneck family, with a couple of very odd children and a granny with a fondness for provoking cops. I sent my son a postcard every day till they were used up, purporting to be a record of their travels on vacation. Each day had a strange misadventure to recount, sometimes involving bailing Granny out of the local clink. They had to be so brief that they left terrible unresolved questions, which was half the humor.

I had great fun setting up and writing the extended gag. My son is now fifty-one, and still has the cards stashed somewhere.

Wish I could go shopping for bad old cards again. I know some people I'd like to mess with.

__________________
Oh well, what the hell.

Jay
Awhile back CheifBob38 posted his Mom had lost a close friend, and needed some 'mail'. I sent a postcaed of an elk from where we were (West YELLOWSTONE MT.)

TB

__________________
frontsightnsqueaz

It was the best way to send friends and family a play by play of your vacation.

We saw Old Faithful

Now we are in the Grand Tetons...

Just to let everybody know you were having a good time.

It's a nice surprise to get in the mail besides a bill.

Usually the photography of the sights on the card were amazingly well photographed and colorful and from a vantage point you can't get to without special arrangements such as a helicopter. Back in Kodachrome days they loved to show reds because of the way they popped in the pictures. Red flowers, red lips, red balloons and clear as glass on the best day of the year.

Those fall pictures of the Smoky Mountains come to mind. And the 'most photographed view in the Smokies' that started getting developed back in the '60s and hasn't looked the same since.

Post cards were a real kick and the pictures were always better than the ones you could take, so rather than sending all of them you'd keep some extra pretty ones for yourself to take home and put in the old photo album.

__________________
"He was kinda funny lookin'"

That is brilliant. In fact I did a similar series with photographs where I wore a wife beater, a Caterpillar ball hat, had a can of PBR in every picture and my wife had a head scarf and a mop. No matter where we were, we were always in the same posture, with me in my best redneck relaxing pose back with my arms on my knees holding the beer can with my wife leaning on the mop and looking up like she was caught using it.

__________________
"He was kinda funny lookin'"

Here's the last postcard I have received, almost a year ago.
It's a keeper.

Attached Images

	SAM_0638.jpg (91.7 KB, 28 views)
	SAM_0639.jpg (53.6 KB, 29 views)

__________________
In Omnia Paratus

Phil, very cool.

Was looking thru a box of old post cards at a gun show and found a card picturing the hospital I was born in in 1945 postmarked in 1945. Way cool.

__________________
Foster Positivity.

"Wish You Were Here" hospital post cards?

__________________
"He was kinda funny lookin'"

They Rock!!

They can be funny, insulting or even heart thumpers.
Here In Nevada, we have lots of "Tourist" towns that have lots of them in all types, for any occasion.
In Virgina city you can even have them custom made as well as the old west
newspaper with your name and a write up back in the 1890's.

Most towns that are laid back and have a smaller population are into postcards............
Towns like NY City are into the fast mode "Thumb" telegraph, these days.

I still look at the postcard racks when I see them, to see there is a.........
"Got to have" card for a friend or one of "those people", like my brother.

Dad used to send birchbark postcards.

__________________
Common sense isn't so common.

All it warms my heart to know others enjoy postcards! Just got done filling one out. It had a camel on it, yeah, I’m far from home!

I picked up mail from those blue mailboxes along HWY 89 in southern Utah for a hand full of years and I saw tons of postcards being mailed during the summer vacation months.

I love getting snail mail from friends.

I don't send any postcards but I mail thank you cards all the time.

I know people enjoy getting them.

I have my grandmother's post card album. The cards date from early 1900s to around 1912. There are several from my grandfather to her before they were married. I am named for him and reading the cards is spooky, the handwriting looks like I wrote and signed them. He passed away in 1919 from the great flu epidemic.


My grandmother was 94 when she passed away and had survived five husbands, two of which were brothers.

I'm so old that I remember when they called them penny postcards.

__________________
In Omnia Paratus

My wife makes a point of buying postcards when we are on the road. She sends them to friends and family. Also sends me some when she's at a conference or visiting our daughter and I'm at home complaining about eating my own cooking.

The last ones I sent were bought at the museum in Northfield, MN.
Pics were of the outlaws killed in The Northfield Raid. I sent them to
a couple of my shooting buddies.