Let me start off by saying that although I do have a few 100 postcards I don’t believe I am a postcard collector. What I like about Postcards are their images, their design, who they are sent to, who they were sent from, the postmarks, the stamps, the content of notes written by hand on the back of the card, and the terrible penmanship on most of them. I like to think I am collecting the stories that these cards tell rather than the Postcards themselves.
Also, although I now have a rudimentary knowledge about the manufacturing of postcards and who produced them in/for the Parry Sound tourist market – I only have been curious enough to understand these areas to the degree needed for my requirements. I’m not expert on Postcards proper in any way.
Also, I am not expert on the subject matter. There are undoubtedly errors in my descriptions, and I am certain I have woven supposition into fact even though I’ve tried to edit it out. Apologies and feel free to contact with corrections large and small.
I also continue to be surprised by the variety / lack of variety that are encompassed by my two main subject areas – The Beach and James & Seguin. For over 100 years these locations have been a popular topic with both Postcard photographers and with the tourists that purchased them. I’m not entirely sure why.
Starting Out
I’ve been acquiring these postcards for almost a decade. Initially I picked them up quite absent mindedly at Antique Shops and Lawn Sales. In these early days I didn’t need to look very hard to find them – they just seemed to be around. At some point I noticed that the same cards kept popping up over and over again and as a result, in a few years, I was on the lookout for new ones. That took a little more effort.
eBay
So I moved on to eBay, they had a fine selection of cards. Today for example(early March 2017) , there are 215 Parry Sound postcards available on www.eBay.ca. The highest priced one is $40.01 (someone had sent a postcard from Parry Sound to someone in Scotland in November of 1951). The handwriting is legible (which isn’t generally the case) and the topic is solid – the James & Seguin intersection circa 1940s I suspect. The seller is from Romania and they priced it at $30 USD (translating into $40.01 CDN). Shipping is $3 CDN. That price is about $30 too high. I have that card in my collection and I am certain I paid less than $8 CDN for it. More typically (than the Romania/Scotland connection) mine was mailed in June of 1950 to a Mrs. Foreman in Florida. Both have good stamps of the last King of England on them and each has a clear Parry Sound postmark.
You’d think a couple of 100 postcards to search through at any given moment would keep you busy but it turns out its not the case at all. There are a few cards that seem extremely popular that come up regularly and they dominate the ebay inventory. In a few years eBay’s allure waned. I still keep my search lists active (old habits die hard) but I don’t check eBay as regularly and almost never find any new ones.