Vintage Collectible German and American Halloween and Holiday Christmas Postcards

In the Victorian age the penny postcard and particularly holiday postcards were highly collectible. Many Victorian homes had a scrapbook and the Victorians loved to collect trade cards, postcards and pictures and articles from magazines.

The most popular postcards were from famous illustrators/artists of the day and the postcards and trade cards that were produced in series. These beautiful chromolithography cards were kept for years as mementos from their friends and family members or souvenirs from their travels. Popular illustrators of postcards include: Frances Brundage, Maurice Boulanger, Ellen Hattie Clapsaddle, Bernhardt Wall, H. Wessler, Fred Spurgin, Gene Carr and many more. The most popular, collectible holiday vintage postcard collected today is Halloween. Look for German Halloween vintage postcards or Halloween vintage postcards that were published in the United States.

Ephemera collecting is collecting the many pieces of paper that make up the daily history of our world. Hand written receipts, ledgers, penny postcards, advertising trade cards, calendars, die cuts and more are considered ephemera.

Ephemera is defined as printed or handwritten materials that show the day-to-day life of people. The first collected pieces of ephemera were advertising trade cards. These brightly colored and well designed cards were the result of advances in the printing world.Chromolithography, the new process of printing in color as well as die cutting and embossing gave the world a reason to collect these little art cards. Following advertising trade cards, the penny postcard, greeting cards, and die cuts became equally as popular. To encourage people to collect often printers would do series of cards.

During the Victorian era, almost every family saved ephemera in scrapbooks. These scrapbooks were filled with beautifully designed and colored visiting cards, mourning cards, menus, dance cards, lithographs, bookplates, and prints. and newspaper clippings were kept for their beautiful graphics or for nostalgic reasons. Magazines and newspapers kept the popularity going by hiring skilled well-known illustrators to fill their pages with color illustrations and advertisements that would be cut up and pasted into beautiful scrapbooks.

The Ephemeral Society of America was formed in the 1980's to help collectors price, collect and preserve all of the vast collections of miscellaneous papers, paper-related objects and advertising pieces. Some collectors specialize in one type of ephemera such as Halloween postcards or advertising trade cards. Some pick an era of time or a subject matter, such as railroad ephemera. With the rise of online auction sites like eBay more ephemera is on the market than ever before.