How to celebrate National Postcard Week 2019

By the time you receive the May 8 issue of Antique Trader magazine, National Postcard Week 2019 (NPCW) will be upon us. Some of the feedback we received after our last mention of NPCW, which was the poll in the March 13 edition, revealed some newcomers to our magazine are unfamiliar with the event.

To clear up any confusion, we’ll call up former postcard maven Barbara Andrews. Six years ago, Andrews was Antique Trader’s postcard columnist extraordinaire. You may recall she has since retired from writing about postcards, but in 2013, she wrote a quite helpful article about National Postcard Week. She spelled out the “why” and the “how” of this annual celebration of deltiology.

In part, Andrews says:

Postcard collectors today know how important it is to promote and enrich the hobby. For that reason, many enthusiastically support National Postcard Week (NPCW), the first week of May every year.The emphasis of this event is not only to generate interest and send postcards but to create them.

Anyone can participate.

All that’s needed is an original design that includes NPCW, the date, and the name of the individual or club producing it. The quality of the art, the printing, and the paper stock may vary, but everyone can share in the fun of trading or selling their creation for a modest sum. Many pass through the mail in envelopes, but it’s even nicer to get an appropriate postmark on the card itself.

Undoubtedly some early collectors came up with the idea of a week devoted to postcards, but the first two people who acted on it in recent years were my friend Louise Northam (1914-2012), also known as Kazoo Lou when she sold postcards, and Nevada postcard artist Ann Rusnak (deceased 1998). They sent out the first modern postcard week cards in the early 1980s.

Either their enthusiasm was contagious, or others were thinking along the same lines. Approximately 30 years ago, four collector/dealers, John McClintock, Roy Cox, DeeDee Parker, and Richard Novick, established NPCW as an annual event to promote the hobby of postcard collecting. They were helped in their efforts by the IFPD (postcard dealers), Postcard Collector Magazine (now defunct), and Barr’s Post Card News, which still pictures cards made for the event with information about trading or buying.

There are several good reasons to participate in the annual event and collect the postcards designed for it. The first is, of course, to promote the hobby and encourage those who go to the time and expense of producing original limited edition postcards. A card featuring a topic of local interest is a great conversation piece and a way of making a community aware of postcard collecting as a major hobby.

Want to trade postcards with Antique Trader?

While exchanging National Postcard Week Postcards are best because it captures the spirit of the week, we will gladly trade our 2019 NPCW postcard for any postcard you want to send.

Mail your postcard to: Antique Trader, 5225 Joerns Dr., Stevens Point, WI 54481. 

We will publish the postcards we receive in the June 19 edition of Antique Trader.Please note: In order to be published, we must receive the cards before May 25.

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