General Postcard Topics

Various Articles

**When are you going to write?** French card promoting ppc correspondence.

Below a selection of old TPA articles on various topics. Photography, particular companies, general topics connected with postcards and also a longer piece on the bromide real photo cartel(s) set up by major printers and publishers (Germany/Austria) in order to stabilize selling prices during difficult times.
Farther below also 3 articles dealing with Picture Postcard Collector Clubs from worldwide. The various membership notes, rubberstamp imprints and sometimes even labels are found on quite some old cards. As well as not easy to understand (for non-members) exchange wants codes. An interesting part of old ppc history, but not too well researched yet.

TPA 14 Photographic_Masterpieces_Darjeeling_India [721 KB]
TPA 16 Photogr_Masterpieces_Headhunters_Hula_Girls [1.125 KB]
TPA 14 PPC Publishers_from_Egypt [482 KB]
TPA 19 Collecting_Opera_Cards [2.020 KB]

TPA 20 Annie_French_Glasgow_Girl [1.359 KB]
TPA 20 Early_Postcards_of_St_Helena [1.935 KB]
TPA 23 PRA_NBC_bromide_ppc_cartels [704 KB]

TPA 31_What_is_wrong_with_Roemmler_&_Jonas_PPCs [2.113 KB]
TPA 31 Who_was_Theodor_Kreh? [1.605 KB]
TPA 21 August_Schwarz_The_first_Picture_Postcard.. [724 KB]
TPA 22 Down_with_the_New_Postcard_Format [1.205 KB]

Postcard Collector Clubs

**Club memberships.** Hungarian collector Leopold Altdorffer was member of collector societies "Kosmopolit" and also "Globus". Card was mailed in 1913.

When postcards were not only used as correspondence media but turned into a collector item, the desire for owning cards of favourite topics best from far-away place grew considerably. In the second half of the 1890‘s the first ppc collector societies were set up. Some companies started to sell subscriptions for a "Journey around the World" card services. The customer received cards from various places on the world directly addressed to him. Most of these businesses not long around, however.

More popular was to be a member of one or more ppc (and philatelist) collector societies' from different countries. Some of the biggest then were "Kosmopolit", "Globus" and "Jolly Jokers‘ Club". But there were many, many others around. Their traces can still be found on old cards. Interesting to learn is also that some of the collector clubs continued service in the 1920-30‘s. When the so-called "Golden Era of Picture Postcards" was over. See for yourself!

TPA 15 Ernst_Henning_Tsingtau_PPC_collector_clubs [1.136 KB]
TPA 17 André_Perlet_and_PPC_collector_clubs [440 KB]
TPA 23 PPC_Collector_Clubs [1.293 KB]

André Perlet from Paris, France was probably the "King" when it comes to the most memberships in postcard and philatelist clubs and societies worldwide. This person was a favourite research topic of the late Frans Bokelmann from The Netherlands for some time. Although André did not collect any postcards himself – but used postage stamps only. I recall we managed to find more than 30 cards mailed out by him. Half of the address side covered mostly by a rubberstamp imprint listing some 20 clubs and societies worldwide. But he was member in even more!

As the illustrations in the provided article pdf lacks of resolution, the original files not available anymore, I show a card by André Perlet here separately. Zoom and see for yourself. He appears to had been active into the late 1920‘s at least. In case you come across any cards with André Perlet mention, it would be great if you could share a scan. Thank you!