Broads Post Cards

[JennyMorgan]

Do any of you sell on E-Bay? I've both bought & sold for about fifteen years now. At one time the prices were low, it became a great hobby at reasonable cost. Then, like has happened with boat yard badges, prices reached what can only described as silly money. I suppose we all had the more common cards but the rare ones, wow! Great if if you were selling but a bummer if you were buying! Over the last six months, in my experience, the post card market has all but collapsed, not just ones from the Broads. Perhaps now is a good time to start a collection!

I often wonder just how many cards are out there. Back in the 1960's and 70's my father & I sold countless thousands every summer. The cost of a card & a stamp was seen as reasonable, cards were guaranteed results whereas yer average Kodak crap-matic camera was not, people bought them by the several handfuls. Bare in mind that we had a twenty week season & for my little shop at Burgh St Peter I would buy in at least 10,000.00 cards every spring and would also top up during the season. Cards were big business for us, browsers in the evening were big buyers. Cheap souvenirs I suppose and by buying them in the quantities that we did they were profitable, especially as they were an add on to the grocery shopping that most folk first came into the shop for.

Now, as children clear their departed parent's homes, just a theory, I suppose that many of these cards have surfaced over recent years and now the market is satiated, there are just not enough collectors for those thousands of cards!   

I wonder what my children will do with my collection of Southern Rivers post cards when I snuff it? In the meantime I shall stash away my 'for sale' cards, until a new generation of interest comes along, if it does. Will the newer generations collect as the older ones do or did. I used to collect & sell old bottles that we found after the dredgers had done their work, that was a good earner whilst it lasted but now that interest has declined. Collecting does seem to be something of a fad. Having collected stuff then what do we do with it? 

[TheQ]

 "I would buy in at least 10,000.00 cards" would have loved to see you buy decimal places of cards...

" Having collected stuff then what do we do with it? " sell it on Ebay?

[JennyMorgan]

Whoops, .00 of a card too much, doddery old fool!

Selling it back on e-bay, so true! Be surprised how much can be made on poorly described items. I bought a badge the other day for a pound, poorly described thus search engines missed it, I found it whilst browsing a seller's other items. In this case an angling badge, one of which I already own, and only a few weeks ago another the same topped eighty quid! Mind you, with this one I might hang on until I go to a specialist angling show.

 

[Timbo]

I use ebay mostly for the purchasing of two things. Firstly woodwork tools...or to be more exact the legal importation of good quality 'imperial' measurement woodwork tools and accessories from the USA. And indeed there are some right bargains to be had. I think my table saw was the best bargain. Bosch table saw, price £699 + VAT everywhere I looked. Ebay...£289 inclusive for a brand new saw, boxed, warrantied for three years through Bosch, and next day delivery. Slowly I'm beginning to recognise the bargains when I see them...particularly the rebranding that goes on. The band saw for example. Dewalt bandsaw £500 but with Lumberjack branding £250.

The second most frequent purchase I make from ebay is exotic timber. Yew, cherry, zebra, ebony I can buy small job lots of offcuts at fractions of the cost. It's also the only source of many species of timber in my locality.

As far as collecting goes...I'm still sat among pile after pile of 'junk' my Dad has collected over the years, that I've had to stuff into my tiny flat. Dad's collecting and what he thought of as 'valuable' are difficult to reconcile. He'd rob an antique sailors box dated 1710 for timber to make bird boxes...I kid you not...yet at the same time he's stockpiled box after box of mole traps, knackered farm implements and cheap tin tie clips and cufflinks. I could put them on ebay...but then I would never get my flat emptied of junk.

[JennyMorgan]

Tim, flog 'em off as a job lot, you might be pleasantly surprised!