Real Photo Post Cards, known as RPPCs to collectors of vintage ephemera, are a popular way to collect actual relics of another era, on almost any subject imaginable. Although the world's first picture postcards date from the 1860s to the mid-1870s, most of the earliest American picture postcards still in existence today were sold at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. The ease of sharing an actual photograph of a location, event, or other item of interest led to quick popularity and growth of postcards as a means of correspondence and communication.
An online exhibit from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA, explains one aspect of their popularity and widespread availability: “In 1903, at the height of the worldwide craze for postcards, the Eastman Kodak Company unveiled a new product: the postcard camera. The device exposed a postcard-sized negative that could print directly onto a blank card, capturing scenes in extraordinary detail. Portable and easy to use, the camera heralded a new way of making postcards. Suddenly almost anyone could make photo postcards, as a hobby or as a business. Other companies quickly followed in Kodak’s wake, and soon photographic postcards joined the billions upon billions of printed cards in circulation before World War II.”
At Playle.com a unique site dedicated to vintage postcards, there is good advice on how to identify and date Real Photo Vintage Postcards, how to tell the difference between a Real Photo Postcard and a printed postcard, and other helpful tips for those interested in collecting and identifying them. Known as Deltiology, the study and collection of postcards has long been one of the most popular and fastest-growing hobbies. The Wikipedia entry for Deltiology notes “Postcards are collected by historical societies, libraries and genealogical societies because of their importance in research such as how a city looked at a particular time in history as well as social history.”
EBay and Amazon are veritable storehouses of vintage postcards, often available for very little money, but most libraries, museums, parks and other venues are rich sources of historic postcards. Check the Alaska Digital Archives for an extensive collection of postcards of all types.