Dating an old postcard and what makes it collectable

Postcards · 5 September 2026

Turn the card over first. The back carries more dating information than the picture: whether the address side is divided, what the stamp box says, who published it and what the postmark reads. Together those place most cards within a decade or better. And the answer to the second question is usually blunt – no, not all old postcards are valuable; the picture matters far less than what is on the other side.

Read the back in four steps

1. Is the back divided? Early postcards reserved the whole back for the address, so any message had to be written on the picture side or in a margin. Later cards split the back with a vertical line: message left, address right. A card with an undivided back belongs to the earlier era – this single feature is the fastest broad date you will get.
2. What does the stamp box say? The printed square where the stamp goes often carries the publisher's mark, a postage instruction or a country name, and those texts changed over time.
3. What is in the imprint? Publisher, printer, series number, sometimes a print run and a price. Publishers appeared, merged and closed, so a name brackets the period even without a date.
4. What does the postmark read? If the card travelled, the cancellation gives an exact date and place – the most reliable evidence on the whole object. That is why a written, posted card often tells more than a pristine unused one.

The front helps too

• Printing process. Under a magnifier, early cards show fine engraved or lithographic detail and later ones show a dot pattern. An even grid of identical dots means a modern print – possibly a reproduction, as covered in the guide to telling an original from a copy.
• Hand colouring. Colour that sits slightly outside the outlines, applied over a monochrome base, points to an earlier card.
• The scene itself. Vehicles, clothing, shopfronts, tram wires and street lighting date a view within a few years, often more precisely than the imprint.
• Place names. A city or country renamed since publication puts a hard limit on the date.

What actually makes a card collectable

Age alone does very little. Cards were printed in enormous numbers, and a common view from 1910 is still common today. Interest concentrates elsewhere:

• The subject, narrowly. A specific street, a shop with a legible sign, a factory, a railway station, a disaster, a local event – something a place-based collector needs and cannot substitute.
• Real photographic cards. Printed as photographs rather than as ink, often produced in tiny local runs.
• The postal history. An unusual route, an early date, a wartime marking, a rare cancellation. Here the stamp and the postmark carry the object, as in the guide to first day covers.
• The publisher or artist. Signed artist cards and known series are collected as sets.
• Condition. Corners, creases and album marks decide between two otherwise identical cards.

What not to do

1. Do not remove the stamp. On a posted card the stamp, the postmark and the message are one object.
2. Do not erase or ink over the written message – it is part of the history and often the only date.
3. Do not trim edges to tidy them, and do not flatten with an iron.
4. Do not store in soft plastic; use inert sleeves and keep cards upright without pressure, as described in the guide to storing a paper collection.

What the archive shows

The open archive holds 216 postcards of 1926–1991, 74 of them dated, including cards posted with legible cancellations and cards shown from both sides. The Soviet-specific reading of the back – imprint, print run, price – is covered in detail in the guide to dating a Soviet postcard from the back, and the holiday groups in the guide to holiday postcards.

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