I was curious…, my first question is, what do you have in your country like this? Some people have thrift stores where folks just consign or donate things. Many of them are charity stores, where money from what is purchased goes to a particular cause or organization (like an elderly care facility, or children’s medical fund, etc). Some are just resale of donated items.
In these places (we have about 5 around my town, mostly quite small), I have found loads of stationary, stickers, rubber stamps and cool stuff for Postcrossing, but finding postcards in these places is getting increasingly rare. Or I occasionally find cards that are used - still some cool cards for collecting, but it’s even more rare to find nice, blank cards in these places - cards I would use in Postcrossing… my rule of thumb is if it is a card I would like to get, then it’s a card that’s “good enough” to send.
I checked out a new one today and BINGO - they had about 300 great cards that were very good quality, from my area, and unwritten. They had them batched into groups of 20 and very, very reasonable!
That is awesome! I have never looked for postcards at thrift shops. If you don’t mind my asking what is the card behind the mickey card? It is red. Thank you!
There is a Goodwill store in this area. They do a ton of business with clothing. Maybe some with housewares, CDs, books, etc. Have never seen postcards though.
It took me a few minutes to answer you, because I had to look it up. It was Japanese on the back, so I suspected (correctly) that it was anime. After a little research, I see that those are characters from “Vampire Knight”.
The more I look through the cards, I wonder if someone gave up Postcrossing and just dumped their whole collection at that store, because it is perfect for the hobby. Mostly view cards, standard size and good shape, and then a handful of “themed” cards like this one. I’m also thinking that a find like that was pretty lucky and pretty rare. In the whole batch, there were only 2 or 3 that I would never have bought myself.
In the Dallas area, I haven’t found any postcards at the thrift stores but we do have Half Price Book stores. Where you can buy postcard books and those have about 30 cards in a book for about $6.00.
I’ve managed to find some at a thrift store in the past, but unfortunately that store has closed.
Half Price Books has a variety, depending on the location. I’ve only been to a few, and one store had a container of individual cards for sale, although that was pricier than buying a book or box set. The store nearest to me often has postcard books from Pomegranate, usually 30 postcards for about $2 - $6. My best find (in terms of price) is probably a book of 30 elephant postcards for $2
I lucked out at the thrift store across from me, they have a box of cards that included some tourist postcards of my area! I got maybeee… 10 for $2? Not bad at all.
Yes, I love finding cards at the thrift shop! I actually had an amazing find a couple months ago of circa 1930s cards. I bought a handful for .10 cents each–afterwards I thought I should have bought the whole box for that price but when I returned someone had done just that! (I hope they are on Postcrossing and they’ll send me one )
I hadn’t been to the thrift store near me since before Covid times - this post inspired me to stop in with my daughter this morning. We flipped through 2 big boxes of cards (I’d estimate it was easily over 1000 cards!) and we narrowed our picks to 12 cards. Price was set at $1/card or 3 for $1.99 (so not a great deal) and most were out of state tourist/view cards (tons of Arizona, Florida, Missouri, Montana, New York, South Dakota, Vermont.) My daughter chose these animal cards:
I picked lighthouse cards (often requested on Postcrossing profiles), United States Capitol Building (Washington, D.C.), and a couple of unique church buildings (also a request I normally cannot fulfill):
Oh my goodness! My nephew got married in that church (bottom left). It is a tiny chapel in the middle of the beautiful Ozarks, in the woods, and all glass… in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. That was a great pick because that is such a unique and pretty little chapel.
I found a set of scratch postcards a while ago in a thrift store. I like unusual postcards so I was pretty happy about it. I’ve sent 2 of them out already and asked the recipients to reupload the image of the postcard if they decide to scratch them off. Both decided to leave it unscratched so I don’t know how it looks like in color. I’ll probably do it on the last card myself
I’ve had great luck at used bookstores (like our local one, McKay) where I can find postcard books or box sets. Antique/vintage stores are hit & miss because they can be pricey I’ll still grab a few if they match the profiles of people in a RR - otherwise $2-3 each is out of my budget!
There is an antique mall near me that sells vintage cards from our area. Usually they are $1-$2 a piece which is very reasonable I’d say. I was in there recently and hit the Mother load! They restocked the vintage postcards and started carrying new ones too for $1! I mentioned how hard it was to find local postcards even though we live in a touristy city and the owner said that’s what everyone one says so she brought in the new ones too.
The best find I had there was finding old postcards from the tiny area I grew up in that’s 800 miles away. They were at least 40 or 50 years old but the town hasn’t changed. Those have been fun to share and gave me something interesting to write about.
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Hope all is well