I was just recently talking to someone in a store in town about how I was finding it really difficult to find nice, Steve Parish-type viewcards of Canberra. She told me that the Steve Parish business had been sold, and the new owners had moved the printing offshore, and that she would no longer be stocking their products.
She said I’d be better off making my own postcards, because they were getting near on impossible for her to buy. This is not the first business owner who has told me that they can no longer source Australian postcards !
I’m not a huge fan of view cards but have found it really difficult to find ones for people that request them. I’ve thought about having some of my own photos of local attractions printed.
I think I’m going to do that too. Lots of people appear to collect viewcards…and it’s just getting ridiculously hard to find them. It’s so disappointing.
Of course the next problem will be all the people who specify in their profiles that they don’t want cards that you’ve had printed yourself! I can understand not wanting home-printed…I don’t think the quality of those is great either…but if you’ve gone to Vistaprint or Moo or similar…I’d challenge anyone to actually be able to detect that I’ve had them made up myself! Sorry for the rant…I’m feeling a bit miffed .
I can’t help with shops since I’m not from Australia and last time I was there was before pandemic with tons of view cards around but from what I hear Australia Post has some nice maxicards and prepaids. You might want to check on Australian Post website or check with other Australian postcrossers. Maybe @helent can help??
Thanks @tani. Most of my collection of postcards consists of Oz Post Maxicards and prepaids. They just don’t offer much in the way of local view cards. I saw my first real Canberra viewcard by Oz Post today, advertised at the Canberra GPO but they were all out of stock.
Any Australians have experience with redbubble.com? There are some great images from my area on there I’ve had my eye on but I haven’t yet made a purchase so I don’t know what the quality is like. I have designed some postcards and printed with Vistaprint before, and they’ve been well received. You wouldn’t know they were self-made, very sturdy cardstock etc.
I was underwhelmed by the Redbubble cards I bought. I found the cardstock flimsy, and the print quality akin to a good home printer…but nowhere near professional standard. I would not buy again.
And absolutely agree with Vistaprint. Very high quality.
I have ordered postcards from Redbubble several times. The first order I made a few years ago the printing was quite good and glossy, but have found on subsequent orders the printing to not be that great, as mentioned above. After 2 extended lockdowns though I feel like I don’t have many other options for viewcards.
This has been linked to before I think, but there are LPOs that have their own local prepaid cards, the ones I’ve seen have all been viewcards. Any of the localities nearby to you? Might be worth visiting those shops.
So I feel like I’ve hit the jackpot here, and I’m wondering if it could happen elsewhere…
The post office on the nearby university campus has 2+ racks of Steve Parish cards etc., plus a huge range of prepaid cards including several local views that I’ve never seen available online.
I presume they keep this stock to cater to (international) students?
Maybe try the PO at/near to a university or at least the student housing, maybe you’ll get lucky too!
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