I appreciate you sharing your ugly cards. As the saying goes, and has been mentioned here already, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I love card #1; the desolate beach with the rocks. As for the others, I find them more boring than ugly, but sometimes I call my boring cards ugly because they’re both, lol. I also don’t like multi-view cards, lol.
Like @tomrinkoski mentioned, some box sets or postcard books come with cards I’d never choose.
I also have a lot of art cards, and opinions on those are really individualized too. Some are ugly, some are boring, and some are both, and a few are weird, even by my lax standards…but conversely that’s what can make them interesting as well.
Fun topic, thanks. I have a stack of ugly, or boring, cards ready to bring to a meet-up here this weekend!
I can not “judge” any of the cards, I can only share what came to my mind viewing them (BEFORE reading your thoughts about them):
First off: I personally had pictured something TOTALLY different after reading the first post of this thread, so if I’d seen those 8 cards in a big pile of cards, I’d probably not guessed that those are supposed to be “the ugliest”.
[It’s a bit hard trying to really write down thoughts that instantly popped up when viewing images, but it definitely was something along those following lines for me…]
Ah! Sea and shoreline, love the free space, love that view, love the cards composition / the image section a lot… funny how different and kind of surreal the colours looked in earlier days… wonder how old this card is and from which place… let’s see what it says on the other side…
HaHA! Someone’s having a perm! Oh, and those white clothes! … reminds me of tennis. Ah and I remember those shiny shorts – some adults wore them when I grew up, haHA! Funny how different it feels to look at that nowadays compared to “back then”… now I wonder what the sender says about this image…
Oh, it looks like those fancy “herb spirals” have been “a thing” earlier, too! I didn’t know that!? … wonder where that is from… let’s see what’s written on the backside…
WOW! Giant conifers on a real and big camping site with A LOT of space!! Those were the days!!! Not this tamed “glamping style”, all squeezed together with car next to car but actual green, quiet and room to breathe! NICE! I wonder where and from when that is, let’s find out…
Receiving 6 or 7 would immediately have reminded me of my own adventures out on smaller and bigger BLUE…
Only with 5 and 8 I would have had more trouble relating. To me it feels like there’s too little room to breathe, makes me feel kind of “trapped”, too many walls, concrete… buildings oftentimes are just not “my thing”…
Now I bet there’s people out there who would have VERY DIFFERENT first impressions of / associations to your “8 ugliest” cards.
Sometimes I send those “Why?” kinds of cards with a wink to the recipient: “Can you believe they used to make postcards like this?” Last week I sent a card that says "Drive Beautiful I-80 and it is literally just a photo of a highway with one semi-truck on it. I literally wrote “Why?” as my message. (The recipient messaged back “Eh, I’ve seen worse.”)
I love the #1 orange beach view. Your statement about the color being a result of photographic manipulation made me curious so I did a search for orange sand beaches. They can be found in Malta, Portugal and Sardinia. Nature can be both odd and beautiful.
Here’s a suitable suggestion for those who have an ugly postcard. You know those profiles in which the receiver describes that they are only wanting nice postage stamps and the postcard image doesnt matter? Well, send that ugly card with a couple of very special themed stamps.
Hi @dempsterstreet So I just looked up Wes Anderson and I do see what you mean! The postcards are sorta ordinary/typical of the era really (1980’s/1990’s) so makes me wonder where WA got his inspiration from? I love his huge, pink building.
And yes, I do see your point about the less well-loved postcards! #BeKindToUglyPostcards
I send them out in the 4x Trash (swap) tag, I use them sometimes in an envelope with swap cards enclosed with a message of Group name and my ID as sender, they can go to profiles along the lines of “I don’t care about the front at all, I’m interested in what you have to say!”
At this moment, these are the ones I’d send in a 4x Trash envelope if required:
If there’s anything I’ve learned in 4 years of postcrossing it’s that if you hold on to a card long enough someone will want it
Some examples of cards I found really ugly, but the recipients like a lot
I had this one for a year, finally pulled an address of someone who likes coffee and the colour orange and they LOVED it
Had this one for over a year, finally pulled an address of someone who does woodworking as a hobby
I couldn’t imagine who would like this one, finally sent it out and the receiver was very interested and liked the artistic side of it
That’s the one of the many neat things about postcrossing. We’re all interested in postcards & snail mail but our other interests are so diverse. You never know who you might connect with and what they may like
When I first started postcrossing, I went around to various tourist towns buying lots of postcards. Now I realize that some of them are just ugly or not great pictures. So when I buy postcards now, I’m more picky and if it doesn’t seem like a nice picture that I think someone would like, I don’t buy it. I hope someday to find a home for the ugly, strange or unique ones.
I love that dog card! My sister had a very sweet, intelligent, loveable border collie / golden retriever mutt. Blaze had the biggest underbite ever which absolutely terrified everyone who met her for the first time. The dog in the postcard’s underbite reminds me of Blaze’s.
I have few different boxes and the ones I don’t like, i keep them in last box and just never sort them and keep storing the weird and cards i think no one will like, and it’s like one forgotten box for me!
And I think you are very kind. 
So I just looked up Wes Anderson and I do see what you mean! 
The postcards are sorta ordinary/typical of the era really (1980’s/1990’s) so makes me wonder where WA got his inspiration from? 
