World Postcard Day, October 1st
When was the last time you sent a postcard to a friend or loved one? Or purchased a postcard as a souvenir? Chances are you have neither purchased nor sent postcards in the past few decades, and it is also likely that you have not even thought about postcards in years. Or, perhaps when you see the word “postcard” you think of the plethora of unwanted cards we all receive in the mail each election season.
October 1st is World Postcard Day, and for the sake of this blog, I will be talking about the postcards that are purchased for souvenir purposes- in other words, the ones that you want to send and receive.
The oldest postcard in the world was sent by Theodore Hook Esq. from Fulham, London, to himself in 1840. The cost to send that postcard was one penny. However, the official beginning of postcard sending was October 1, 1869. Dr. Emanuel Herrmann, a professor of economics from Vienna, wrote an article for the local newspaper, the Austrian Post complaining that the time and effort involved in letter writing was not worth the price to send the letter. He suggested that there should be a cheaper and more practical method to convey short messages. The post agreed with his sentiments, and thus on October 1, 1869 the Correspondenz-Karte, or the postcard, was born. This first postcard was a light-brown rectangle with space for the address on one side and a short message on the back. The price to send these cards was half the price of a normal letter.
I spent a semester in Spain back in the late 90s, right before cell phones and digital cameras became a thing, and I remember seeking out little stores and boutiques around Europe to find the perfect postcards to purchase as mementos of my adventures in case the photographs on the actual film in my camera would not turn out. It is crazy to think of a time when we would take a picture and not be able to immediately see what that picture would look like. I didn’t travel much when I was young, but when I did, I would fill up a camera roll with pictures of my adventures and inevitably there would be several out of focus or blurry due to the angle of the sun, or worse, I would attempt to capture a moment that I would want to cherish forever, and instead I would get a photograph of my thumb.
While postcards sent for personal reasons seemed to die out with the rise of digital media, there are still people all over the world who are purchasing, sending, and receiving postcards on a regular basis. Today, in addition to the postcards that we receive reminding us who we are and are not to vote for, postcards are used primarily by businesses who want to make an impression by alerting their customers about sales and promotions, or by engaged couples or graduates. However, of the 2.78 billion postcards that were processed through the USPS in 2024, at least 325,000,000 of them were stamped and used for personal use.
In my research for this blog, I discovered a website called Postcrossing that allows people to send and receive postcards around the world. So, if you do not have friends or family members who would appreciate receiving postcards in the mail from you, you can send and receive postcards from eager postcard participants around the world. Not sure where to find postcards to send to your soon-to-be friends in distant lands? In Petoskey, you can find a wide variety of Petoskey-themed postcards at, you guessed it, Grandpa Shorter’s Gifts.
What better way to celebrate World Postcard Day this October 1 than by sending a loved one an actual postcard in the mail. Who doesn’t like to receive something in the mail that is not a bill? I know I do. We know that Grandpa Shorter’s Gifts is already your go-to location for a gift for any occasion. It is also your destination for Petoskey area themed postcards.
If you found this blog to be interesting, or if you are interested in learning more about this topic, click for a complete history of postcards. And, if you would like to find out more about Postcrossing, click here.
