Thursday, March 1, 2007

Finding that special postcard among millions

Welcome to Moody's Postcards, your source for vintage, collectible postcards! My name is Richard Moody and I started the company in 1986 and we have been accumulating "old" (otherwise known as "vintage collectible") postcards for twenty years. We specialize in United States view postcards but we also have thousands of antique foreign views, topical postcards and trade cards. Our goal is to exceed your expectations and provide a superior selection of the collectible postcard you are searching for.

Everybody files their postcards a little different and that can make it hard for you find that special postcard you are looking for. I want to make that easier for you and as an example, let's assume you collect postcards related to Teddy Roosevelt, our 26th President who took office September 14, 1901 to complete William McKinley's unexpired term. The postcard shown below is a Teddy Roosevelt postcard you can find here at Moody's Postcards. This is a postcard that could be filed under "Bears", "Teddy Roosevelt", "Fantasy", "Political" or even "Firearms". I placed it under bears because it is the dominant theme to me. To another collector or dealer, the Teddy Roosevelt connection might be the most important. This is one of the problems collectors and dealers alike face since many postcards can cover multiple categories. Another example would be a lighthouse at St. Simons Island Georgia which could be filed under "Georgia Views" or "Lighthouses" in Topics.

This is where a website and a good search engine is a lifesaver for both the dealer and collector. The dealer can be assured that the item will be found regardless of where it is listed IF he has described it adequately and IF the collector uses the search engine using the same terminology the dealer used to describe the card. The lesson here is be sure to make multiple searches using all the common ways you can think of that a dealer might describe what you are looking for. For the "lighthouse", you might also want to try "light house", for a "movie theater", you might also want to try "movie theatre" using the older spelling that is often used on postcards. Also, don't get too specific on your first search. If a general search returns too many possibilities, then you can be more specific based on what you see returned on the general search.

Search engines are different and some are better than others depending on what you are looking for. Most search engines return a page where the word or words you searched for are located. Then you have to scroll through the page to see if what you want is there. We use a different type of search engine on Moody's Postcards which will return each postcard listing that has the key word or words and the results are in the same format as they are listed on the website. This gives a much cleaner look and you only see listings that meet your search criteria. Be sure to go to Moody's Postcards and give it a try. It requires special coding for each postcard but I believe the results are worth the extra effort.