Antique Postcard and Paper Show

 “Postcard Store, St. Stephen, N.B.”, Photo Courtesy Penobscot Marine Museum

Antique Postcard and Paper Show Coming to Searsport Town Hall June 29th

20 June 2013 - Penobscot Marine Museum is hosting The Maine 2013 Antique Paper Show: Postcards & Paper Collectibles on Saturday, June 29th from 8:30 am to 3:30 pm at Union Hall (Town Hall), 1 Union Street in Searsport.  The  show will feature over a dozen exhibitors and vendors with thousands of vintage postcards, old maps, paper ephemera, and historic photographs.  At the show the exhibitors will buy, sell and trade old postcards, maps, calendars and other paper collectables.  Free appraisals of your own antique postcards and paper will be offered from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm.

Penobscot Marine Museum will be displaying postcards and photo prints from its extensive collection of the Eastern Illustrating and Publishing Company, an early 20th-century Belfast postcard publisher.  According to Kevin Johnson, the Museum’s photography archivist, “The area’s tourists in the early 20th century were prodigious correspondents. Writing and sending postcards and letters to friends and relatives back home was an almost daily ritual for summer visitors.”

Postcard collecting has been a popular hobby since they were introduced to the world in the early 1900’s. Collectors, known as deltiologists, often focus their collections on specific geographic locations or subjects like post offices or train stations. Cards that sold two for 5 cents a hundred years ago are now worth hundreds of dollars in some instances depending on their rarity or more importantly the desire of a collector to own it.

Admission to the show  is $2 and if one also visits the Museum $2 will be deducted from the admission price.  Call 207-548-2529 ext. 210 for more information.  www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org