The lure of keeping history close to home through old postcards

ABOVE: An old postcard for sale for $25 on ebay.

Susanna Freymark

Demand is everything. If more people want an item, the more valuable it becomes — especially when there is only one of them.

On eBay, an old postcard of a Kyogle town view is up for sale for $25. And that’s just the starting point as people can bid more on the postcard. The highest bidder gets the item.

The seller of the old postcard is in Rydalmere in Sydney.

Another postcard of Lismore’s Woodlark St is up for $15.

John James Maloney buys old postcards because he wants the local history to return home.

“Often they are in UK, USA, Germany, Romania.”

I’ve bought postcards of  Casino, Coraki, Evans Head and Lismore, John said.

The most John has paid for a postcard is $800 for some of the glass plate negatives from Rose Postcard Company earlier this year.

“This week I bought the official program of the Queen’s visit to Northern Rivers in 1954 from a dealer in Gosford,” John said.

“I upload it to the Good Old Days history group on Facebook.

“It is insatiable — the demand for posts about local history is huge.”

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