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Items of this page	postcards pages
Introduction	The Hague (ca 250 postcards)
Stamps on old postcards	Locomotives and trains (ca 300 postcards)
Postcards
The age of a postcard
The value of postcards
Copyright

Introduction
Because there're a lot of postcards at this site, I've divided them into two themes: The first theme is the Dutch city  The Hague, the second theme is Trains. Every theme is also divided into several items. 

Stamps on old postcards
You usely wouldn't find rare stamps on old postcards. The reason for this is that postcards use the standard stamps. Besides: from a lot of old postcards people already removed the stamp.

Postcards
First of all: It's fun to watch the pictures. You can see how much the world has been changed. Old postcards are from cardboard with a black and white picture. These cards are in sepia (a beige colour) The first photo's are static, because you had to stand still for a photo! Later postcards became thinner and they could photograph moving objects as well.

In the beginning black and white photo's were coloured by hand. When you have a serie of coloured postcards, the colour can of one serie can be different, because during the printing the printer had to refill the colours. There're also reprints of old postcards and it's somethimes difficult to see if you have an original postcard or a reprint.

The age of a postcard
How can you estimate the age of a postcard? First of all there's the photo or picture at the front of the card. When you see an airplain, the card obviously isn't from before 1900, because at that time the airplaine didn't exist. When you see a color photo at the front, it's a relative new card. When it's a hand coloured card, it's obviously an older card.

Very old cards are thick. A lot of old cards also have rounded corners. Later the edges somethimes became waved.  

Besides of the front of the postcard, you can also get a lot of information from the backside of the card. First of all there's the stamp. Verry often you can read the date of the postmark. When you can't read the postmark, the value on the stamp gives you also information. A stamp with 0,39 eurocent on it must be verry recent!

Somethimes there's no stam anymore at the back. Even then you can get some information, because in history people had a different way of writing.

The value of postcards
I'm not an export or trader, so I can't tell much about the values of postcards.

Postcards with a large issue are of course less valuable then rare cards. But beside the volume, also the theme is important. Well-known themes are: airplaines, ships, trains, boats, wedding, cloths, cities etc. Photo's of buildings that are destroyed are more valuable then buildings that still exists.

There's not a real fixed price fore postcards. When you own an old restaurant and somebody does have an old postcard of it, you would buy it for a price somebody else would consider to much. When you already have this card, you wouldn't be intrested in another one. So what you want to pay for a  postcards is personal. Usually old cards are more expensive, but younger cards that are rare could be more expensive then older cards with a large issue.

Copyright
At the back of some postcards I saw the copyright sign. This means you can't publish them and therefore I've written the name of this website on it. All cards that are published on this site can be bought, so this is a catalogue of items that are sold.

When you want to buy a card, you pay by Dutch bank. You can inform me of your intrest by sending  a card to

Guus von Scheven
Graaf Janlaan 109
3818 DX Amersfoort
Holland

Do mention the name of the postcard you're intrested in (see name of the picture) and do mention the price you want to pay. (Banking costs are your's) Also mention your e-mail adress and I will send you my counter offer.