As I’ve shifted my collecting focus to vintage racing and (some) football, it’s become apparent that I need to think outside the box. In both sports, there isn’t a ton out there from before 1948.
On the racing side, I’ve opened up to postcards. I attended a postcard show last month and my eyes were opened to a whole new world. I never knew so much was available or that there was so much interest. I discovered a lot of vintage Indianapolis Motor Speedway ones and even picked up a few. At some point, I will post them. However, this one was an eBay pickup. I am delighted with it and only paid $2 (INCLUDING the shipping).
The day of the postcard show, I learned that it’s somewhat easy to put post cards into a time frame that they were produced. I plan to do more in the future, but a quick interwebz search landed me on the Smithsonian Institute Postcard History page. This is a “Linen” card, placing it’s production as somewhere between 1930 and 1945.
With our sports cards we want the “mint,” as perfect card as we can get. What I discovered is that with postcards, I actually prefer used ones. As a newbie in postcards, it’s nice to see a postmark date. While that doesn’t tell you an actual production year, it can narrow it down.
I’ve decided to start a collection of IMS postcards from over the years. I love the ones with images like this, where you can see the entire track. The ability to also date them will provide a look at how the track and Speedway, Indiana itself has grown over the last 100+ years.
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