CELEBRATING OUR 50th ANNIVERSARY IN 2027. An association over 250 dedicated deltiologists, we are admirers and collectors of vintage postcards. While our home base is in Toronto, Ontario, Canada our membership hails from all across Canada, and some from the United States.
The Toronto Postcard Club began in September 1977 when ten postcard-collecting enthusiasts met in Agincourt, in Scarborough. Since those early days, the club’s contribution to deltiology in Canada has been significant. Beginning in 1980, our magazine CardTalk has featured hundreds of stories with postcard themes. A digital archive of CardTalk has been added to a “members only” section of this website. In addition, for 45 years and counting, the Club has hosted an ANNUAL SHOW and SALE where members and dealers meet to buy, sell, and trade vintage postcards.
1897 Canada Postal Card
The POSTCARD was created over 155 years ago in 1869 taking its now familiar “divided back” form, (the image on one side, message/address on the other) around 1904 in Canada. The postcard was a new, quick, way to communicate. Cameras, photography and photo processing were new, expensive and not readily available to laypersons. Long distance telecommunications were also expensive and limited. Mail service, however, was timely and in many communities occurred twice a day. Postcards cost just a penny and needed a 1¢ stamp for domestic mail, or a 2¢ stamp to send internationally. In the “Golden Age” of postcards, beginning about 1902 through World War I, the number of postcards collected and exchanged globally, was in the hundreds of millions, if not billions. In Canada alone, tens of millions of postcards were being purchased, collected and/or posted annually. Postcards were the “social media” of the times!
Why do we collect vintage postcards? Because they are fascinating artifacts and pieces of art, providing an often unique glimpse into Canadian and world history – from mundane and personal moments to momentous social and political events. Aspects of postal history, social history, early photography, and postcard production intrigue the postcard collector. We study the different eras of postcards, the different kinds of postcards, the impacts of international postal regulations, early Canadian photographers and publishers, and more.
Many of us tend to gravitate to postcards that have a connection to our lives: home towns, occupations, sports, genealogy, places we’ve visited or other interests that we have (e.g. the history of the military, railroads, movies or fashion). There are postcards of virtually every town, village and hamlet in Canada, of military events such as World Wars I and II, sports and leisure, domestic life, agriculture, automobiles, aircraft, religion, business and industry, disasters, politics, labour, the North, the opening of Canada’s West, Indigenous life and almost anything else you can think of. The vast numbers of “real photo postcards” (RPPCs) that are actual photographs, produced explicitly for use as postcards often of stunning quality and depicting rarely-seen places and events, are a particularly valued segment of the hobby. The message side is often an exquisite example of cursive writing. The Internet has made in-depth research into the stories of individual postcards, their producers and their users possible in a way that it never was previously. From the postcard “Golden Age” to the modern age, postcards have evolved to reflect changes in the world.
JOIN THE TORONTO POSTCARD CLUB!
It’s not just a Toronto thing! Members with interests in all parts of Canada, the U.S. and the world are part of our club. We regularly interact with other Canadian and U.S. postcard clubs as well, all of which expands our knowledge – of postcards themselves and of the things they depict. Become a member and/or attend one of our ZOOM meetings as a guest. Or go to a postcard show to see for yourself why postcard collecting is such a compelling hobby.
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