Vintage Halloween Postcards

Mostly what attracts me to vintage postcards are the beautiful graphics. I love vintage art. My tastes of late have been running more graphically and illustrator like. Vintage Halloween postcards offer all the fabulous graphics combined with a favorite fun holiday. The artwork runs between sweet to full on spooky.

Collecting vintage postcards is a fun and inexpensive hobby that offer the thrill of the hunt. At the turn of the century postcards where one of the main way people communicated and so postcard images were made to fit every possible theme. You'll find on this lens both original Victorian, Antique and Vintage Halloween postcards for purchase, as well as vintage Halloween postcard reproduction and tips on collecting and caring for your vintage postcards.

What You'll Find On This Page

Reproduction Halloween Vintage Postcard Books are scattered throughout this page.

Victorian, Antique & Vintage Halloween Postcards

Vintage Pumpkin Postcards

Vintage Witch Postcards

Vintage Black Cat Postcards

Print Your Own Vintage Halloween Postcards & Images

Also

The Origins Of Halloween

The History Of The Postcard or Postcard

The Symbolism Of Pumpkins In Halloween

The Symbolism Of Black Cats In Halloween

Tips On Starting A Vintage Postcard Collection

Tips for Caring For & Storage Of Your Vintage Postcard Collection.

The Origins of Halloween

Halloween is well known for it's parties, trick or treating, pumpkin carvings and visiting scary spooky or haunted places. It is said to be the day when the veil is lifted between the world of the living and that of the dead. It seems an odd basis for the holiday we now have that is all about fun for children and adults. But as all the scary movies blockbuster hits can attest. Being scared can also be fun.

The term Halloween is attested in the 16th century and represents a Scottish variant of the fuller All-Hallows-Even ("evening"), that is, the night before All Hallows Day. Although the phrase All Hallows is found in Old English (... mass-day of all saints), All-Hallows-Even is itself not attested until 1556.

Halloween is attributed to having it's roots in the Celtic Samhain festival which roughly translated means summer's end..

For more visit Halloween on wikipedia

It's not really hard to picture why black cats are associated with Halloween. Being black they are virtually invisible in the dark with the exception of their oddly glowing eyes. Cats are naturally creatures of the dark and their ability to see in the darkest of places is also just a bit freaky.

During the witch trials cats were associated with witches as their familiars and thus partners in evil and sorcery. Black cats also has a high degree of superstitions about bad luck being associated with them. Black cats have long been seen as conversing darkness and evil that goes well back into history.

Personally I love my black cats and have had nothing but good luck while owning them. And yes, daily they scatter back and forth across my path on the way to the barn for feeding time. Still even I enjoy their association with Halloween as you can see by my photo was I used for a Halloween card one year. Mojo my cat was good enough to pose for me.

Pumpkin carving was always my favorite part of Halloween .... well next to the candy that is.

Spooky is fun and since I come from an artistic family carving pumpkins was turned into a very creative and artful family activity. Creating scaey faces, pulling out the stringy "guts" and even cleaning and roasting the seeds. Halloween just wouldn't be the swame without the carving of the jack-o-lanterns.

Pumpkin carving or carving of the Jack-O'-Lanterns has it's origins in the turnip carving. It seems from a myth about a man called "Stingy Jack" who was after death was not wanted by God or the Devil so was set upon to roam the world with nothing but a burning coal in a turnip lantern.

Irish children would often carve turnips or potatoes to make lanterns for Halloween to keep Stingy Jack with his lantern or Jack O' Lantern away. After the great potato famine when Irish immigrants came to America, they found a more than suitable replacement for turnips carving in the pumpkin.

To read more on Stingy Jack and Halloween Pumpkins visit this website

Or Halloween on Wikipedia

A Few Things To Consider Before Beginning A Postcard Collection

Before you start with collecting anything in earnest doing a little research on the subject is always a good idea.t. A few things to understand before you begin collecting is what has value and how to evaluate a postcard's overall condition. Doing a little research on collecting postcards and their values will help you to spot the jewels amongst the rubble.

I personally collect for the joy of it and don't consider myself a serious postcard collector. Therefore the postcard's overall condition is less important to me than the lovely graphics or what kind of emotional response the vintage postcard triggers in me.

Things To Consider When It Determining The Quality Of A Vintage Postcard's

• Brightness and color of the graphics
• Tears, stains, smears or folds.
• The thickness and quality of the paper
• Look at the fine print for a publishing date

Narrow you focus by collecting only that which you most love. This doesn't mean you can only collect one thing but if you collect everything it may get a bit overwhelming. A Narrow focus produces a cohesive collection. For me I love vintage images, romantic and Victorian. I also love holidays, so things like Valentine's Day, Easter and Christmas were just natural and horses are my passion so I collect just about anything with horses on them..

My collecting vintage valentines started with being given my fathers childhood valentine collection. But prior to this I had already been interested in vintage images and had a good start on a vintage Christmas postcard collection and photo postcards of my childhood home town.

Good Places To Find Vintage Postcards

* On this lens (yes, I couldn't resist.)

* Estate Sales

* Garage Sales

* Ebay

* Flea Markets

* Antique Stores

And I've occasionally run across postcards at:

* Baseball card shows

* or coin and stamp shows

Caring For & Archival Storage Of Your Vintage Postcard Collection

In order to maintain your vintage postcard collection's value and visual properties it important to correctly store and display it. I've been a professional picture framer, having working in a museum and having been in the art industry for over 20 years I have a firm grasp on the importance of archival quality storage and containers. In order to preserve both the value and the appearance of your vintage postcards be sure to mount them or store them archivally using only acid free materials.

Tips For Storing Your Vintage Postcard Collection

* Remove Vintage Postcards From Old Albums Carefully Most albums and storage products that are over 15 years of age aren't archival and so you should them remove postcards from their mounting. Often they are glued down so be sure to go slowly so as not to tear, bend or crease your postcard. Also remove as much of the glue and paper that may yet be attached to your vintage postcard as it will continue to deteriorate your postcard.

* Use only acid free and archival boxes, albums and pages. Archival albums are very easy to come by these days and are cheap to buy.

* Make sure the slots in your album pages are sufficiently large enough to accommodate your postcard. Most postcards are roughly the same size as a 4x6 photograph. However vintage postcards do vary in size. Be sure that the postcard slides in with ease as too tight a fit may mean you damage your postcard while trying to make it fit.

* Archival photo corners are a good option for mounting your postcards. Do Not Uses Glues if at all possible.

* If framing your collection use conservation grade products. Using only archival materials (including the conservation glass) and do not hang in direct sunlight., in a bathroom or anywhere the environment compromises the integrity of the framing

Mona Majorowicz of Wild Faces Gallery

My name is Mona Majorowicz I am a professional artist who has been making my living selling my work for some time now. I am an animal artist, (meaning I paint critters) who works primarily in Oil Pastel or Water Soluble Pencil.

I own and operate Wild Faces Gallery with my husband Mike in a small rural town in Iowa. There we sell my original artwork and prints, as well as do quality custom framing and offer Giclee printing for other artists as well as for ourselves. I have over 20 years in ate art and framing industry both as a business owner and as a working artist.

I maintain a blog called Fur In The Paint, as well as write a regular column for the equestrian magazine Apples 'N Oats about painting horses.

Animals are my passion and art is how I chose to express it.