Ephemera

I consider myself well read, but I had never heard of that word until I started reading all the eBay blogs. It seems like such a fancy word for what it is, sort of putting your fig above my persimmon, if you will,  but a lot of people apparently collect “old paper,” though, and I mentally filed it away for future reference. 

On Saturday, however, it was the first word that popped into my mind when Ella mentioned a bunch of old postcards in another room while I was scanning some books at a moving sale.  Finishing up with the books, I followed Ella into the next room.  I was expecting a box of postcards, but was surprised when she showed me this:

 
The 3-foot tall plastic chest of drawers was full of postcards from everywhere, and, as can be seen in the picture, they wanted $5 per drawer, plus $5 for the extra box.  Some were newer, some were vintage, some were clean, and some had been written on and postmarked.  It had been a slow morning, and I was looking for something to redeem the day, and we were running out of sales.  So, I made the decision to take a chance on this ephemera.

For $20, I walked out with all the postcards, and they even threw in the little chest of drawers, which I figured would be useful even if the postcards didn’t pan out.

Since it was Ella’s “Birthday Weekend,” I didn’t a chance to spend a lot of time on the postcards, but did manage to go through the extra box and one drawer.  The post cards were sorted by location and/or subject, and I found postcards from all over the world, as well as special interest cards (i.e., military, Civil War, etc.).

I also found about 10+ vintage souvenir postcard folders, and was able to list a couple of them on Sunday.

This ephemera probably will be slow dime, as opposed to fast nickel sales, but that’s OK.  It’s going to take me forever to get it all listed anyway.

How was your weekend?