The news that the Postcard Collector Magazine, the last remaining forum of our Postcard Community’s communication vehicles, was to cease publication came suddenly as a shock to the entire Postcard Community in September of 2008. Until then, it was generally felt that the internet would be the more natural media for communication but many media organizations, individuals, and especially older postcard collectors were still resisting the new electronic media. Instead of changing to the electronics media, FW publications (the publisher of the Postcard Collector Magazine) chose to pass the baton to their sister print magazine publication, The Antique Trader.
Ebay had already become the primary source for the buying and selling of postcards as proven by their daily statistics (truly a new national craze). There were also several other trends, which we see as being part of the electronic revolution, including fewer postcard shows, shortening of the 2 and 3 day shows to 1 and 2 day shows, serious concerns about decreased attendance at shows, an increase in the use of electronic postcard auctions, and a growing use of electronic payments. Collectors, Suppliers, Postcard Clubs, Writers, and Dealers were all asking, “What is going on in our hobby?”
OUR PLAN
We decided to develop a FREE, comprehensive internet site that would be devoted exclusively to Postcard Collectors and the study of Deltiology. We are committed to utilizing the emerging electronic technologies in developing this new communications vehicle with numerous opportunities for participatory involvement by collectors and a cooperative style approach to enhance the POSTCARD COLLECTOR’s enjoyment of Deltiology by providing access to a wide variety of resources. We have organized our pages to provide a maximum variety of opportunities for collectors to: Buy or Sell Postcards; obtain Basic Information about Postcards; read articles and news about Deltiology in The Postcard Journal, and communicate with other collectors and experts in the field through our Questions & Answers section.
We will continue to remind our readers (with our bottom of the page statement) of OUR MISSION: To enhance the postcard collector’s enjoyment of Deltiology by providing
information, education, & access; all in one place on the internet.
The technical side of this project involved many organizational components, a wide number of contributors, and about 3 months of intensive site development work, and some working capital. We carefully chose GoDaddy.com to host the site and we used their "Website Tonight" website development plan primarily because of the 24/7 availability of their remarkable technical staff. Although we were conversant with Front Page web design, we found the navigation system, links, and theme designs from Website Tonight to be superior and believe it to be more stable than Front Page. We thank GoDaddy.com for their service to us and to the wide postcard community.
We went online on January 7 , 2009 and hope to grow quickly and welcome your comments, suggestions, and support.
Our National Postcards Clubs Coordinator joined us on January 14, 2009 and has been very active. He revised the presentation of club pages from a national list to a more useful listing, by State. He is currently offering to assist those clubs that need a web presence and advising other clubs about our special events postings available to all on our Postcard Clubs page
We submitted our site to Google and other search engines for their evaluation on January 15th and were fully evaluated and remarkably posted by the Google search engines on January 19th. We have seen a sharp increase in viewership since that time, with increases in our readership. We also appreciate the collector to collector endorsement of our site as "the place for postcarders" as shown on our home page marquee message.
We are truly pleased to welcome you to our wonderful world of postcard collecting. Please come back and visit us as often as you wish.