The School Teacher's Big Trip

On June 12, 1938 a school teacher from Minnesota boarded the S.S. Normandi in New York City. She was starting a 30 day trip to tour Europe. This was here first major trip from home. From the photos taken that day of her boarding the ship, she looked joyful, filled with smiles. She made a scrap book of her trip across Europe and I want to share this trip with you through the postcards she collected along the way.

She arrived in London on June 15, 1938 and stayed at the Regent Palace Hotel. In the coming days she and her friends would tour London’s grand’s sights. She collected more than a dozen postcards in her traveling around London. Here are four of them. The first two postcards are of the Westminster Abby. These historical postcards, standard size are black and white photographs with a flat finish.

A outside view of the Westminster Abby.   The inside view is of Henry VII's Chapel. 

The next two postcards are historical postcards, standard size; they are sepia photographs with a glossy finish. The glossy finish was a new type of postcard in the late 1930’s.

The top postcard is of Yeomen of the Guard also known as "Beefeaters"

The bottom postcard is the Tower of London

Flat or glossy, these 1930 postcards are treasures to view and store for another generation to appreciate. Our school teacher locked away a big piece of history on the 1^st stop of her European trip.

Movie Poster Postcards

When I was a boy sitting in the movie theater, there would be a certain music that would play,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye8KvYKn9-0

my little heart would skip a beat and the all kids in the movie theater would cheer. And man wearing suit and hat would walk across the screen, stop and shot his and screen would go red. Another James Bond movie was going.

                  

 Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, Diamonds Are Forever. So what does that have to do with post carding? I was in a little shop in New York City and on several racks there were postcards of movie posters. There were 100’s of them. I got so excited; I had never seen this type of postcards before. So this was the start of another chapter in my postcard collecting, movie poster postcards. I started collecting the James Bond movies poster postcards first and then moved onto what ever was there. The Bullitt, Dirty Harry, Frankenstein, the list is long. But there was a little problem with collecting these postcards. I could only find them in two places in New York City. I would find out that both places imported there postcards from Europe. I asked one of the owners what was going on with him being the only person having these postcards…he would just smile at me warmly. Then one day he explained. It was illegal to sell these types of postcards. I would then learn you weren't allowed to copy a movie poster of any movie poster in the USA. It was an infringement of copy rights. So I was purchasing black market postcards. I bought hundreds of them. When I want them now, I have to order them from London. But if you read the laws now, the copy rights for movie poster made between certain years have expired.

-  All movie posters created on or after January 1, 1978, are copyrighted.

-  Some movie posters created between 1923 and 1977 are copyrighted. Some have fallen into the public domain.

-  No movie posters created prior to 1923 are copyrighted. They are all in the public domain.

I will always love my collection of black market movie poster postcards, I chuckle. Who said post carding isn't exciting?