What is a vintage postcard? What is an antique postcard? As the hobby of collecting old postcards (and old paper ephemera) grows, this questions grows in importance. What makes it difficult is that, across other hobbyist niches, the definitions of both antique and vintage differ. Cars, for instances, have a much older definition for what consitutes a vintage car verse what constitutes a classic car, but for clothing, what constitutes vintage is much, much younger than what constitutes antique.

For postcards, the major delineation is between antique and vintage- antique postcards are postcards that are 100 years old (or older, where as a vintage postcard is merely a postcard that is 20 years old or older. Beyond these definitions, there are also period era terms used to describe postcards and paper ephemeras at large- those being “retro” 1970s to 1990s, “modern” 1990s to current day, mid-century “1950s to 1960s”, and pre-war, being prior to 1939.

In addition to this, there are also reproductions and reprints, reproductions being earlier postcards taht were reproduced, often times with slightly different features (an antique embossed postcard being reproduced without the embosses features, for example) and reprint, which is a direct copy and is often of lower quality than a reproduction.