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Hi David,
I was poking through an abandoned cottage on a lake in Maine and
found this private mailing card beneath a stack of very old and very dirty
newspapers. As you can see from the images, it is a very early International
Tailoring Company advertising card that apparently was distributed at
the 1901 Pan American Exposition at Buffalo, New York. The detail is
amazing as the card depicts catalog fabric samples along with an Exposition
view of the Temple of Music. Who would order tailored clothing via a post-
card? I suspect it may be quite rare as I’ve not found a duplicate depicted
in any deltiological reference book. I’ve had exposition collectors tell me that
it could be valuable. I am interested in knowing more – not just about its
value, but about the early use of postal mailing cards at expositions to order
goods by mail.
VR, Frank Pierce, Newburyport MA

Hello Frank, and thank you for the postcard submission. This is a
great piece of Deltiology (The Study and Collecting of Postcards) to
appraise. And by the way, the next time you go poking through an old
abandon cottage in Maine, please call me – I want to go with you!

The Early Days of Mail Order
Several books have been written on the collecting of postcards, but
here is a simplified and limited explanation for the emergence of the
postcard and the soon-to-be-overloading genre of Direct Mail. In the
late 19th century, the US Postal Service underwent changes that led to
the standardization of the mail delivery processes.
With mail-order houses such as Montgomery Ward and Sears
Roebuck & Co wanting to sell directly to their customers in their
homes, mass mailings of catalogs, etc. started plugging up the delivery
process used with the then-outdated system. The postcard was an easy
and inexpensive way to summarize a message, address, stamp, and send.

The Card
The first “Postal Card” was non-pictorial. The front of the card was
blank and designed for the sender to write a message and the back
was used for addressing and placing the stamp. The US Postal Service
printed the first postal cards in 1870 with a preprinted postage stamp
on the back. By 1898 it was deemed that the U.S. postal service had a
monopoly on the postcard delivery business and Congress passed the
private mailing card act and lowered the sending rate down to one
penny. This created a massive public demand for and use of postcards
being sent through the U.S. Mail.

The Color and Materials
Picture private mailing cards were very popular with an image on
the front; half of the back was used for a message with the other half
used for addressing and placing a stamp.
In the 1890s, the photochrom color picture postcard was in vogue.
“Photochrom was the process for producing colorized images from
black-and-white photographic negatives via the direct photographic
transfer of a negative onto lithographic printing plates.” By 1910
the Photochrom process was disregarded for the more popular offset
lithography format that allowed the mass-production of postcards with
bright, colorful pictures. Then in the 1940s, Eastman Kodak developed
a quality photo postcard.
To add to the many reasons postcards are so collectible, they were
also made from a variety of cardstocks, metals, wood, leather, and silk.
With the seemingly limitless pictures and designs, it is easy to under-
stand why they are so collectible today.
photochrom private mailing cards, the person who collects early adver-
The International Tailoring Company tising, and lastly the person who collects exposition or World’s Fair
Your picture private mailing card has a quadruple draw being items. Your postcard is advertising “The International Tailoring
desired by the person who collects early U.S. Postal Service items, early Company sample fall and winter outfit” and to get this sample outfit,

40 Journal of Antiques and Collectibles