Almost as Good as Actual Farm Equipment

Dallas Petersen of Villisca, Iowa, is sold on postcards. He has
been collecting for five years and has 115 Allis cards, 90
miscellaneous cards and 18 farm equipment cards. He also has cards
to trade. “I have 14 pieces of large Allis equipment, but cards
don’t take up much room,” he says. “And when you find a different
card, it doesn’t take a trailer to get it home.”

What kind of postcards are you going to find? In American
Advertising Postcards: Sets and Series, 1890-1920, by Frederic
H. Megson, the following categories are identified as being among
the earliest of farm equipment and farm-related cards: steel fences
by American, Corbett, DeKalb, Pittsburgh and Union companies; horse
blankets by Ayres and Phoenix companies; horseshoes by the Phoenix
company; fertilizer by Buffalo, German Kall, Hubbard and Royster
companies; cream separators by Empire, Melotte and Sharples; gas
engines by Brown, Bruce-MacBeth, Huber and Aultman & Taylor;
machinery/equipment by Hart-Parr, International, Rumely and Case;
and road rollers by Kelly Springfield and Monarch. You’ll also find
a lot of single cards from the years leading up to 1920.

After the 1920s, when Allis-Chalmers bought out Rumely,
Allis-Chalmers continued Rumely’s postcard promotions. That period
also is the time when John Deere, Ford, Minneapolis-Moline and
other manufacturers began producing postcards. Since no one has
documented the cards available, surprises are found every time you
look.

Brad Carlson, Janesville, Minn., has a varied collection
numbering more than 2,000 cards. Brad’s dad has been an
Allis-Chalmers collector since Brad was a boy. About 12 years ago,
Brad’s father got into Allis postcards. Five years ago, Brad
started looking for cards for his father … but he didn’t limit
himself to Allis. His father, though, remains a specialist. “To my
dismay, he was not interested in them if they were not
Allis-Chalmers,” he says. “I found many interesting tractor cards
of other brands, and it sort of took off from there.”

Where do you find postcards? If you have limitless time and
energy, they can be found at antique malls and shops, flea markets,
auctions and garage sales. They’re also available at online auction
sites. The best place to find them, however, is at a postcard show.
You’ll find dates and locations of shows on flyers posted at
antique shops and malls. A typical show features 10 to 75 dealers
who handle nothing but postcards. Some carry a large stock of
cards, as many as 50,000.

At postcard shows, each dealer’s card inventory is carefully
organized. Save time by searching specific categories, say, farm
equipment, or farm-related headings such as specific manufacturer
or item name. Visit with the dealer; tell him what you’re looking
for, and ask him where he files cards in that category. Since all
dealers have their own filing systems, this will save you time and
frustration. Most dealers, if they’re not busy, are glad to help
you.

Little information is available on postcard press runs, series
components or distribution methods. Most of the equipment
manufacturers that produced cards have merged or gone out of
business, and if records pertaining to card production ever
existed, which is unlikely, they are unknown of today. Equipment
manufacturers understandably focused on promoting their products,
not on recording data relating to promotional efforts.

Once you begin your collection, start a checklist of the cards
you buy. It’s a useful reference at shows, and helps prevent
duplicate purchases. Use a three-ring “D” binder to store and
display your cards in clear plastic, four-pocket pages. The plastic
pages protect your cards from damage. Don’t try to economize and
put two cards in one pocket: There is a lot of information on the
back of each card, and it’s easy to see when you put just one card
in a pocket. Messages written by the sender can be entertaining and
informative, and printed information (such as artist, photographer,
printer and more) is also of interest to the collector. Many cards
within a series are numbered; you may want to see how many of them
you can find.

In the 35 years that I’ve been a collector/dealer, I find that
almost every postcard is a collectible to someone. Price has a lot
to do with which card is purchased. If the price is too high, be
patient. You may worry that you’ll never have a second chance at
that card. That’s the chance you take, but remember, prices vary
from dealer to dealer. Most cards start out at $2 to $3; rare cards
in mint condition can sell for hundreds of dollars. Early steam or
gas tractor cards, in particular, command a good price, mainly
because of the scarcity of the card.

What do I collect? Rumely. And I have four cards. Thirty-five
years and only four cards? Yes, but they’re really neat
cards …

– John Cole is a 35-year postcard collector and dealer from
Minnesota, and a contributor to Barr’s Postcard
News.