Customer Reviews

Children's Greeting Cards: Collecting Vintage (Identification & Values (Collector Books))

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I bought this book after I accidentally threw

away the last valentine card my late father gave

me in 1967,I was absolutely heartbroken.Since I

would probably never be able to ever find that

card ever again I decided to purchase this

book as the same artist who designed my old card

was featured in it.It truly is a lovely book, the

artists really took great care in designing greeting

cards back then (1930s-60s), which you can't say for

the cards of today. :(

I don't collect these cards but I do collect books about popular visual culture and for my interest Linda McPherson's title is a treat. Each page has been four and eight cards (though mostly four) so I guess there might be about a thousand throughout the book. I think the Contents with eighteen sections probably covers every type of greeting for children. What's left out is most likely in Miscellaneous with six sections including four cards with a real button on the front, ten cut to irregular shapes, five that had playable records.

The Holiday Season provides a rich selection with thirty-four Santa cards, nineteen with Frosty the Snowman, seventeen for Rudolph and thirty-five general Christmas and snow themes. The chapter on Characters shows that the card companies don't miss a trick with Popeye, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Dagwood and a fascinating thirteen Campbell's Soup kids on can-shaped cards. Though they are not cards in the conventional sense the Hallmark Dolls from the Land of Make Believe are pure enchantment and the most valuable in the book ($8 to $45 each)

I was a bit disappointed that there isn't a bit more about the leading card companies from past decades, their most popular greeting cards for children, print runs and more. The actual Introduction is on two pages and is a rather generalized overview of card collecting. The book's design and printing is fine and so much better than similar collector books put out by Schiffer. Each card is captioned with a date, size, sometimes the publisher and finally the rough price variation.

Linda McPherson has edited a book mainly for collectors but I think its good enough to be enjoyed by anyone who wants to see some lovely examples of greeting card nostalgia and you might have the thrill of seeing a card that was sent to you back then.

***SEE SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.

It's not that this is an unattractive book - if you like old greeting cards the photos are nicely done but really that's all. Anyone with much of a collection could have come up with a similar set of cards and virtually all of them are very similarly valued. It was really a case of "here are some pretty cards - you probably have lots like these - they're pretty much worth the same thing whatever you have..."