Hobby - A Picture Perfect Theme

I know I'm breaking one of the first rules here, but I couldn't resist this postcard from South Africa. I think a few of my photography friends can relate ; )

Deltiology...

The hobby isn't mine, but Tatiana's. It started when she was being homeschooled. As a social science/geography project, she had a goal to collect at least one card from every country and one per state from the larger countries. The project involved writing and organisational skills too. We both thoroughly enjoyed it. In fact, we enjoyed the project as a family. A huge wall map marked where the postcards were from. The highlight of our day was visiting the post office to see if another card had arrived. Tat's collection is now huge and we've slowed down with the collection somewhat, but looking through the albums is enough to revive interest.



Unlike regular deltiologists, we collected cards of all shapes and sizes. At first, we prefered the cards to be written on and stamped. It made it more personal. An added bonus was if the person wrote a little about themselves and their country. Later, we went through a phase of preferring mint postcards in envelopes, as the post office was damaging them. The photo above is just a tiny sample of her collection. She now has 717, excluding those that aren't sorted into folders. There are some very old postcards in there now, from the early 1900's and some really unique ones, like the emboidered Spanish one pictured here and one with a sample of South African beach sand. One last photo ; ) This just to show how much work went into the collection. Each postcard is set onto the page with cutouts - no tape or glue involved, so as not to damage the card. Alongside, Tat would write details about the card, where it is from and who sent it with any extra information if there is any.



I was just thinking that the postcard collection is much like a Picture Perfect by snail mail. What a thought : )