Old postcards have been reprinted for decades. Some reprints were made openly, as souvenirs or decorations, and are clearly labeled. Others were made the same way but have since lost their context, turning up in boxes and online listings next to genuine cards with nothing to say they are new. A smaller number were made to deceive.
None of this means you should be nervous about buying old postcards. The vast majority of cards sold as vintage are exactly that, because most old postcards are simply not worth the trouble of faking. But it does pay to know the tells, especially when you are looking at the kinds of cards that get copied most. This post walks through what I check, roughly in the order I check it.
Why reproductions exist at all
It helps to understand where copies come from, because the source often explains the clue.
- Souvenir and gift reprints. Museums, historical societies, gift shops and publishers have long reissued popular old images as new postcards. These are usually honest on the day they are sold, and many carry a line on the back saying so.
- Decorative copies. Old holiday images in particular are reprinted for crafts, scrapbooks and seasonal decorating.
- Photographic copies of real photo cards. Anyone with a camera and a darkroom, or later a scanner and a printer, could copy a real photo postcard. Some of these were made for family members who wanted their own copy of a hometown view.
- Deliberate fakes. These are the rarest, and they tend to cluster around cards that already sell well.
A reproduction is not a bad thing in itself. A labeled modern reprint of a beloved old view is a perfectly nice object. The problem only arises when a copy is sold, or mistaken, as an original.
Start with the back
The back is where most reproductions fail, so I look there first.
Modern printer marks and barcodes
Anything on the back that did not exist when the card was supposedly made is an immediate answer. Watch for:
- A barcode, a website address, an email address, or a telephone number with a modern area code.
- A copyright line with a recent year, or a line such as "reproduced from an original in the collection of..."
- A ZIP code in a publisher's address. ZIP codes were introduced in the United States in 1963, so an address with a five-digit ZIP on a card that claims to be from 1910 is not from 1910.
- A recycling symbol, a modern printing company's logo, or a line crediting the photograph to a library or archive.
Some reprints say "reproduction," "facsimile," "reprint" or "replica" in small type, sometimes tucked along an edge where a trimmer or a dishonest seller might remove it. Check every edge.
Does the back match the era of the front?
Old postcard backs changed in step with postal rules, which is the backbone of dating an old postcard. A reproduction often pairs an early image with a back that does not fit it. A view that ought to have an undivided back (the address-only back used in the United States until 1907) printed on a card with a modern, generic divided back is a warning. So is a blank back where an original would have had a printed design.
Look closely at the stamp box too. Original publishers printed their own stamp boxes, often with their names or trademarks in them. Real photo paper makers did the same, and those boxes are dated well enough that I cover them in the real photo postcard guide. A reprint may have no stamp box, a box that looks too crisp and clean, or a box copied from an old card but slightly blurred, because it was reproduced along with everything else.
Copied backs
Some copies reproduce the back as well as the front, postmark, stamp, handwriting and all. These are the ones that can fool people at a glance. Up close, the stamp is flat and printed rather than a separate piece of paper, there is no ink indentation from the pen, and the postmark has no impression in the card. Tilt the card under a light. An original that was mailed usually shows the faint dent of a cancelling machine and the slight shine of real ink. A printed copy of a postmark lies perfectly flat.
Check the size
Standard American postcards of the early twentieth century were about 3.5 by 5.5 inches. Plenty of originals vary a little, because cutting was not perfectly uniform, and some real photo cards were trimmed by hand. But reproductions are often noticeably off: a bit too large, a bit too small, or in a proportion no original postcard used.
The larger 4 by 6 inch "continental" size became common for glossy cards much later. An image from 1905 on a 4 by 6 card is almost certainly a modern reissue, unless it is clearly marked as such and makes no pretense otherwise.
Measure, don't guess. A small ruler belongs in any postcard kit.
Feel the paper
Old card stock has a character that is hard to fake.
- Weight and stiffness. Many early cards are on a fairly heavy, slightly soft board. Modern copies are often on thinner, slicker stock, or on very stiff, uniform board.
- Surface. A lot of reprints have a glossy coating that early lithographed cards simply did not have. Linen-era cards have an embossed cloth texture you can feel with a fingertip, which I describe in the linen postcards guide. A "linen" with no texture is suspect.
- Brightness. Very bright white paper that glows under an ultraviolet light is a strong hint of modern manufacture. Optical brighteners became widespread in paper production after the middle of the twentieth century. Older paper usually looks dull or creamy under UV. An inexpensive UV flashlight is a useful tool, though it is one clue among many, not a verdict on its own.
- Aging. Genuine age shows unevenly: a little toning at the edges, soft corners, a faint album mark. Artificial "aging" with tea, coffee or heat tends to look uniform, or to sit on top of the image rather than in the paper.
Use a magnifier on the printing
This is the most reliable test I know for printed cards, and it costs very little. A 10x loupe or a phone camera's zoom will do.
What originals look like
Many of the finest early color cards were made by chromolithography and related processes, often in Germany. Under magnification these show an irregular, grainy texture, layers of flat color, and sometimes fine stipple patterns. Embossed cards show raised areas that you can see and feel from the back.
Other originals were printed with halftone screens, and those do have dots. Halftone printing was used on postcards for most of the twentieth century, so dots alone do not prove a card is new. What matters is which dots, and whether they make sense for the card in front of you.
What modern copies look like
Most reprints are made by modern four-color offset printing or by digital printers. Under a loupe, four-color offset shows dots in cyan, magenta, yellow and black, laid down at different angles so that they form tiny ring-like "rosettes." Digital printing shows a fine scatter of colored specks. When you see a crisp modern rosette pattern across an image that ought to be a chromolithograph, you are looking at a copy of a picture, not the original printing.
A related tell: a copy of an old printed card often shows two patterns at once. You can see the original card's texture, photographed and flattened, with the new printing's dots on top. Original printing never shows a "picture of a texture."
Embossing and gilding
Many early holiday and greeting cards were embossed and some had metallic gold or silver details. A flat reprint shows the shadows of embossing printed into the image but has no raised surface. Copied gold is often a flat yellow or brown ink rather than a true metallic. Turn the card over: on a genuine embossed card you can usually see the reverse of the embossing from the back.
Real photo copies
Real photo postcards are photographs printed directly on postcard-backed photographic paper. Because there is no printing press involved, there are no printing dots, and the image tone runs smoothly from light to dark. That is the first thing to check. If a "real photo" shows a regular dot pattern under magnification, it is a printed reproduction of a photograph, not a real photo at all.
Photographic copies are harder, since they are also real photographs. Signs to look for:
- Loss of sharpness. Each generation of copying softens the image. Fine detail, such as lettering on a storefront, the bricks in a wall or the leaves on a tree, goes mushy. Compare a suspected copy with another example of the same view if you can find one.
- Increased contrast. Highlights blow out to blank white and shadows block up to solid black. Copies often look harsher than originals.
- Copied flaws. Scratches, dust spots, or the edge of an original card's border may be visible inside the image, because they were photographed along with it.
- The wrong paper for the era. The stamp box printed on the back of photographic paper is a strong clue to when the paper was made. A view that should date from about 1910 on paper whose stamp box points to a much later period is either a later print from the original negative or a copy.
That last point needs care. A photographer might print more cards from the same negative years later. Those are genuine old photographs, just not first printings. I describe them as later prints when the evidence points that way rather than calling them reproductions.
For comparison, one of my own cards is a real photo captioned "The Old Mill, Williamsville, Vt." It has a divided back with a CYKO stamp box, a paper brand used from about 1904 into the 1920s. Under magnification the image is continuous tone, with no dots, which is what a real photo should show. The stamp box narrows the window but cannot give an exact year by itself, which is why I date that card c. 1907 to the 1920s rather than pretending to more precision.
Subjects that tend to be copied
From what collectors and dealers report, reproductions cluster around subjects that are popular, decorative or valuable. I would be extra careful with:
- Holiday cards, especially early Halloween and Christmas designs, which are widely reprinted for decorating. My Halloween postcards guide and the post on early Christmas postcards cover what originals typically look like.
- Popular artist-signed designs, whose images are well known and attractive. See the artist-signed postcards guide for the genuine article.
- Advertising cards and other images with strong graphic appeal.
- Famous people, events and disasters, where a card's subject alone drives interest.
- Real photo views of well-known places that have become iconic in local history.
This is not a list of cards to avoid. It is a list of cards where it is worth spending an extra minute with the loupe.
Watch the context, too
Sometimes the clue is not on the card but around it.
- A stack of identical "originals." A dealer who has ten pristine copies of a scarce early card should make you curious. Old cards survive in ones and twos, with different wear.
- Condition that is too perfect. Old cards can survive in beautiful condition, but a card with bright white edges, flawless corners and no sign of a century of handling deserves a closer look.
- Vague descriptions. "Old postcard" or "vintage style" in a listing can be a polite way of avoiding the word "reproduction."
- A front-only photo. If a seller shows only the front of a card, ask to see the back. A back is the single most useful piece of evidence, and an honest seller will be happy to show it. This is one reason I scan both sides of every card I list, as I explain on my about page.
A practical checklist
When I look at a card I am unsure about, I run through this list:
- Back first. Any barcode, website, ZIP code, modern copyright, or the word "reproduction," "reprint" or "facsimile"? Check every edge.
- Back design. Does it fit the era of the image? Is there a stamp box, and does it match a known publisher or paper maker?
- Size. Measure it. Close to 3.5 by 5.5 inches for early cards?
- Paper. Weight, stiffness, surface finish. Glossy where it should be matte? No texture on a linen?
- UV light. Does the paper glow bright blue-white?
- Magnify the printing. Chromolithographic grain, or a modern rosette or digital speckle? Any "photographed texture" under the dots?
- Embossing and gold. Raised from the front and visible from the back, or printed flat?
- For real photos. No printing dots? Sharp fine detail? Paper and stamp box consistent with the date?
- Postmark and stamp. Real ink, real impression, a separate stamp? Or flat and printed?
- Context. Multiples, too-perfect condition, vague wording, missing back photo?
No single answer settles it. A card with one oddity may be fine. A card that fails three or four checks is almost certainly not what it claims to be.
When you're still not sure
Some cards stay ambiguous. When that happens:
- Compare it with a known original of the same card, if one can be found in a collection, a library's digital archive, or a reference book.
- Ask experienced collectors. Postcard clubs and collector forums are generous with their knowledge, and a clear photo of both sides plus a close-up of the printing will get you a long way.
- Price it as what you can prove. If you can't confirm it is original, don't pay an original's price for it. The guide on what makes a postcard valuable explains why authenticity sits underneath every other factor.
Learning the feel of the real thing
The best defense against reproductions is simply handling a lot of genuine cards. After a while, your hands notice the weight and texture of old stock before your eyes find the evidence. Inexpensive common cards are perfect for this, since they let you learn what the real thing feels like without risking much. If you are just starting out, my post on starting a postcard collection on a budget suggests ways to build that experience.
Every card I list as vintage is an original from its own era, and when there is any doubt about a detail, the description says so. That seems to me the only fair way to handle old paper, and it is the standard worth expecting from anyone you buy from.