The Last Days of the Postcard?

Somewhere in my house, deep in a closet or the bottom of a cardboard box, resides just about every postcard I’ve ever received—from a friend’s family trip to Key West in the fourth grade, to a recent arrival from Seoul, where another friend is teaching English and contemplating grad school.

In another box are all the postcards I’ve bought for myself: glossy shots from glamorous destinations around Europe, but also lower-grade cards I’ve picked up from non-destinations like Walkerton, Ontario, and Truro, Nova Scotia. And though they’re scattered around the world, if you could collect all the postcards I’ve sent over the past few years, they’d fill a shoebox of their own, too.

I’m a big fan of postcards. So I was sad (though not surprised) to read Sherry Wickwire’s recent story in the San Francisco Chronicle about the slow demise of the postcard.

Wickwire talks to a trade association president, producers, distributors, and a few consumers at the Golden Gate Bridge gift shop to chronicle the steady decline of a once-mighty arm of the souvenir business. She does find one bright spot: the popularity of online postcard catalogs and preservation efforts like the Tacky Postcard Archive. As one online postcard vendor noted, one of his best sellers is “the one of a sleek, white, 1960s convertible with a four-point stag at the wheel and a red-plaid-clad hunter strapped to the hood.”

Kitsch, it seems, could be where the postcard makes its last stand.

I don’t have to dig through those old boxes to find my favorite tacky postcard. It takes pride of place on my fridge. It’s an overhead shot of the Colosseum, filled with spaghetti and meatballs, and the caption says: “Delicious Rome!”

Sales may be declining, camera phones and text messages may be making the postcard obsolete, but that shot never fails to make me giggle.

Related on World Hum:
* Rio Takes Aim at Sexy Postcards

Photo by Eva Holland.

©2026 World Hum, All Rights Reserved