How to Make Money With Post Cards
Postcard collecting, known as "deltiology," has become a hobby for some and a profitable business for others. Vintage and antique postcards have market value, whether they're new or used, and they exist by the millions. They can be found at garage sales, antique shops, used book stores, flea markets and in your own basement. Making money with postcards is part treasure hunt, part sales, part craft. Depending on your level of output, marketing skills and design sense, postcards can be a profitable home-based business.
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Instructions
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Make your own postcards from card stock. Buy blank postcards from card stock retailers. They're available in a variety of colors and weights. Choose a heavier stock that resists bending. Design your own rubber stamps (online or with software) or buy a set with a group of colored inkpads. Market your cards at bookstores and shops in your area. Create a website where they can be viewed and ordered online. Include shipping in your price to increase sales.
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Shop flea markets and antique stores for antique or vintage postcards. Look around your home for postcards you've stashed away. Once you've collected your postcards, take pictures of them with your digital camera. Post the images on ebay for bids.
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Buy vintage postcard collections on CDs. Vintage postcards are available by the thousands on CDs. They can be sized to fit on your postcard stock and printed from your color printer. Sell them as regular postcards, or print them on heavy stock to make a small sketch pad or journal. Bring them to your local FedEx Office store for a good wire binding. See Resources below. You also can create small sketch pads and journals with used postcards for covers. When you open the cover, you can read the brief message someone wrote to a friend or relative.
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Use your computer to expand a colorful, Victorian postcard image (from a postcard CD), and print it on heavy stock to make a journal cover. Use another sheet of heavy stock for backing. Take about 100 sheets of lighter stock paper, and place them between the cover and the back. Have it bound at a FedEx office. Make several and test-market them at bookstores, art supply stores and specialty shops.
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Tips & Warnings
If you plan to print vintage postcards on a large number of covers for journals or sketchbooks, consider buying a coil binder. See Resources below. Some department stores still send postcards, so if you're receiving them, put them away because they'll be worth something 20 years from now.
Resources
- Photo Credit Anna
