Personal Picture Postcard

Postal Activities > Personal Picture Postcard

In this interactive game, you can make and print a unique postcard with your own photo on it.

Postcards are small message cards sent by mail without an envelope. Both Postal Administrations and private entities can produce postcards, but only the former can issue postcards with postage paid.

The first batch of postcards was issued in Austria in about 1869 with no pictures on them. Soon there was a picture on one side of the postcard. At first, post offices did not allow any message to be written on the address side so the message had to be written on the picture side. From 1902, the message could be written on the address side and the modern Postcard was born.

Postcards were convenient for those who did not like to write long letters. The picture became part of the message. As more and more people traveled on holidays, the picture postcards they sent to friends encouraged even more travel, and the postcards played an important part of the tourism trade. They also became collectable items. People bought them to keep as souvenirs. For the philatelists, "Maximum" Postcard is the most valuable item for collection.

The basic requirement of a Maximum Card is that the picture on the postcard must be maximally consistent with both the picture on the Stamp and the Stamp Cancellation Postmark applied to it. In other words, a Maximum Card is a picture postcard that bears an effective postage Stamp with picture similar to that on the postcard and a postmark of the location related to the picture on the postcard.

Maximum Cards have gained their popularity since the 1940's when many Postal Administrations began issuing First Day Covers, special postmarks, and Postcards either reproducing picture of postage Stamps or featuring the pictures from which their motifs were derived.

Postal Activities > Personal Picture Postcard