Swap vintage postcards with collectors of the same places.
Deltiology runs on duplicates. Everybody who collects a town or a theme ends up with cards from three others, and every one of those is the card somebody else has been looking for.
Swapping the postcards outside your own collection
Group by place or by theme, because that is how the person on the other side collects. A run of one town, one pier, one railway line: that shape is immediately legible to somebody who wants it and invisible when the same cards sit in a general pile.
A card with a story of its own deserves a listing of its own. An early postmark, a notable photographer, a message worth reading: those are found by people searching for exactly that, and they should land on a page about it.
Say whether the backs are written on. Some collectors want the message and the stamp as much as the picture, and others want a clean unused card, so stating it plainly puts you in front of the right one.
Scan the front and the back. Name the place, the era and the publisher if it is printed. Say whether corners and edges are sharp. Then say which towns or themes you are building, however narrow.
The questions people ask first.
List the cards you have spare, say what you are collecting, and we introduce you to somebody who wants yours and holds something you want. Both sides have to match before either of you is bothered.
Very much so, in groups. Somebody building one town wants every view of it they can get, and a bundle from that town is precisely the listing they are hoping to find.
Each side gets a band worked out from what is in it and how many people are after that kind of thing, and you both see the same reading of how evenly the swap sits. If it needs a nudge, a small extra item closes the gap.
Nothing here has a price.
Barterama is a barter marketplace: a swap site where value is shown as a band rather than a figure, and where no money changes hands at any point. Every item sits in one of twelve bands that we work out — you never set your own, and neither does the person you are swapping with. If we are not confident, the band gets wider rather than more precise.
Where two sides do not quite balance, a small extra item closes the gap. Cash never does, and there is no balance or credit on this site to close it with.
Other things people swap.
Got vintage postcards to swap?
List what you have, say what you are after, and we will introduce you when somebody wants yours and has something you want.