The Old Card List: What is an "Old Card"?
I recently bought a card of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at Silsden; a nice scene of a coal wharf, with a typical Pennine mill beyond. A wooden short boat is being poled away from the wharf, and the scene is a classic canal view.
However, the back of the card bears an Elizabeth II stamp, giving a posting date of 1953+ and this brought up again a question which has been raised by a number of recent contributions to the Old Cards List, where should we draw the line?
I suspect that the List may have been going for well over ten years now, and cards which were relative "moderns" when it started are starting to acquire some age. Early 1950s cards will soon be fifty years old, and I suspect some of them could soon be costing as much, if not more than, the so-called "golden age" cards. Not having been collected to the same extent, they could become quite rare. I seem to understand that the Old list was originally intended for "pre-war" cards, but I am increasingly getting contributions that may possibly be 1950s or even 1960s.
My feeling is that, particularly for canal cards, there could be a lot to be said for demarcation date somewhere around 1960. There are two reasons for this.
Firstly, style. After this date there are a number of differences of size and modern colour photographic cards become much more common. In addition, for canal purposes, this date makes the end of most commerical narrowboat traffic, and much of the traffic on a canal such as the Leeds and Liverpool.
Does anyone have a view on this? (Not that I wish to stage a takeover for the Modern Cards List!)