I collect vintage postcards of the region including and surrounding Canaan, Vermont where I grew up.

The postcard pictured here is a real photo postcard (RPPC) of a building situated partly in the Canada and partly in the United States.  The building still stands today.  During the days of Prohibition, the Canadian side housed a saloon.

The term RPPC is applied to postcards produced using a photographic process rather than  a printing process.  The work of both professional and amateur photographers is represented among the real photo postcards of the day. 

RPPCs are a fascinating and valuable form of art and folk art that captures a visual history of the time, the places and the people which are their subjects.  The variety of historical subjects found is nearly endless:  cowboys, the gold rush, suffrage for women, child labor, Nazism, Klu Klux Klan, lynchings, flappers, royalty, trains, planes, and boats; public buildings, disasters such as floods, hurricanes, and fires; Prohibition, the labor movement and state fairs.  The list goes on and on and on.   World wide, postcards are the third most collected item behind stamps and coins. 

The Library of Congress has a collection as do some colleges such as Middlebury College in Middlebury Vermont.  Happily, these two collections have been digitized and are available for viewing on line. In the Middlebury College collection, I have seen an RPPC of my own grandparents house!  It is one that I hope to find and add to my own collection.