Children's Greeting Cards: Collecting Vintage

I don't collect these cards but I do collect books about popular visual culture and for my interest Linda McPherson's title is a treat. Each page has been four and eight cards (though mostly four) so I guess there might be about a thousand throughout the book. I think the Contents with eighteen sections probably covers every type of greeting for children. What's left out is most likely in Miscellaneous with six sections including four cards with a real button on the front, ten cut to irregular shapes, five that had playable records. The Holiday Season provides a rich selection with thirty-four Santa cards, nineteen with Frosty the Snowman, seventeen for Rudolph and thirty-five general Christmas and snow themes. The chapter on Characters shows that the card companies don't miss a trick with Popeye, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Dagwood and a fascinating thirteen Campbell's Soup kids on can-shaped cards. Though they are not cards in the conventional sense the Hallmark Dolls from the Land of Make Believe are pure enchantment and the most valuable in the book ($8 to $45 each) I was a bit disappointed that there isn't a bit more about the leading card companies from past decades, their most popular greeting cards for children, print runs and more. The actual Introduction is on two pages and is a rather generalized overview of card collecting. The book's design and printing is fine and so much better than similar collector books put out by Schiffer. Each card is captioned with a date, size, sometimes the publisher and finally the rough price variation. Linda McPherson has edited a book mainly for collectors but I think its good enough to be enjoyed by anyone who wants to see some lovely examples of greeting card nostalgia and you might have the thrill of seeing a card that was sent to you back then. ***SEE SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.

I bought this book after I accidentally threw away the last valentine card my late father gave me in 1967,I was absolutely heartbroken.Since I would probably never be able to ever find that card ever again I decided to purchase this book as the same artist who designed my old card was featured in it.It truly is a lovely book, the artists really took great care in designing greeting cards back then (1930s-60s), which you can't say for the cards of today. :(