Official Price Guide to Postcards : 1st Edition

Rating:
Summary: A nice book for the beginner, but not complete
Review: Allmen's book is a nice reference, but not an absolute essential. It has some valuable information in the beginning, such as how to determine the age of a card and so on, but her examples aren't as plentiful as one would wish. As well, her prices aren't current, and having been published in 1990, cannot possibly reflect the kind of resurgance in interest in postcards that places like Ebay and Amazon auctions are generating. But if you're a dealer or a serious collector it's a nice book to add to your shelf.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent resource for beginning postcard collectors.
Review: This book starts with short easy chapters on the topics of most interest to beginning collectors: history of postcards, how to gauge age, condition, buying and selling, terms and abbreviations. Contains a comprehensive list of postcard publishers, a good glossary, but less than adequate index. One particularly good chapter runs through 5 postcards from the same artist that range in value from $1 to $150 in order to give a sense of what is valuable. This type of comparison would be of great value in any collectables/antique book and I wish there were more examples in this book. The novice can quickly get up to speed on the basics, then browse the extensive price listings both to estimate the value of their own collections, or to see if the local antique store is overpriced (it is!).The price list contains several thousand categories. Contains many b&w photos. The color insert would've been better if it showed a greater variety of postcard types rather than emphasizing a specific topic: European Art Novaeu. I highly recommend this book to beginners. Advanced collectors will probably already know the basic information, including the monetary value of their own topical interests. However, the extensive price list makes a good shelf or shopping reference even for advanced collectors.