A trip to the British seaside may not always have been something to write home about, but these days you might struggle even if you wanted to.
At the Little Gems gift shop in Blackpool town centre, all the usual seaside wares are on display – beach towels, plastic buckets and spades, sticks of rock – but one item is notably missing.
“We had loads of people coming in for postcards”, says Lynn Sadurskia, pensioner and owner of the shop, “but they seem to have just disappeared.”
The story is the same at coastal resorts across the country. This week, a gift shop owner in Bridlington, on the other side of the Pennines, declared postcards “a thing of the past”, saying he sold only one every couple of months.
Like so many aspects of traditional high street trade, Lynn thinks the march of technology means the writing has been on the wall for postcards for some time. “People just send them on their phone now.”
The Postcard Traders Association (PTA), which represents more than 100 dealers in mainly vintage postcards, agrees. It believes text messaging and telephones have taken over from postcards as a form of communication, but insist there is a future for them, with collecting still a “thriving hobby”.
Mark Wingham, of the PTA, says: “People still buy and send postcards – but obviously, we are worlds away from the golden age of our hobby in Edwardian times when the Royal Mail used to handle 800m postcards a year.”
Wingham says this is in part because of the changing times and the rising price of stamps, which often cost more than the postcard itself. “Times have changed. We obviously argue that it is still special to receive a postcard from a loved one – and it makes you think of them every time you see it on a shelf in the living room, or you open the fridge, and it falls on the floor because the magnet doesn’t hold it!”
Purists may hold on to the romance of the paper and ink form, but for one shopper in Blackpool, the cold facts of impracticality trump sentiment. “I couldn’t be arsed sending them”, said 55-year-old Anne Hesketh, a day tripper taking her dog for a walk on the beach.
“It was a chore that distracted you from your holiday because you’d have to hold up one evening and write a postcard and you could never think of what to say, then you had to find a post office. We went on holiday, we’d forget, and we’d be at the airport trying to post them.”
Anne also says that when she was young, she invariably didn’t have enough money to buy them and the stamps they needed.
On the promenade, Lucy, 19, is on the tills at The Old Time photo studio, a gift shop adjacent to the Pleasure Beach theme park. She said the only people who came in asking for postcards were elderly collectors on a “treasure hunt”.
She doesn’t understand why anyone would want to buy a postcard when you can “just send a picture saying ‘I’m having a great time. See you when I get home.’”
What are people buying instead? Lucy looks at her three colleagues, and they all start giggling “rude rock,” she says, cheeks flushing.
What’s that? Her colleague whizzes over to one of the shelves and picks up a pair of rock candy breasts on display next to a selection of rock penises.
”People would rather buy that than a postcard,” says Lucy.
You can still find postcards in Blackpool if you look hard enough. The staff at the tourist information office say their postcards sell well. They have about 13 varieties of Blackpool-themed postcards, including drone shots of the theme park, Blackpool Tower and the beach.
Darryl, who owns a tiny novelty shop beside an amusement arcade, still sells postcards. He has 15 varieties on sale but says he’s not overly enthusiastic about selling them. “Most people think they’re like flyers and just walk off with them. So, other shops don’t bother selling them because, in this day and age, you can’t be chasing a postcard.”
Why do you sell them? “I sell it because people asked me for it. I sell everything. If they want paracetamol, I’ve got paracetamol, I’ve got cigarette papers, grinders, you know. You never know who’s gonna walk in.” Darryl doesn’t think postcards will ever truly go away. “If I go away, I’ll buy a postcard.”
