While browsing the postcrossing forum, I found out about Pomegranate, which is a company that publishes postcards, notecards, bookmarks, and other paper goods like that. They have a great deal on an assortment of postcards: 200 cards for $25 (plus shipping). If you wanted 600 cards, shipping would be free. That works out to about 13 cents for each card, which is the best deal on cards that I’ve ever seen. But that’s no good if you don’t like the cards, which many people on the forum reported.
I thought I’d share my luck with this purchase. It’s hard to write an accurate review when the next person might get an entirely different assortment. First, there’s the easy stuff. Ordering was very easy, and I could use Pay Pal. The shipping was reasonable (~$5) and shipped quickly. I really like the box the cards came in. It’s just a regular mailing box, but it is the perfect size for storing my postcards upright so I can flip through them.
Now, for the cards themselves. All of the cards are very nice quality. The writing side is a little glossy, so I just have to be careful not to smudge the ink. There’s a good amount of room for writing, but there are also very detailed descriptions of most of the images. Some of the cards have split backs, some don’t.
I really liked the assortment of images that I got. Most of my order consisted of art cards, mostly from 1900 on. There was also a sizable number of what I consider more “classic” art, e.g., Winslow Homer, Mary Cassat, Monet, etc. I picked out some of my favorites (click to make them bigger)
One thing that many people complained about was that they received too many nude postcards. I did get 7 nude cards in my order; but two were the same image. That’s also being very generous about what counts as nude; for example, one photograph is posed so that I wouldn’t have known it was a nude except the title is “Open Air Nude.” I don’t think that I’ll have trouble finding someone to send them to, and even if I found them too scandalous to send, I would still have 193 other postcards to choose from.
That brings me to the one downside of this purchase: the sheer volume. I really like about 95% of the cards I got, and I also really like scan and keep a record of the cards I send. When I get some new cards, it’s easy to scan them in, but I can’t scan 200 cards at once, and it’s daunting to think about. Also, sifting through all these potential cards when it’s time to send one can be frustrating! That’s probably the worst thing I can say about these cards, because I do like how they’ve expanded my pool of cards; the wide selection improves my chances of having something that’s on a favorites list.
This set is a good bet if you want to expand your collection quickly and are mostly interested in getting cards that would appeal to a wide variety of people, such as those you find on swap-bot and postcrossing. Since this grab bag is compiled from all the postcards the company has published, it might be a good way to cheaply acquire some of their cards that you want. But if you’re after a specific theme or card, this isn’t the way to go.
Buy it: Pomegranate’s website