When Does an Accumulation of Postcards become a Collection?

That’s the exact question I asked myself this morning as I checked to see how many postcards I have left for sending to other Postcrossing members. So, when exactly does an accumulation of postcards become a collection? For me a collection needs to have some sort of order to it. I have a collection of music CDs which are in alphabetical order by both the artist and the title. My postcards however are shoved in a box and are starting to look more like an accumulation.

I need to get them in some sort of order. How do I even go about organizing them sensibly? I have cards from several publishers, numerous themes, and they all range in date from early 1900 up to present day. Do I sort them by publisher, year, theme, used, unused, or a mixture? Where do I even start? I’d love to hear how other collectors organize their postcards.

Before the organizing can even begin I need to find a better way of storing them. I love looking through them and they’re a great source of inspiration for me so I should probably store them in albums but they can be pricey and I’m pushed for space. You can store a lot more of them in a box and the single protective sleeves are less expensive. Plus, it’s easier to take them out of a box and put them back in again.

So, where do I get these magical boxes locally? I’ve seen specially made postcard boxes on the web but they all seem to be US based. I’d love to be able to find some boxes in a suitable shape in my local stores but they always seem to be too shallow or one side isn’t long enough to accommodate the protective sleeves. I may have to take a journey out of town and go to IKEA. Apparently they have some DVD boxes which do the job rather well but looking at the measurements I’m not sure if they’d be quite right.

All I want are a few boxes so that I can store my postcards in a more accessible way and still have space to grow. You’d think it would be easy to find a storage box but when you live in a place where even the local supermarket never has the most basic of ingredients it seems almost impossible. The entire town has been out of bicarbonate of soda for weeks. How on earth are we supposed to make cakes?