Just a super quick note to say that we are back online. I won’t bore you with the details, but apologize for the delay!
Hope you all are having a great day…and in the meantime, here is a postcard pack recently found at Disneyland! Located in multiple places around the park when I was there in April.
Cheers!
Long before I started collecting Disneyland postcards, I was a comic book collector. I was 19 and in the dormitory at UC Berkeley when a floor mate asked if I wanted to go to the comic book story with him while he picked up his latest issue of the Marvel comic “Daredevil”. I went a long, and the rest, as they say, is history!
This weekend, due partly to being cooped up inside because of “shelter-in-place” and partly because it is something I might normally do on a rainy weekend, I was going through my collection and ran across a couple books that I thought I would share here.
First up is a fun book with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck exploring Tom Sawyer Island at Disneyland! The book is from 1958, just a few short years after the park opened. It is packed with no less than 6 separate stories featuring Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Chip ‘n Dale, Granda Duck, Gyro Gearloose…etc. A boat load of entertainment and all for just 25¢! Disney produced many comic books through the Dell publishing house all the way from the 1930’s through the 1960’s…and via other publishers from the 1960’s to present. This was just one example where they used that medium to promote what the park had to offer.
Second up is a book published by Charlton Comics in 1960. The cover of this “Fighting’ Marines” comic promotes a contest to win an all expense paid trip to the park on TWA! (If you didn’t want to do that…you could chose to go to New York City…but why would you do that?!?! Actually I can think of a lot of reasons as NYC is a pretty fantastic place…but I digress!) Anyway…If you have been collecting Disney cards for a while, you’ll know that TWA was a sponsor of the park in the early days and that there is even a card, NT 1107 that speaks to that fact. (I have a post on that particular card here). As an aside, the NT 1107 card is one of a set of “Along the Way with TWA” postcards. It’s a really cool set that is worth collecting in its own right. If your interested, check out this custom search on ebay.
So there you have it…two time capsules from the mid-twentieth century that remind us of a different time when the Disneyland park was just in it’s infancy!
I hope you all are managing in this weird and challenging time for our country and the world. I put this post up as something to hopefully distract and provide a little lighthearted fun. Hang in there!
Until next time…
If you have been collecting Disneyland postcards for more than, I don’t know, 20 minutes, you will notice that there are many cards associated with the hotel and motel industry that grew up around the park. Today’s post is one of those cards…and it is just a gem!
The motel featured here, the Fantasy Inn, was located at 1734 Harbor Blvd., the present day location of the Castle Inn and Suites and right across the street from my go-to motel at the park, the Candy Cane Inn.
What got me most excited about this fantastic piece of Disney nostalgia was the VW Shuttle bus! Note the pastel colors of the bus matching the pastel colors of the motel, the heated pool, TV and (difficult to see) “FREE SHUTTLE BUS” on the marquee. The rear of the card adds free coffee, ice cubes, and again calls out the free shuttle bus to and from Disneyland!
As a long time Porsche/VW fan, I just could not resist this cross over of two of my favorite things, Disney and VW!
I hope you all are navigating these crazy times relative to the global pandemic and disruption of your normal life. Take heart and have hope! This will pass…and Disneyland will reopen at some point!
Until next time…
So last night I was doing some house keeping on the site with an aim to make the site “Secure”…that is, I was trying to get rid of that bothersome little thing that says “Not Secure” in the url on the top of the browser. At the end of the day, it all worked out, but not before I hand deleted the entire site – by accident – and then had to restore it. You might call me the poster child of “knows just enough to be dangerous” when it comes to coding.
Anyway…all is well that ends well!
Going forward, look for an occasional post here now and then. And remember..a couple of you out there are still “Authors”. You can add your own posts. If you are reading this and you want to say a few things…let me know. Focus is, of course, on Disney postcards – their history, present state and just overall cool factor!
Until next time…
A lovely card featuring the Mad hatter (Disney Family Museum)
If you have been in Disneyland at least once a year recently, you know that they still produce an annual lenticular card. I’m not totally sure when they started making these, but they go back near 20 years, I think. I picked this up on a recent visit somewhere inside the park, although I do believe it was available at the World of Disney in Downtown Disney as well.
The card shows the Fab Five posing for a selfie and has some cool artwork on the back with Sleeping Beauty’s castle, the Matterhorn, Cathay Circle restaurant what is now called the Pixar pal-Around wheel.
Anyway…that’s all I have for now. I am in the process of making supgrades to the site. Mostly invisible, but it should be a more secure platform when I am done.
I hope you all are having a fabulous Friday!
Cheers!
It’s been years, literally, since I put a post here! But I was looking at the site the other day and came to realize the checklist tool was not working, so I have been working with a developer to get that fixed. In the process, I was testing it out and added a new card…and that’s what I am here to discuss today!
It’s just not that often that you can find a new card at the park these days. After all, postcards are the practical definition of “anachronism” with the presence of Facebook and Instagram being so prevalent. Why send a postcard when you can just post on social media?
But let’s face it, postcards are way more personal and, in their own way, cooler than Instagram. So, I am glad that there are still a few gems hiding around the park!
This card was found on a trip to Disneyland in early February, 2020, during winter break. Set on a display table amongst some shirts and sweaters at the Pioneer Mercantile store in Frontierland, all by it’s lonesome!
So…next time you are at the park, take heart! there are still a few out there and they are usually well produced with good art.
Happy collecting!
Every once in a while you come across a card that, while not highly collected, is just not very easy to find. Recently I was poking around eBay and came across just such a card from Walt Disney World. This card, 0100-12406, shows an image of Fort Wilderness looking toward the Contemporary Resort and Space Mountain at the Magic Kingdom. It’s 4X6 and it’s 
original owner only saw fit to write “Florida” on the back!
I can’t put a year on this, and my copy of Nick Farago’s original WDW card list is buried somewhere in my office (only a few feet away from me to be sure…but it would take a while to dig out!). But, it looks to be mid 1970’s to me…maybe 1980. Space Mountain opened at WDW in 1975.
Until next time…
I actually spent some time today adding a few images to the database. It’s still pretty sparse, but every little bit counts. I still have a vision to have all the card images in there. All the of the card text from ALL of the cards in the Nickel Tour IS in the database. So, either way, you can still search the text of the cards using the database…images or no. It’s pretty handy actually!
Here is one of the cards I uploaded today…NT0396. Always loved this image! Reminds me of the old Wonderful World of Disney TV show. If you see blanks of images between NT0001 and NT0400, and you have that card…don’t hesitate to let me know. I could definitely use the help. This is your database too!
Until next time…
Yes indeed…it has been a while!
I have been well and truly distracted by the Facebook pages…that’s for sure. I guess the reason is that they are very interactive, whereas this…well…it’s just me! Either way I have been thinking lately that I want to get back to this site and try to execute some of the goals I had when I first started it.
First and foremost…I want to continue to make the database as good as it can be. When I started the blog and the online database, my singular goal was to make the database searchable. To some degree…this has been accomplished. If you want to find a card that has the test “Matterhorn” on it (for example) that is easy to do. The database acts as a searchable version of the Nickel Tour!
But I still have a long way to go to make the database user friendly and really useful. For starters…it is not being searched by Google….so if someone randomly plugs in, say, P11876 in Google…it will not find the database. (Interestingly…it will find my original post on sundrycollectibles.net though!)
So…I want to fix this. It will probably take a while. But that’s OK. In the mean time…what do you want to see in terms of the database? Have a suggestion? Let me know…and I’ll see what I can do.
Thanks for your patience with this project and please, join us on the Facebook group page, Disney Park Postcards. I still have a lot of my special promo cards available (The Hollywood Tower of Terror…card #SCPC-0001…shown here), free to any member of that group! Let me know if you are interested!
That’s all for now.
Until next time…
Hi everyone!
BIG NEWS!! I have been contemplating a change on Facebook for a while, and today is the day! Bottom line…I don’t like my current Facebook “Page” because I am the only one who can post to it effectively. So…I have started a “Group” with essentially the same mission as the Page. The difference is that Groups are way more democratic than Pages. Your posts will have the same visibility as mine…and the group can be used as an easy way for people to share cards and chat about the hobby.
“Disney Park Postcards” is the name…and you can find it here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/534566323346160/
It’s a “Closed” group, so you will have to make a request to be added, and I will approve it. Why closed, you ask? Because Facebook is stupid! If the group is “Public”, than all of your friends…even the ones who don’t give a rip about Disney postcards, would see any post you make in the group in their Facebook timeline. I don’t want to bombard my friends with my fanaticism…I suspect most of you don’t either.
I will probably keep the Facebook “Page” up and running…but going forward, I think this new “Group” will be a more effective way for the community to communicate.
Until next time…
