Postcards

[Cornercandy]

Why do souvenir shops still sell loads of postcards? Very few people still do postcards. As:
. Cost of postage
. They usually arrive after you have gone back home or never arrived. I have heard that if you hand in postcards to hotel reception staff, they steam off the stamps and distribute them between staff.
. Social media

Some people collect them, my mum had a collection of 5000+ dating back to the 1800s. They’re amazing to read back, they chart entire life stories via holidays - you get an idea of the writer. Mainly have family ones but also have hundreds bought from sellers, charity shops, etc.

Like letter writing, they’re far less common but not entirely dead.
I still send two when I go away. One to a terminally ill friend who can no longer travel (at their request). The other to my grandkids who treasure their arrival and keep them on the fridge, held on with a magnet from the same place.

My Mum is very deaf and struggles to use the phone. She lives with me, but my sisters and some of her grandchildren send postcards. They make her very happy.,

My GF is a stamp collector and if I manage to get picture stamps from the post office, I will send him a post card from a day trip or holiday. He loves receiving them and is grateful for the stamp to add to his collection.

I used to work in a book/ gift shop and we finally had to give in and get them in as in the summer we had roughly a request(or two or three) a day! When we went on holiday I remembered and sent a few to people in the family and they were thrilled!

I sometimes buy postcards as a cheap souvenir of places I’ve visited. They take up almost no space to store. Of course I can take pictures but I like postcards too. I can’t get out much so these little reminders are valuable to me.

I also send them occasionally eg to my elderly mother, who loves receiving them, and through Postcrossing which is an organisation for people who enjoy sending and receiving postcards https://www.postcrossing.com

There must be a market for them, otherwise shops wouldn’t sell them. And that sounds a bit far fetched about hotel staff steaming off stamps and redistributing them tbh!