So Many Good Things...

There are so many good things about this post card. The first, of course, is that there is a picture of a train on it!!

The second good thing is the quality of the linen paper on which it is printed. It exudes quality. You can see and feel the linen easily. There is no doubting that there is texture to the surface of this card.

Thirdly, The quality of the print job. I can read the word "OBSERVATION" on the top of the observatory tower without a magnifying glass. The cogs in the middle of the two tracks are very clearly there. With a magnifying glass, I can read, "Manitou & Pikes Peak" on the side of the engine.

The back of the post card is just as wonderful. It very clearly states that this card was printed by the Curt Teich Company using their patented "C.T. Art-Colortone" method for the Sanborn Souvenir Company in Denver, Colorado.

Best of all, it actually dates the card for us!! The number above the word POST in POST CARD tells us this information. The card was printed in the 1930s (the letter A); 1937 to be exact (the number 7) and it was the 602nd print run of that year. The letter H confirms that yes, indeed, this is a linen post card. In 1937 there were 3,989 print runs of linen cards by the Curt Teich Company. Using mathematical principals of deduction, we can guess that this card was printed sometime near the end of February or the beginning of March of that year.

Oh, yeah. It is a very nice picture on the front, too.

Linen Post Cards

Continuing on the theme of Pikes Peak, I have scanned three post cards from the Linen Post Card era. The ages of these cards range from the 1930s to the mid-1940s. Because they are postally unused, I cannot tell you the exact age of any of the cards. Two of them are from the H.H. Tammen Company which existed from 1896 to 1953; one is from the Sanborn Souvenir Company, which existed from 1920 to 1976. This is quite the range of dates but, we can narrow it down a bit.These three post cards are what they call Linen Post Cards. In about 1930 publishers began to print post cards on a linen paper stock. These post cards were called linen because the rag content within the paper gave these post cards a textured “feel.” You can also see the weave in the cards if you hold them just right in the lighting. They were popular among the printers and publishers because they were cheaper to produce and they accepted the use of bright dyes for coloring the pictures on the faces of the cards. Curt Otto Teich was among the early linen post card publishers; some say his company invented the process. The advent of chrome post cards (1939) brought this era to an end. You can see some example of chrome post cards in my previous blog post.

Although you couldn’t tell it by the smoke coming out of the engine, the top post card is a view of Windy Point on the way up to Pikes Peak. It is a product of the H.H. Tammen Company. There is no indicator on the card about who might have printed the card.

The middle card is showing a train as it passed the timberline on Pikes Peak. This was published by the Sanborn Souvenir Company from Denver, Colorado. There is no indicator of the printer on the back of the card, but the number on the front hints that it may have been the Curt Teich Company. The visual “feel” of the card places it back in the early 1900s; but, the linen in the card says otherwise. If I am correct in interpreting the number in the bottom right hand corner of the card (14400-N), this was a reprint of a post card that the Curt Teich Company first printed in 1908. The N in Curt Teich parlance indicates that this card is a reprint.

The bottom card is also from the H.H. Tammen Company and again there is no indicator of who the printer was. One way of dating this card might be to know more about cars than trains.

There are a couple of automobiles at the top of Pikes Peak. If I knew as much about cars as I do about trains, I could probably tell you the year and make of the cars. We could then date the post card to a time after that.

Chrome Cards

The theme of these post cards, as mentioned in my last blog, is Pikes Peak. The ages of these cards range from the 1950s to the 1970s.

This collection of post cards is from the modern version of post cards. They are what are called chrome post cards. In 1946 Kodak stared to produce and market Ektachrome transparent film. Kodachrome was used to make photographs and Ektachrome was used to make slides. I remember sitting through many home slide shows of our family vacations and other family activities. The pictures that we were able to blow up to the size of the wall of our living room were still very clear – they were not what we would call today pixilated at all.

In the case of these post cards those very clear pictures that could be projected also make extremely clear pictures on card stock. There is also a very smooth and shiny finish on the cards that protect the picture from handprints, etc. The finish on most of the post cards you can buy today look very similar to these cards.

The printers and publishers represented on these cards include:

Printers – Mike Roberts
Rembrant Cards
Dexter Press
Curt Otto Teich

Publishers – Pikes Peak News Agency
Noble of Colorado Springs, CO
Sanborn Souvenir
Cooper Post Card Co.
Altitude Publishing of Aurora, CO

Here is how I see it.

Although all three of them were printed in 1925, the top card is the first one in the series. The three cards are numbered from top to bottom (the number is in the bottom right-hand corner of the card) 102668, 106179 and 106170-N. The first card was printed by Curt Otto Teich and distributed by the Union News Company. The Union News Company, like so many other News companies, was wholly owned by the American News Company. From New York City, they distributed postcards and other printed items through the newsstands in major hotels and railway stations. It is printed on good quality paper stock by Curt Teich’s company. This card must have been very popular. It is soon reprinted by Curt Teich’s company. This time it is numbered at the top (collectors now have a series to complete!!) and a new number is given to it in the bottom right-hand corner. This time, it is published by the Sanborn Souvenir Company in Denver. Curt Teich has changed the name of the printing process from “C. T. American Art” to “C. T. American Art Colored”. The bottom rendition of the card has the same number as the middle card with a dash N added. The “-N” is an indication that it is a reprinted version of the original 106179 card. The collector incentive number is still at the top.

However, on the back, all one can assume is that the Sanborn Souvenir Company was the only company that touched this card. They must have struck a deal with the Curt Teich Company to be able to publish and distribute the duplicate copies of the original picture for their use. Two things hint at the Curt Teich Company’s involvement. First, the numbers are the same except the –N that indicates a Curt Teich reprint and second, it is printed on the Linen Style of card that Curt Teich developed. The other two cards are on good stock smooth paper. There certainly was a lot of development in the postcard business regarding this particular view in 1925.