Antique Postcard And Paper Show Inspired
By Summer Folk Exhibits

Postcards were big business in small tourist towns around Penobscot Bay in the early 20th century. Images like this one, from PMM's Eastern Illustrating Collection, will be available at the Southern Maine Antique Paper Show in Searsport, June 30.

June 22, 2012 – A show of antique postcards and paper collectibles will run from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday, June 30, at Union Hall (Town Hall), 1 Union Street in Searsport. Attendees' can obtain free appraisals for their paper treasures and a discount on admission to the adjacent Penobscot Marine Museum.

The Southern Maine 2012 Antique Paper Show in Searsport is being held in cooperation with Penobscot Marine Museum, in connection with its 2012 exhibit, Summer Folk: The Tourists of Penobscot Bay. According to Kevin Johnson, the museum's photography archivist, "The area's tourists in the early 20th century were prodigious correspondents. Writing and sending postcards and letters to friends and relatives back home was an almost daily ritual for summer visitors."

Between ten and twenty vendors will buy, sell and trade old postcards, maps, calendars, scrapbooks, posters, gum cards and other paper collectibles. Free appraisals will be offered from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. Penobscot Marine Museum will be among the vendors, displaying postcards and photo prints from its extensive collection of the Eastern Illustrating and Publishing Company, an early 20th-century Belfast postcard publisher. Those showing a receipt for the show's low $2 admission fee will receive a discount of $2 on admission at the museum.