We wrote about our friend Kerry quite awhile back, and like other good friends he can surprise us in more ways than one.  As he tells it, he was away from home for a musical gig and had some time to kill, so he went into a shop in a small Arizona town and stumbled across a cache of old postcards.  Not just any postcards, but global, old, and just what we would buy for ourselves if we had the chance.  Even better, the vendor wanted them gone.  Kerry’s a clever guy, and did two things in sequence:  bought them, and sent them to us.

 

They’re now sorted, described, listed in the site, and waiting to find new homes.  What this did, of course, was highlight how much we have missed traveling and sourcing more cards on our own.  The situation here in Hong Kong can be summarized like this:  we have always been free to leave, but making a reliable plan to get back here has been impossible, and still is.  The Blog is not the place to air all this in detail — it’s supposed to be about postcards, after all — but we’ve just about exhausted every “domestic” card source here, and there can only be so many different views of Victoria Harbour.

 

Which leads us to consignments.  Recently we’ve had a surprising number of unsolicited messages asking if we would list cards on consignment.  In principle, yes, but in practice most of these people don’t know what “consignment” means.  So here goes:  it does NOT mean that we buy your cards first, and send you even more money when and if they sell.  It does NOT mean that we keep them for six months and then send them on to someone else.  And it does NOT mean that you can dump thousands of poor-quality cards of common topics and let us do all the work, for nothing.  Sorry about that.

 

But we said we would take cards on consignment in principle, and that’s true, but under terms so strict that nobody will want to do it.  We accept zero risk.  First we need to agree on the cards you will send us, at your expense.  You are free to tell us what you want the retail price to be, but we will describe them online in our style.  We will agree on a split of the sales proceeds and will do a gross PayPal transfer on an agreed schedule.  If you think we’ve held the cards long enough, and want them back, we will determine the cost of shipment and send them back to you after you credit our PayPal account with that.

 

That’s what we mean by zero risk.  There might be other small requirements.  Consignment works best for larger items like antiques or art in your own neighbourhood, certainly not online in Hong Kong, but the option is always there, and we’re trustworthy.

 

So once again we want to thank Kerry for his keen eye and fast action.  You can search the site for the few postcards we have showing his sculptural designs.  We’re certain he would be delighted to sell something to you too, in which case the postcard hunt would be well worth it.

 

Best wishes going into our summer, from over here in Hong Kong.  Until next time …