Unused Bromley and Company card 112308 (and NC-1216), starting to age.  Grade: 2

Unused Mike Roberts card C23031 (and NC1148).  Grade: 1

Unused vintage Tichnor Quality Views card 63177.  Grade: 1

Genuinely vintage lighthouse postcard, mailed in 1909 with stamp and full Atlantic City postmark.  Yes, there’s postmark ink transfer on the front.  Grade: 3 

Four cards are available, of this American News Company #5113 with undivided back, not the same but very similar to our entry 10133217.  Three of them are unused.  Two of those (Grades: 1, $5) are slightly less aged than the other (Grade: 2, $4).  Then there is one mailed card from 1906, with stamp and postmarks from sending and receiving offices.  Stamp is still there.  (Grade: 3, $5).

Artwork of this 1795 structure on a card mailed in 1971 with stamp and heavy postmark.  Grade: 3

This unused and somewhat aging Dexter Press card 60203-B gave us a couple of problems.  For one thing, the reverse caption is all about the bridge and doesn’t mention the lighthouse at all.  For another, the caption just says the bridge spans the Hudson River between Fort Lee (New Jersey) and New York City.  So we are putting the card into “New York” and “Bridges” and “Lighthouses” and hoping for the best, because we know it’s the Little Red Lighthouse (Jeffrey’s Hook Light).  Grade: 2

Artwork by Edwin Voorhees on this unused card.  Grade: 2

Before you get confused, we just want to tell you we have two mailed cards, with the same photo on the front but with different reverses.  Both are Plastichrome.  One, mailed in 1969 with 5-cent stamp and Manteo postmark, correctly spells the name of the island (and the lighthouse) as “Ocracoke” (Grade: 1, $4).  The other was mailed in 1961 with a 4-cent stamp and indistinct postmark, less of a caption, but the spelling is “Okracoke” (Grade: 2, $5).

No spelling problems on this unused Dexter Press card 57269-C, dated 1969, whose caption reveals that this 1823 lighthouse is “the second oldest in use on the Atlantic coast,” and also introduced the word “yaupon” to our vocabulary.  Grade: 1

Unused card #3 in a series of “Let’s Explore Ohio” available from Standard Oil gas stations.  The lighthouse itself is a reproduction of England’s Eddystone Lighthouse at Land’s End.  Card has the SOHIO logo.  Very minor fingermarking.  Grade: 1

Unused Curteichcolor card 7C-K1892, gently aging, of a structure built in 1897.  Grade: 1

The writer of this card–mailed in 1908 with stamp and full postmark–had so much to say.  Apart from the address, the reverse is full of message everywhere, and as you can see, on to the front as well.  Though the lighthouse takes second place to all the message, the card in all represents this little window into the past.  Grade: 4

Other than the message (a different sender, same year–1908), this card on the reverse is printed the same as 34000453 but the front photo is so completely different in colour that we list them separately.  We don’t know if this was the result of different print runs, or fading, or what.  Grade: 3

Mailed in 1914 with “Balboa” stamp and full Portland postmark.  Grade: 3

Internet card mailed in 2012 with stamp, bilingual Par Avion label, and postmark.  Grade: 2

Not postally used, but with address written in, and sent or handed over by a laconic “Papa”.  Grade: 4

Mailed in 2012, with stamp, postmark, and trilingual Priority label.  Grade: 1

Unused, aging card.  The lighthouse first “flashed its oil burning beacon in 1818”.  Grade: 2

This unused B&W card is not attractive at all, has aged significantly and just looks overly handled; but at the same time this sets it apart from more conventional cards.  Grade: 3