The worn red cloth of the cover caught my eye immediately. I was strolling through the Puces de Vanves a popular flea market on a recent Sunday morning in Paris looking for old French postcards. As I passed by one of the vendors selling their wares along Avenue Marc Sangnier I saw the album sitting on a table full of plates, dishes, silverware and other household items, looking quite out of place.
The corners were torn and tattered and there were a few scuff marks and stains on the cloth surface of the album. It was thick, at least 6 or 7 inches, long and rectangular. But I was disappointed to not find any postcards. Inside the album were hundreds and hundreds of old French postcards.
All arranged meticulously, their corners inserted into small cuts in the thick paper pages of the album. With three cards to a page I knew immediately that there were a lot of cards.
They were old. Very old. Most of them appeared to be from before And they were in almost immaculate condition. Someone had taken very good care of this album that was almost certainly well over a hundred years old. I leafed through the pages looking carefully at some of the cards, noting the postmarks and thinking about where this album had come from.
Usually these kinds of old postcards are found loose in the wooden bins of dealers who have sorted them into different categories or departments and written prices in pencil on the back of each card.
