Zirconia in the Ash Heap

Hey big boy, wanna walk?

Harold Sanborn’s “Path Along Lake Shore – Grand Lake” postcard is not particularly rare.  Over its 20-year shelf life, almost 1000 copies were printed and sold.  The example I own, with a Kodak stamp box, is worth even less (some might deem it worthless) – Not only is it NOT a first edition, among the initial run of 25 produced by Sawyer’s in Portland, it’s closer to a last edition, when the negative was washing out and the hand-lettering on the title beginning to erode.

Used postcards, except for “exotics” made of tin, leather or wood, are paper, so are intrinsically worthless anyway, provided the cancelled stamp is not a freak/error, or the message admits you, a celebrity, just offed someone.  But photo-postcards like this one (but not this one) have been accorded the top shelf of worthlessness, and in Colorado, and especially because of Ebay, Sanborns like these (but not this one, although I don’t know, maybe I should list it) often sell for $34.56 to $78.90.

That is all relatively new.  In the glory days of postcard collecting, back in the 1970s (and I’ve heard enough, oldsters, I’m up to here with it), all Colorado printed or photo-postcards were routinely priced at 25 cents to $1, and collectors who started then and are still in the hobby routinely kick themselves for not acquiring more.  Chuck Harbert is Creede’s millionaire postcard asshole for a lot of reasons, but a big contribution came from his placement of a $2 ad in a national postcard-collector newsletter 40 years ago expressing interest in anything and everything Colorado. 

We’re not to the “tulips in Holland” stage yet, but folks in Grand Lake, in particular, are voicing concerns about whether they will be soon be unable to afford their history, and whether, at this point, they should be chasing items like “Path Along Lake Shore – Grand Lake”, or selling.

Museum “deaccessioning” of donated holdings deemed irrelevant to the scope of their collections, or too expensive to insure or conserve, is not a new thing, and anymore, it’s not even a particularly secretive thing.  Most publicly-funded museums depend on donated items, but those who donate sign papers giving the museum the right to do anything with them, including calling buyers while they’re still in the foyer. 

Unwanted items used to leave quietly out the back door with staff (some of my best early “Estes Park Trail” material came from former museum volunteers instructed to “get rid of this stuff”) or paying collectors.  Now the auctions are public, and well-publicized.

When you are flush with cash and know how to search, bargains are everywhere.  I just picked up a poorly-described (plus last name misspelled) Dave Stirling oil for $200, and would have paid double.  But when you are Grand Lake, and postcards like this one (but not this one), for example, interiors of Phantom Valley Ranch or Pine Cone Inn that sold poorly at the time and are now hard to come across, that look a lot like this one but sell for $100 to outsiders who don’t even live in Grand Lake, indeed, who some claim they’ve never ever seen step foot in Grand Lake, the frustration is palpable.

History has, for some reason, and especially locally, become a commodity.  Our historian laureate has side-branched into one of the largest listers of area original and reprinted photographs, all lushly described, all opening-bid or “Buy It Now” priced out of reach of the beginning or average collector.  Copies are copies, whoever pays anything for reprints in the age of flatbed scanners and digital cameras is a moron, but originals are lakefront property – they aren’t making much anymore, and it’s definitely a sellers’ market.

I have no problem churning this interest and driving up prices, especially when I have zero risk of ultimately paying for any of cheap crap I’m fake interested in.  Dumber bidders than me come along well before the end of the auction, often multiple dumber bidders, leaving my underbids a distant memory.  This is not empty bravado or locker room one-upsmanship.  This is the verifiable and now tediously predictable outcome of thousands of Ebay “Northern Colorado collectible” listings over the past ten years. 

I love it, because it brings even more fresh inventory to the market, and, look, I’m no genius, but after a decade of solving the same Sudoku, you kind of learn hungover how to tell prime rib from horse meat.

Some collectors insist, “I’m not interested in making money from this hobby.  I just do it for the enjoyment of the search, and cherish the images.”  I agree.  The nostalgia of this Jazz Age POV footpath draws me in something fierce, indeed, it’s almost like I’m right there in Grand Lake buying the shit.  But instead of flushing Benjamins down the toilet shoeboxing assembly-line dreck reeking of diaper, I’ll hold off for something that I at least might be able to break even on when China’s nukes timber the grid and we’re forced to utilize paper as fuel.

My advice to Grand Lake – Unloose your treasure.  The barbaric lust across the Divide for items that could potentially fill holes in sets is currently unslakeable.  Our holes cannot be enough stuffed.  And this addiction will remain unsatisfied no matter how much history you pillage for profit. 

Oh, and use the money to invest in whiskey distilleries or marijuana dispensaries.  Either one.  Both.  Hell, legalize prostitution, snag cooch from Nevada.  Heading into a world of tomorrows on the government dole, incapable of sin – That’s the future.