On this page I will tell something about my most important hobby: collecting business cards.
Many companies use their business cards as a pr-instrument and pay a lot of attention to layout, use of colors and materials which sometimes result in beautiful , extraordinary or strange specimen.
That makes collecting business cards so interesting.
To bring some system in my collection of more than 70,000 cards I started to set up categories which I call "themes". A few of them have become complete. For example, I have cards from all the states of the USA and all the Australian territories.
You can think of all kinds of themes, I have more than 15 of them. On this page I will discribe some of my categories. And the page EXAMPLES will give some highlights from my collection.
MY COLLECTION OF COUNTRIES.
There are more than 160 different countries in this theme. Several of the original countries do not exist anymore as DDR of USSR, but of course they remain part of my collection.
Sometimes it is not clear what a country is. So I cherish a card from Falkland which is an island under British administration.
Some countries will probably never be part of my collection because of their size, number of people or distance to the rest of the world like the Polynesian island Nauru whith only 10,000 inhabitants.
But sometimes it is difficult to get cards from countries which are not so far from home. In my collection some European countries are still missing: The Vatican City which is not so strange with only 900 inhabitants, but Liechtenstein or San Marino should be easier to get.
UNUSUAL PROFESSIONS.
To make a theme 'professions' is rather difficult. Many choices have to be made before you have a clear deffinition of what you want to insert in this theme. What to do with different names for the same profession (reseller, salesman etc), all kinds of consultants/advisers or the use of names in different languages which is rather common in Holland.
I decided to skip all these troubles and limit the theme to 'unusual professions', which is rather relative too, of course. What is unusual to me can be very common in some branches.
The examples with this theme are rag-and-bone-man (Malle Pietje), holistic (?) healer and shoeing-smith (there are only a few left in Holland).
CELEBRITIES
This theme is a very poor one in my collection. Most of my celebrities are only well known in Holland.
The only way to get cards from these is to write for them. Up to now I hardly did that. I only wrote to the Dutch goverment and the result is a lot of cards from our ministers.
By the way, what is celebrity. Who still knows the celebrities of 10 years ago. Most of them have been forgotten. And al lot of important people from big companies are not known by the public. Everybody knows the boss of Microsoft, but who is that at IBM or Shell.
I
General Couzy is well known in Holland on account of his role in former Yougoslavia, Ans Markus is a Dutch painter and illustrator and the famous governor Walter J. Hickel: I do not know him, do you??
SPECIAL DESIGNS, MATERIALS AND CONSTRUCTIONS.
Often companies try to give their cards something special to stand out.Sometimes by using extraordinary sizes (not so often in US) which results in cutting off by the recipient . What a waste.
This seller of picture postcards used an old postcard as background for his bc.
Some companies have cards in the shape of its product like a truck for a trucking company, a bowling pin for a bowling alley and a salesman of an envelope-manufacturer has his card in a nice window-envelope. The Dutch Mint has its bc's made as real coins.
More companies use their own materials to indentify themselves. I have cards made of rubber, corrugated cardboard and aluminum. Also the cards of Etchform are special. This company's bc is a very thin piece of aluminum on which is etched their name and address, as well as samples of their expertise.
SCRIPTS.
In the world there are a lot of different cultures with their own history, development, customs and language. Sometimes they have a script of their own too.
Of course everybody knows that besides the Roman script, there are also Greek, Chinese and Arabic scripts. But only insiders know the difference between Chinese and Japanese or between the 15 scripts used in India.
Nevertheless it is quite a challenge to find cards with all that different scripts and find out what language it is.
The translation which is often on the backside of the card helps to know from what country it comes, and I hope that the script belongs there too. If there are more scripts used in that country (like India) I must find an expert to tell me what script it is.
My collection of different scripts is rather poor up to now. Only 19, so I can have some help from throughout the wide world.
COLLECTORS.
It is obvious that I have a theme 'collectors' . There are to categories: collectors of business cards and all the other collectors.
Among them there is a large variaty of hobbyists. Collectors of calendercards, carpenterpencils, crowncaps, dolls or other toys, ballpoints etc, etc.
In Holland there is a special site for all kinds of collectors where you can get in contact with your fellow-collectors. Only in Dutch.
OTHER THEMES.
Some other themes I have are the following:
- Airlline companies from all over the world, including the small companies which only have roundtrips above some area.
There must be more than 1000 companies and I only have 300 of them.
- Logoes of personal cars.
I don't know how many brands there are, but for the Dutch market I think I have most of them (almost 50).
-Employment agencies.
In Holland there are more than 400 of them active and I have 210 cards. Most difficult to get are cards from agencies which only work regional. And a lot of them are structured that way.
- England's counties.
From the old history England has been divided in counties like Kent, Cornwall, Essex and Northamptonshire. All together about 60.
I am still missing about 20 of them.
So far the story of my collection business cards. I hope you liked it and got enthusiasm for starting a collection yourself.
IF YOU LIKE TO SEE MORE EXAMPLES OUT OF MY COLLECTION, CLICK HERE.
For the ones who want to meet some other collectors, go to the pages of IBCC.
Thanks for your interest. If there are remarks or questions, please mail me at : robsmitnl@gmail.com
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Copyright Rob Smit
Rev: april 2006