S.O.S. (Surplus Old Stuff) with Amy Moyer: Greeting Cards – WorthPoint

Whether I am helping a client clean out a family home or attending an estate sale where everything but the kitchen sink is up for grabs, inevitably, I find piles of one type of ephemera that never made it in the recycling bin: greeting cards. Used or new, decades old or even a century old, older generations frequently save these paper salutations. Read on to learn more about this familiar S.O.S. (Surplus Old Stuff) item, why we keep them, and what to do with them now.

Predating Email

The history of greeting cards is well-documented. Early cultures exchanged paper well-wishes for grand events like Chinese New Year, and by the 15th century, Germans were using woodblock printing techniques to reproduce their New Year’s cards more quickly. Add in new holidays such as Valentine’s Day, and the next thing you know, exchanging greeting cards is part of popular culture. By the mid-19th century, both men and women took joy in receiving a paper card in the mail, just as your heart may leap today at getting an important email from a new suitor or job prospect. Add in the 1840 introduction of the postage stamp and industrialization’s constantly improving printing techniques, and the market for greeting cards exploded. Today, Hallmark and American Greetings continue to be America’s largest producers of greeting cards.

Mountains of Christmas Cards

However, the joy of receiving a greeting card has always been fleeting, leaving the recipient with the question: now, what do I do with the card? That fleeting joy persists as a bit of memory, however small, encouraging the recipient to “do something” with the card rather than simply throwing it in the trash. Because of their folded nature, you can easily display greeting cards on a shelf or mantel for some time. Perhaps you have houseguests dropping in, and you want to impress them with the legions of cards that filled your mailbox for your birthday, or you want to subtly remind them to send you a card next year.

Maybe you integrate greeting cards into holiday displays, such as nestling Halloween cards between ceramic witches and pumpkins. Oh, and what to do with those mountains of Christmas cards flying into mail slots every December? Personally, we have a wedding gift Waterford salad bowl we take out once a year (because we don’t serve salad in Waterford…) and fill with all the holiday cards. This bowl is perfect for all those “flat” cards with family photos and easy to pass around at holiday dinners for the elderly relatives to leaf through and “see how big” all the nieces and nephews in far-flung states have gotten.

Stuffed in Desk Drawers

So that solves the immediate question of what to do with recently received greeting cards, but now let’s tackle the bigger question: what to do with them after a month or a year … or a decade? How many older relatives do you know who simply squirreled some of these cards away in a bag in a closet, a box in the attic, or a drawer in a desk? I will be honest here on two points: this is not a bad thing to do, and I do it myself. Why? Because greeting cards are small and thus easy to store, they often contain the aforementioned memory of a time worth saving.

Greeting cards take up very little space compared to other S.O.S. items like china, crystal, and magazines. You don’t need a whole cabinet or dedicated piece of furniture to store them, and they are easy to forget about once they are tucked in a little box or drawer somewhere. What greeting cards have I saved? While I have held onto some birthday and holiday cards, most of my saved greeting cards are “new baby” cards in boxes with other kiddo mementos, such as baby books, school photographs, and vaccination records. These boxes are so important to me that they fall under the category of “things to grab if the house is on fire.”

Sort, Save, Recycle, Donate

However, you can leave the bulk of old greeting cards to burn if your house is aflame. Unless they are super old (i.e., 18th or 19th century), they generally have no value, but most of the old greeting cards we hold onto aren’t that ancient. Most are from the 20th century and have no value unless they are unused or feature a popular theme like Barbie or Gary Larson, in which case you can resell them. Read on for a step-by-step guide on how to get rid of those boxes of old greeting cards!

S.O.S. Step-by-Step Guide to Sorting Old Greeting Cards

• Sort into two piles: Used and Unused.
• Resell or donate the Unused Pile if they are “vintage.”
• Open the ones in the Used Pile to see if they are any sentiments worth saving (such as a wartime note from deceased Great Uncle Charlie, etc.). Put those in a manila envelope labeled “Family History” and mail those off to a younger relative.
• Go back through the “Used Pile” and recycle any that are stained, yellowed, worn, or simply ugly. Try to recycle at least 75 percent of this pile so you are left with a new pile called “The Best.”
• Cut the front off all of the cards in The Best pile. If you are feeling handy, use these to make new greeting cards. If you simply want them out of sight, contact your local community art center or public high school art department to see if they’d be interested in a donation. Chances are they’d be thrilled to have your carefully whittled-down pile for future student art projects!

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Amy Moyer is the proprietor of Antmuffin: Art, Antiques & Collectibles. She holds a B.A. in Visual Art from Brown University and lives in Boston.

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