Postcards, a disease that probably won't kill you

I have been wanting to start a blog for quite some time and finally decided to pull the trigger today.

My postcard disease started in 1997 while I was living in Kansas City. My Father was in town to do a flea market at the Kemper Arena. I had weekends off and went down to help him out. I didn't get to see him very much since I lived about 450 miles from home and thought it would be fun. He had brought old model airplanes and related items for his booth. After we had gotten his booth set up I decided to go look around. Not too far from us was a booth of postcards. I had never looked at old postcards at any shows in the past. I had been to dozens and dozens of antique shows and flea markets while I was growing up. Looking back, there were probably lots of great cards I missed out on. My Mother had collected postcards of both of my parents hometowns as well as several other Nebraska communities important to our family's heritage for the previous twenty years, so I knew she had an interest in them. I had looked through those cards but had never really thought much about them even though I have always been intrigued by family history and history in general. Anyway, I thought I would see if they had any postcards from McCook for her. I started going through the cards and found a great real photo of my parents building. (To this day it is still one of the neater cards I have found of the building.) I bought it and showed it to my Father. For some reason it didn't go back home with him but stayed with me. It wasn't very long after that someone at work told me about ebay. I started to check there for postcards from McCook, Fairbury (where my Father grew up) and Auburn (where my Mother grew up). I started to buy cards from these towns when I came across them and picked up some cards of places that seemed important or familiar to me. Shortly thereafter I met a postcard dealer who I had purchased from on ebay who lived right in the city. His name was Dick Lightle and he was a very nice man who had been dealing in postcards for quite sometime. Sadly, he has since passed away from cancer. I went over to his house and looked though some of his Nebraska cards for the towns I was interested in and made my first big purchase. I spent over a hundred dollars with him - goodness! He explained why a 1940s real photo of a street scene was $20 and I bought it. Good thing he broke me in early. =) I had really never collected any thing of much value growing up, even thought I grew up around antiques. I appreciated antiques but didn't seek them out. I had even always said I would never get into the antique business. Little did I know that these silly postcards were going to change my life.