I became interested in vintage ephemera by accident really. I had been buying quite a bit of estate sale merchandise and included in the boxes upon boxes of items I brought home with me was quite a bit of very old, even antique ephemera. It seemed that every time I took the larger vintage items out of their boxes, I would come across at least one or two handfuls of very old paper. At first I didn't pay much attention to it, but then I started taking a closer look.
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 50 Pc Lot Vintage Antique Book Pages Ephemera Altered Art Scrapbooking Collage  US $.99 |  Lot of 2 1910s International Harvester ephemera pieces US $.99 |
 Vintage Lot of Political Ephemera Congressional Handbook Republican Rally US $.99 |  VINTAGE Lot of 3 Mr Boston 1981 Baseball Handbooks Guides Stats Games EPHEMERA US $4.00 |
 Lot of Mixed Ephemera Trading Cards Sewing Cancelled Checks and More US $.99 |  Lot of Mixed Ephemera Photos Stooges Eastwood 45 Record Ads and more US $.99 |
| Vintage Ephemera |
To me, it seemed like the vintage paper ephemera told the tale of a time long gone. What I found really interesting about it was that the history I was reading was the everyday history that people lived and then put behind them without ever writing about it. Silly little things like local advertisements with items selling for five or ten cents, or antique cards that people played with and then threw in a drawer only to be dug out 50 years later for an estate sale.
If you have found yourself collecting ephemera, you probably understand what I'm talking about. If you're not a collector, you might wonder why people hang on to so much old junk, let alone pay for. All I can say is that it feels like you're looking at a piece of history.
If you are a collector and you haven't figured this out yet, you really should make the effort to go to some estate sales or estate sale auctions. Oftentimes, you can purchase entire boxes filled with papers that are over 100 years old for just a few dollars. It seems that the people running the estate state sales don't want to take the time to try to sell them individually on places like eBay. I can understand that because both entire house filled with items such small things easily get pushed aside. Of course this is not a guarantee. Sometimes, it seems like now that I look for these boxes, I only find them once every seven or eight estate sales. Maybe some people around here are catching on to how cool this stuff is.
Some of the more interesting things I have found include vintage postcards, postage stamps, vintage art and the correspondence written to the artist, vintage posters, tons vintage advertisements, probably about 10 vintage ticket stubs, vintage magazines, Disney ephemera, paper dolls from the early part of the 1900s, vintage catalog collections, and enough vintage scrapbooking material to fill two large boxes. Some of this ephemera I've sold off on eBay, but somehow I have hung onto for no particular reason. Every once in awhile I get the itch to look at it, and it is like having my own little museum commemorating the late 1800s through the mid 1900s.
