'Name Band' Cards Taking the Place of LL's
This article is by Mark Eastland and is reprinted from November 30, 1957 (Vol. 13, No.3) issue of Post Card Collector News
The Large Letter (LL) card enjoyed high popularity during the late 30’s and early 40’s, but come the 50’s and the photochrom cards — they have taken their leave only to be found in out-of-the-way card racks. Soon they may be collector’s items — in fact, some of them already are.
The new ‘Name Band’ (NB) cards are ‘the thing’ now appearing in predominance all over the U. S., by all publishers. From state cards to suburban communities NB’s are sending greetings to the rest of the nation.
Let us define an NB. Generally it is a photochrom card with one or more views separated one or more times by a white (or any other color the publisher chooses) band horizontally or diagonally over the face of the card expressing a greeting from a special location. Variation in NB’s are even more extensive that LL’s. One thing definite — 99% of the cards say ‘greeting’s from.’ So did LL cards.
Supposing, before this gets out of hand, that we set up a common code reference on these cards.
The direction of the band could be identified by the following code:
D-1 Diagonal-upper left side to lower right
D-2 Diagonal-lower left side to upper right
D-3 Diagonal-top left to bottom right
D-4 Diagonal-bottom left to top right
H-1 Horizontal-top
H-2 Horizontal-top
H-3 Horizontal-bottom
H-4 More than one horizontal band.
* If band covers only half the distance across the card, indicate with the fraction ‘½’ after the code. Example: D-1½
C If name space is centered on card, not touching any border.
O If name space is round or oval.
M If more than two views appear on a card followed by the number of
views.
Example: H2-M4 means divided horizontally in the middle with four views
on the card.
S If only a single view appears on the card.
Publishers names can be simplified too as follows:
CP Colourpicture (Plastichrome)
CT Curt Teich
D Dexter Press
HSC Crocker (Mirrokrome)
K Koppel
ECK Kropp
MR Mike Roberts
SH Shelton
T Tichnor ( Lustrechrome)
In practical use ‘NEW YORK CITY – D-1 – CP-P11505 (MP145) would say ‘The card is for New York City with a diagonal band from the loser left side to the upper right side with 4 different view published by Colourpicture card n. P11505, publishers no. MP145.’
This is accomplished by listing the information in the following manner:
(1) name of card, (2) code, (3) publisher, (4) card nos.
If this or a similar system of describing NB cards were to be adapted universally it would be simple for collectors to state their wishes simply through the mails to other collectors.
