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POSTCARDS CELEBRATE JACOB POPP’S LONG BATTLE OVER SUNDAY TRADING (from page 17) times over a period of eight years, during which he paid over £200 in fines and costs. The longer the confrontation continued, the more profitable it became for him; by 1910 he was saying that “if he did not take between £40 and £50 on a Sunday at his Frogmoor shop, he had experienced a bad time.” Popp’s postcards Mr. Popp was a man of varied talents. He supplemented his shop takings by applying his command of several languages as a courier for Thomas Cook’s foreign holiday tours before and after the 1914-18 war. From his trips abroad he often brought back novelties to add to his retail trading stocks. He had a keen eye for publicity, which he promoted by producing a set of six artistic postcards presenting a satirical account of his prosecutions, with a commentary in verse of which he seems himself to have been the writer. The spirited artwork captioned by these amusing lines may also have been Popp’s but these postcard compositions do not bear any name. The New York Times report of 1908 stated that Popp had “issued a series of picture postcards illustrating his experiences and has sold one edition of 12,000 of these.” It is unclear whether this figure represented 2,000 sets of six or 12,000 of each of the cards. They were produced both in sepia and coloured ver- sions; the former is more often found today, usually kept together as a set by original purchasers having retained them as souvenirs, enjoying Popp’s sense of humour. They are illustrated here, with the texts of their neatly hand-lettered commentary. For another postcard, Popp was photographed standing outside his Frogmoor shop. Later years Jacob Popp was described as a man of fine physique and constitution, fully 6ft. in height. He was a keen sportsman, captain of the Wycombe Cycling Club, also a motor cyclist and motorist. He was involved with local football and cricket clubs and organised races for the benefit of street newspaper sellers and other causes. He was also an active Freemason. In June 1924 he fractured his skull and injured his legs in an accident while riding his motor cycle. After spending nine weeks in hospital he seems to have resumed his active life, until 1938, when his leg troubles became serious. Their ulcerous condition compelled successive amputations above the knee of both legs in 1938-39, but to no avail, as he died on 6th April 1939. The inquest verdict was “death through misadventure”. Popp had asked for no mourning but the widespread respect he had earned over four decades in his adopted town was shown by the large crowds lining the route of his cortege from Frogmoor to the parish church and the numerous and widely representative attendance at his funeral. Jacob Popp posed for this postcard photograph outside his shop, probably in 1910. 18 Picture Postcard Monthly December 2009 STAMP & POSTCARD FAIRS Modern postcards as well as old ones are well featured at each event This mmonth’s ffairs: Sunday 6th December WOODBRIDGE, Community Centre Sunday 13th December MOUNTNESSING, Village Hall Next mmonth’s ffairs: Sunday 10th January WYMONDHAM, Ketts Park Community Centre All fairs 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Details: Ray How 01702-544632 ALL COLLECTORS ALL RISKS - NO EXCESS Insurance Cover for STAMPS: POSTCARDS: COINS: MEDALS: & all other Collectables DEALER COVER ARRANGED at premises and Fairs PUBLIC LIABILITY for SOCIETIES STAMP INSURANCE SERVICES C G I Services Limited (Dept 16PP) 29 Bowhay Lane, EXETER EX4 1PE Tel: 01392 433 949 Fax: 01392 427 632 Authorised & Regulated by the Financial Services Authority This included his four daughters, two of them with their husbands, the other two then being unmarried. Popp’s widow was duly granted probate of his will in July 1939, when his effects were precisely valued at £3,891. 14s. 8d. She was then named as Philadelphia Priscilla Popp - which indicates that Jacob Popp seems to have married again after the death of his first wife. While his personal biography and contributions to the public life of High Wycombe may now have slipped into the shadows, his long campaign for Sunday trading remains a significant chapter in English social history, pictorially documented by the set of postcards he produced to celebrate it. Acknowledgements Grateful acknowledgement of their help with information for this article is made to the Local Studies Specialist, Buckinghamshire Library Service, High Wycombe; and to Tom Holder. PLEASE MENTION PICTURE POSTCARD MONTHLY WHEN REPLY- ING TO ADVERTISERS LOOKING FOR POSTCARD ALBUMS & ACCESSORIES? Look NO further than VERA TRINDER Ltd 38 Bedford Street, Strand, London WC2E 9EU OPEN: Monday to Friday 8.30 am to 5 pm Send for our free catalogue Tel: 020 7257 9940 Fax: 020 7836 0873 E-mail: vtrinder@aol.com Ansaphone: 020 7836 2366 Web site: www.vtrinder.co.uk Got a point of view or something to say? Write to PPM Postbag!
The State of the Nation, Postcard Fairs, and why should I bother? Many items are sold on the Internet by individuals operating alone and who have no other involvement in the world of postcards. That is good; it opens up new opportunities for everyone. The big concern for me is the fact that major dealers from the mainstream postcard fraternity are also climbing into the Internet. Nothing wrong in that, you might think; it's a free world (relatively speaking) anyway. Except that is, it isn't being properly managed at all. There isn't a balanced approach. There is no leadership. In many cases not even an awareness of what it all means, despite the inescapable fact that it greatly affects every one of us, sellers and buyers, dealers and collectors, all alike. I cannot believe the complacent, inward-looking, shortsighted, unprofessional attitude that leading figures in the postcard world are taking towards their industry and our hobby. It is an abdication of responsibility. People forget that the postcard world is an industry. A significant number of individuals rely on it to make their living; it needs raw material supplies to function; above all it relies on having regular customers. Without the customers it is nothing. Customers I spent all my working life as a supplier to, or working for, or as a customer of the retail industry. Rammed in my head every day were phrases like - "quality and value", "listen to the customers", "if we don't give customer service they don't come back". I've seen, at first hand, what happens when the people at the top lose sight of those principles. When it comes to post- John Wood I don't write public letters - it isn't my scene at all - but this time I've had enough. I'm hacked off, disillusioned, despairing and generally frustrated beyond belief, even angry. At what? At the direction our postcard world is heading. The impact of the Internet means that the whole postcard industry and hobby is at a crossroads. Should that concern us? Too right it should if it isn't handled intelligently and responsibly, because it has already had an enormous impact on both dealers and collectors. And that impact is not all good; some of it is not good at all; in fact it is very bad. No Leadership cards, all I am is a customer, nothing more than that. I like my hobby; I like the cards I collect; I like to look at cards I don't collect; I like the friendship of like-minded collectors; I like the repartee and friendship with many of the dealers. As one particular example, I like to go to postcard fairs. At fairs we don't just talk about postcards, but also football, politics, scandal and anything else of the moment. And, and it is a big ‘and’, fairs are also one of the main sources where we all learn more about postcards and our hobby, and we broaden our interests. Fairs and clubs and people are at the heart of postcards. Many collectors, like me, browse through all sorts of postcards at a fair, not just looking for the specific ones missing from our collections. For me, I finish up buying all sorts of cards that I didn't plan for. Maybe I liked the message on the back, maybe it was in better condition than the one I already had, or it was from a different batch, or it was of a town that I knew, or maybe I just liked it when I held it. I like to buy from the dealers I am familiar with, those who are friendly and helpful, and who know what they have in their stock. Fairs - why bother? But what is happening now? I go to important fairs like Woking, Twickenham and Haywards Heath and there are precious few of the cards from my favourite publisher to look at, let alone buy. I get home, look on the internet a couple of days later and there have appeared lots of cards from that same favourite publisher, being offered for sale by dealers who had been at the fairs but had nothing new in their stock - those same dealers that I have been buying cards from regularly for years. What is the point of my driving over 100 miles to go to Woking or Haywards Heath? - not much. Why spend £50 on the train to go to Bipex - I didn't, I couldn't be bothered, I expected it would be a waste of time. How sad is that? What price loyalty of dealers at fairs to their regular customers? Not a lot in some cases. Worst of all, we now have major dealers not even bringing their topographical stock to the fairs, but there they are at those fairs trawling other dealers’ stock prior to opening time (and during the rest of the day) to put away the cards to sell on the Internet. No wonder there isn't much for the likes of me to look at! Thanks a lot, everybody! It's ‘I'm all right Jack’, for the few, at the long-term cost of the majority. Doesn't anybody realise that? Don't other dealers realise they are going to lose out in the end, because, if they don't have some decent cards to sell, then they won't have the customers coming to visit them. The ‘I'm all right Jack’ approach is like having a cuckoo in the nest, but for how many years do cuckoos themselves survive, after they have destroyed the nest? Not many. Increasingly, there is much more enjoyment in going to smaller, friendly, local fairs like Ripley and Portchester, where the dealers know each other, they know their stock, and they know their customers. At least I know I have an evenhanded, fair chance of seeing some cards. And I can have a cup of tea and a laugh as well. Long may they prosper! Postcard Industry But what are the senior members of the postcard trading community doing? Sniping at each other, criticising what the big fair organisers are trying to achieve, grumbling how things are getting difficult, and ignoring the big wide world called reality, and business reality in particular. There are many dealers who would read the above and say, "But I don't do that". Selling cards themselves on the Internet? I agree that many do not do that, but if they sell to those who do, then are they looking after their own business? I think not. Selling a few good cards to an ‘internet man’, who then gets dealers' discount as well is surely not the best answer. Getting a good price yourself, seeing the same customers next fair and next year, selling other cards to them as well. Is that not a better bet? Some dealers agree, they do not sell new stock on the Internet, and they try to sell all their cards themselves. I applaud them. We should all applaud them and we customers should support them whenever we can. The Internet Does all this mean that the Internet is the equivalent of The Great Satan? Of course not. Do I buy on the Internet? Of course I do. For people who cannot get to fairs, or auctions, or have no local shop, then the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. For sellers who maybe are geographically remote, or for whom postcards are only a part of what they do, then it is also a great opportunity. For the regular dealers, if they have had a good card in their stock and it has not sold, either because the normal customers haven't turned up to see it, or we won't pay the asking price, then we cannot object if they then choose to offer on the Internet, or sell to another dealer. On the Internet there is no doubt that some cards can, and do, achieve more money than if they were sold over the counter. But many other cards do not sell at all. By the time commission charges, scanning and uploading, packing and posting, are all taken into realistic account, does anyone ever work out their effective net hourly pay when selling on the internet? I really wonder about that. No Level Playing Field None of us has any divine right to preferential treatment. But if, as regular customers and collectors, we are willing to shell out our hardearned money on a regular basis then we have every right to ask for a level playing field. That is now not the case, and it is getting worse. It isn't fair and it isn't right for the future welfare of the hobby. The danger of collectors becoming faceless user ID's on the Internet rather than regular customers is real. The danger of a few selfinterested dealers jeopardising the welfare of the majority of their colleagues is real. Do Something - Now! I'm saying to everyone out there, who cares about our industry and hobby, that unless something is done, the postcard world will not just be changing, it will be withering at the core. What can collectors do? Not a lot in reali- (continued) Picture Postcard Monthly December 2009 19
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Page 7 and 8: International Diary This is a selec
Page 9 and 10: CANTERBURY POSTCARD & COLLECTORS FA
Page 11 and 12: TWICKENHAM IS COMING JANUARY 15th &
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Page 23 and 24: Boxmaking department at Aintree ly
Page 25 and 26: Waterloo Bowling Handicap. Blackpoo
Page 27 and 28: Edwardian Postcard Project Julia Gi
Page 29 and 30: Sale date 9th December 2009
Page 31 and 32: Father Christmas must have been ple
Page 33 and 34: Alcohol galore. Let’s hope Bert w
Page 35 and 36: CARDS 2010 140+ Dealers at Bath & W
Page 37 and 38: David Broome on ‘Discutido’. He
Page 39 and 40: Sidmouth, Newton Abbot, Bexhill, Cr
Page 41 and 42: Channel Isles displays Some 23 memb
Page 43 and 44: Arrivee de Viande fraiche (Les Esqu
Page 45 and 46: Cheapside’s postcard heritage Sir
Page 47 and 48: CAN YOU HELP? New political cartoon
Page 49 and 50: Dingle, County Kerry. It was near h
Page 51 and 52: Baxter, Tom Walls, Henry Wilcoxon,
Page 53 and 54: HULL CITY FC postcards wanted: team
Page 55 and 56: SHOPS PAGE POSTCARDS at HUNGERFORD
Page 57 and 58: Picture Postcard � Puzzles � An
Page 59 and 60: Picture Postcard � Puzzles � 36

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