Wish You Were Here: Travel by Postcard

Collector: Carleen FerroNyalka
Collection Title: Wish You Were Here: Travel by Postcard

Collector Statement:

My postcard collection began with a $20 estate-sale purchase in Florida, but my love of collecting ephemera started long before that, with the iconic Lisa Frank stationery and stickers of my childhood. Today, I regularly keep a junk journal to document my travels, but my favorite souvenirs are postcards. There is something special about choosing a postcard from a place I’ve visited, writing a few words, noting the weather and sending it home to myself. I love watching the journey unfold; sometimes the postcard takes so long to arrive that I’m already home before it reaches my mailbox. Over the years, I’ve received postcards from places as far away as Russia, New Zealand, Chile, and Singapore through r/RandonActsofCards on Reddit. Some of my favorite finds, however, are the postcards I discover in antique stores, especially those with handwritten messages from another time, often ending with a simple, heartfelt “Wish you were here, with love.”

The collection celebrates the many ways postcards capture a sense of place, memory, and everyday life. It includes transportation and hotels, historical places and moments, iconic viewpoints, people and activities, flora and fauna. Together, these cards offer glimpses into how people traveled, what they saw, and what they chose to remember and share. I have collected postcards from 42 of the 50 states, including Alaska and Hawaii, as well as Puerto Rico and Guam, along with cards from destinations around the world. Each postcard is more than an image—it is a small piece of ephemera that has traveled through someone’s hands, carried a message, marked a journey, or simply served as a reminder: Wish you were here.