Collecting Travel Souvenirs

Souvenirs can reflect sweet memories of trips you have actually taken or places you have always meant to go.  The nostalgic collectible keepsakes can be anything from tablecloths, spoons, salt and pepper shakers, maps, regional magazines, local cookbooks, or old postcards.  Travel memorabilia look their best when grouped together.  Invest in cabinets, shelves, or shadow boxes that are custom-designed to display your collections.  Here are some practical pointers on travel keepsakes.

--Collections of vintage postcards from 1930s and 1940s of Main Streets, post offices, railway stations, theme parks, or tourist attractions that have long since closed can be found on eBay, antiques shops, yard sales, or local flea markets.  Old postcards are well suited for a collage to tell a story.

--Look for vintage tablecloths.  Even tablecloths that have been in a drawer for 50 years will show signs of aging with yellowing along the folds.  Most reproduction cloths have all four sides hemmed while vintage cloths are only hemmed on two sides.  You should be able to date your state map cloth within a few years by looking at local attractions, highways, or landmarks.  For example, any California cloth that does not include Disneyland is probably pre-1955 when the park officially opened for business.

--Collect ceramic salt and pepper shakers in symbol that goes with each state, for example, Idaho and the potato and Texas and the oil well.  Arrange salt and pepper shakers along a window ledge or shallow shelves to show them off.

--Travel souvenirs in the 1940s and 1950s from North and South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas are the hardest to find because these states were not popular as tourist destination.