This is one of those picture-postcard towns that dot the north shore of Long Island Sound. You`ve seen them; we all have. Either in reality or on, well, a picture-postcard.
It has its requisite pointy, white church steeple; its gingerbready Victorian piles (although why some homeowners insist on coating them in
”Colonial” colors is beyond me), and its proper village green.
There are Ye Olde thises and thats, offering everything from scented candles to squid-ink pasta and 57 varieties of pates. (If you can`t find it in one of these trendy shoppes, you probably don`t want it.)
If Guilford isn`t the quintessential New England coastal town, it is one of the best examples money can buy. (Real-estate prices have plenty of zeroes and commas.) Its quiet streets, lined with ancient shade trees, would attract any postcard photographer worth his Nikon.
But in addition to postcard photographers, Guilford has attracted a man who may well be the world`s largest postcard purveyor.
Palmer Chambers is a one-man cottage industry, operating out of his home as Foreign Cards Ltd. In this capacity, the 75-year-old Chambers qualifies for the title of Card Czar of the United States, if not the Grand Postcard Poobah of the Universe.
Mammoth stock
Chambers stocks hundreds of thousands of postcards from places all over the world, selling them by mail-order. How about a view of Aberystwyth, Wales? He`s got one. Something from Burundi? Chambers has 30 cards. The Castle at Chillon, Switzerland? No problem: two views available.
In addition to geographic locations, Chambers` collection includes subjects ranging from the birds of Arizona to the flag of Iceland.
”It`s incredible what people will buy,” Chambers said. There was more than a tinge of wonder and surprise in his voice as he discussed his customers` buying habits during a recent phone interview. It`s not that he doesn`t appreciate their business-he emphatically does-it`s just that they and their buying patterns are for him a constant source of amazement and amusement.
”Something like a little town in Germany, up in the Hartz Mountains,” he said. ”There were six aerial views of this tiny little town, and some people would buy all six of them.”
For Chambers, a native of Pittsburgh and a graduate of Yale, the postcards represent a second career. About a decade ago, he wrapped up his first career, which was also a mail-order operation-selling vitamin products. ”It was right after World War II, and I was one of the earliest people selling vitamins by mail,” he said, adding that his was a small business.
A cottage industry
”I wanted to keep it a home industry, because I didn`t want to have employees and bankers and everything,” Chambers said. The business flourished, but that was many years before the small-is-beautiful concept gained a following. He soon found himself playing with the big boys.
”These people came along with their full-page ads on the backs of magazines, and that just cooked my goose,” Chambers said.
About the time the string ran out on his mail-order vitamin business, he heard about a business for sale called Beforehand Postcards. As it was then run, the small firm was marketing postcards to travelers who would buy them in advance of their trips. It was an interesting idea.
If, for example, you were headed for Rome, you could buy cards showing various views of the city, sit at home and write messages such as, ”The Colosseum is magnificent, truly a wonder from the most glorious period of this beautiful city. Wish you were here to enjoy it with me,” and, when you got to Rome, simply buy stamps and mail them. It saves a lot of valuable vacation time and means you don`t have to drag an address book with you on your journey.
An interesting idea-but one with appeal to a limited market. Few travelers are that compulsive about sending postcards home and that jealous of the few minutes it takes to dash off a few cards to friends or family while away.
Customers are collectors
”Today, those aren`t our main customers,” said Chambers. ”Now, it`s mostly collectors who buy from us.”
Chambers said that, when he bought the business, it came with a sizable-but limited-inventory.
”The former owner had hundreds of thousands of cards,” he said, ”but he didn`t even have 200 different cards.” Just thousands and tens of thousands of copies of the same relatively few cards.
But with a love of travel and a passion for geography (”I may know more geography than anyone in the country,” he says with no false modesty), Chambers began adding to his inventory, increasing the number of locations available to his customers.
Clearly it`s the traveling to buy new inventory that delights Chambers. He and his wife, Britta, a Bryn Mawr College alumna who recently retired as business manager of a private school, returned not long ago from a European swing. ”I got about 10,000 cards in France, Austria, southern Germany and Italy,” he said.
Chambers said his business is not unique. He knows of another dealer in Indiana who sells cards only from the United States, and one run by a man in Sweden with whom he trades overstocks-huge numbers of a single card that he gets when he buys out a firm`s inventory. But he does claim to have the largest assortment of cards in the world.
Sends out mailings
Every couple of months-or whenever he gets in a new supply of cards to boost his inventory-Chambers sends out a mailing to his customers, an order form listing hundreds of selections.
Prices range from 30 cents apiece, for a standard order of 10 to 24 cards, to 22 cents apiece for more than 200 cards. Then there are the specials: ”Special Armchair World Tour-250 cards-$50; 1,000 Different Cards from 125 Countries and Islands-$185; 500 Different U.S. Cards from 50 States- $95.” And, if you`re willing to take 250 to 2,000 cards of Chambers`
choice-”No individual card will exceed 4 percent of the total quantity”-you can get the price down to 8 cents apiece.
Foreign Cards Ltd., Box 123, Guilford, Conn. 06437; 203-453-5813.
