Vintage Angel’s Flight postcard. (Courtesy of the Newberry Library.)
FOR NEARLY A QUARTER CENTURY, Jeremy LeRoque, like his father before him, has put on the L.A. County Vintage Postcard & Paper Show three times a year. The show is exactly what it sounds like — a celebration of brochures, postcards, trading cards, stamps, and posters from bygone eras.This weekend, it will be at the Masonic Lodge in Arcadia, a giant hall that often hosts events for collectors. Some of the wares on display could be seen as nearly worthless, while other items are worth a small fortune. All of it is a paper link to the Southland’s’ past, from marketing postcards for a new desert town called “Joshua Tree” to 1930s matchbooks selling a new restaurant called the “Brown Derby.”
The latest show, which someone in the LeRoque family has been hosting for more than 50 years will begin Saturday. It opens as the modern era of paper ephemera faces an existential question: Who will take on the businesses as the collectors who founded these postcard shows retire?
Antiques dealer Bobby McDearmon, who runs a store in Orange County and has been selling at LeRoque’s show for a decade, said he has high hopes that the field will continue going strong.
“The collecting people that I've been tight-knit with are all aging out, but I come to [the L.A. County] show and meet so many young people with great interests,” he said. “It is a big pick-me-up because a lot of this isn't dying like some people say it is.”
Ahead of the show, five ephemera purveyors who will be on hand this weekend gave L.A. Material a peek at their favorite pieces of Southern California memorabilia.
And McDearmon offered a word of advice for potential shoppers: “If you see something you like, buy it. It won’t be there in another 15 minutes.”
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