Divided back, Real Photo Postcard, unused, deckled-edge. Publisher unknown. Series or number 990. Circa possibly 1930s to 1950s.

Price:  $20.00

Originally I was going to give this post the title “What A Face” because well, just look at that face – you just want to hug him. But the translation from German for the caption  “In Gedanken versunken”  is “Lost in thought.”  (Awww!) that’s great, too. And I hope someone corrects me if I’m wrong, but I believe this guy is a Wire Fox Terrier.

The stamp box mark for this one says “Echte Photographie.” This seems somewhat confusing as echte is German for “real” and photographie is French for “photography.” Why use both languages? Ahhh, echte is also “real” in Dutch, so perhaps this was printed in Belgium, as Dutch, French and German are the three official languages of the Kingdom of Belgium. Anyway, we know from the stamp box that the card is a Real Photo Postcard. Trying to pin down a date is another matter:  There are variations in the design of these two words in stamp boxes. The excellent Playle’s website (playle.com) shows examples and at first (yikes!) I almost thought I saw the same mark of the cursive words in an oval which is a known 1953 stamp box, but thankfully noticed that ours here is a bit different, (a good reminder to not be too tired when doing these.) The main difference in ours here is that the line in the “e” in photographie extends all the way to the surrounding oval. Here’s the stamp box itself and the unknown printer or publisher logo that appears in the bottom left with either the series or number of the card beneath it. This one will go in the mystery pile to hopefully get clarification on later.

Sources:   http://www.playle.com/realphoto/photod.php

http://www.feldgrau.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=8096

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Belgium