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03 February 2013

The Choice of Gill

One of our contacts at Flickr is Gill aka Gill Steenvoorde from the Netherlands. He has uploaded over 50,000 photos, including many postcards. He collects cards of the Dutch seaside resort Noordwijk aan Zee and fantasy cards from the early 1900's until 1940. We invited him to select his 10 favorite postcards. Here's the Choice of Gill:

"I was born in 1953, so everything that appeared on TV is etched in my memory. Around 1959, we got a TV at home. I have always collected something. During elementary school I kept track in my large atlas of every comic book I had. In high school I collected primarily music - the charts. In 1972, I left home and started collecting clocks and sacred heart statues. Antiques and comics always remained, other collectibles came and went. I am also interested in photo albums."

Batman and Robin
Dutch postcard by Vita Nova, Schiedam, no. 5. Photo: National Periodical Publications Inc. / 20th Century Fox. Publicity still for Batman (1966).
Gill: "I always watched Batman and at the time I collected small cards for in an album. The Batman comics I collected as well. I will always remember those times, sitting on the floor in front of the TV."

Brigitte Bardot
Brigitte Bardot. European postcard, no. 1154. Photo: Sam Lévin.
"BB. Well you just can't ignore her. At this photo, I had a beautiful poster of her in my bedroom. Before that, the BB postcards probably adorned the walls of my brothers' bedrooms."

The Beatles
The Beatles. Vintage postcard.
"I was still in elementary school when you could collect their pictures. Because of my older brothers and sisters, there were all kinds of music at home: Nina Simone, Jaap Fischer, et cetera. At our house, friends and girlfriends came and went. Especially Saturday nights were always like a party with all these people cramped together in a small room."

The Beverly Hillbillies
The Beverly Hillbillies. Dutch postcard. Sent by mail in 1968.
"This series has always stuck with me, especially Elly May. Must have been a boy's dream."

Bonanza
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam.
"The series Bonanza always started a bit later. In my recollection, we first went to bed and could come back down later when the series started. And I collected Bonanza postcards."

De Fabeltjeskrant
The Fabeltjeskrant. Dutch postcard by N.V. Vita Nova, Hank (N.B.). Photo: M.M. Chanowski, 1969.
"Who of my generation did NOT grow up with this series? It was a fixture after dinner - first watching De Fabeltjeskrant - and then doing the dishes. I especially liked the Beaver brothers - great."

Barbara Valentin
Barbara Valentin. German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/192. Photo: Bernard of Hollywood.
"This is a postcard which I must have had too in the 1960's. A photo tells more than a thousand words:)"

Roger Moore as Ivanhoe
Roger Moore as Ivanhoe. Belgian postcard by S. Best (SB), Antwerpen. Photo: still from Ivanhoe.
"Ivanhoe is another of my favourite childhood series. All the kids talked about it. Santa Claus gave my brother and me Ivanhoe suits with plastic swords and a beautiful shield with a bird painted on it."

Jayne Mansfield
German postcard by Krüger, no. 900/78. Photo: Bernard of Hollywood.
"Jayne Mansfield reminds me of the fairground. You could get these cards only at the shooting tent. I had older brothers, so there were several of these cards at home. When I saw this card again at Flickr, I thought about collecting them. But you can't collect everything."

Pierre Brice and Lex Barker
Pierre Brice as Winnetou and Lex Barker as Old Shatterhand. Dutch postcard by Facet Publishers, Lunteren, no. 4. Photo: Rank Film Distributors (Holland) N.V. Publicity still from Der Schatz im Silbersee (1963, Harald Reinl).
"These cards give me that old sunday feeling. We then went over to the Lido - the cinema in Noordwijk aan Zee. There, you really felt like you were in the wild West. But the Lido is gone now."

Thanks Gill, for sharing your memories and photos with us! Gill is also a collector of Suske & Wiske comics (a.k.a. Bob & Bobette or Willy and Wanda or Spike and Suzy) and hosts 4kleuren.nl and 4kleuren.be. For his postcards and other comics, see gill4kleuren.nl, and for his family photos, gillsteenvoorde.nl. And there is his Flickr site of course. Check it out!

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