886,460 picture cards were sold at post offices in the first half of 2014. The annual sales in 2013 reached 1,767,784, or by 31 thousand picture cards more than in 2012.

The volumes of purchased picture cards traditionally grow before Easter, Christmas and during summer holidays. Unlike picture cards with Christmas or Easter motifs where it is possible to calculate the number of cards sold, the volume of picture cards related strictly to summer holidays is uncertain because people send not only local motifs of towns they visited but also pictures of animals or children’s book or cartoon characters.

So far this year, post offices successfully sold about half a million of picture cards with Easter motifs, or by 80 thousand cards more than in the past year. These volumes show a slow but steady return from the impersonal text messages back to picture cards.

It is unfortunately impossible to say how many of the purchased cards are really sent because these so-called unrecorded consignments are not calculated in any country in the world. Although the tendency has been towards an annual decline in the number of letters and cards by 8-10 percent on average, there are still hundreds of millions of them delivered by Czech Post every year.

In addition to the classic picture cards, Czech Post also offers MMS Postcard service.

It has been on the market since 2006 but without attracting much attention. Although a complete redesigning in late 2013 changed the situation, MMS postcards are still losing their battle with classic picture cards. Only hundreds of customers use MMS postcards every month. They can use the simple application MMS Postcard to make their personalised picture card and send it from their mobile phone or computer to us. The card will then be printed and delivered to any address in the Czech Republic.

Send an MMS message containing your picture and the text NAME SURNAME*STREET HOUSE NUMBER*TOWN*POSTCODE*WORDING to telephone number: 720 00 22 55, or use our form.

Example: Jan Novak*Dlouha 25*Praha*110 00*Hi, we are greeting you from a holiday in the Prachovske Rocks. The picture shows our Pepik hanging from a rope after he slipped. Mirka and Jirka

The text must be incorporated into the message rather than into the heading, which has to remain empty. You will receive an SMS message confirming the receipt of your MMS message and asking for payment. The payment is made by replying to this message with an SMS message. You will then receive another SMS message confirming the payment and saying that your MMS card will be printed and sent. The printed picture card will be delivered to the given address within 1 to 2 days.

The price of MMS Postcard is CZK 26 inclusive of VAT and is payable with a premium SMS message. The price includes the printing and sending of the picture card.

You can find more information on www.doschranky.cz.

A short message in the form of postcard, picture card or telegram is a postal phenomenon inseparable from the boom in letter services in the second half of the 19th century, based on a simpler and cheaper method of processing all kinds of mail and on the introduction of printing technology allowing cheap and fast reproduction of texts and images. Short messages transmitted by postal service gave literate people access to remote communication and the possibility to play with the message and strongly influence its final appearance. In the decades following the 1860s, when the first postcards consisting of a single card with printed stamp and lines for address details were invented, human creativity led to the creation of a rich visual culture based on the attempt to deliver a clear, fast and visually adequate message to a remote addressee.

There are three aspects of the development of short message.

1. Postcards continued the tradition of closed letters but simplified it by removing the envelope. Postcards utilized the former invention of postage stamps by using an image of the stamp printed on a card of the size of a letter envelope, which allowed the sender to write only a limited message.
2. The combination of the properties of letters, written on a decorative paper with picture motifs with a stuck postage stamp, and the simplicity of postcards gave rise to picture cards. The first picture cards in Europe can be found in the 1870s in Germany, and from the 1880s also in Austria-Hungary. They spread from Europe in the whole world (in the United States officially from 1898) and completely conquered it in the 20th century, stimulating the creation of a large scale of different products, such as Easter, Christmas or army picture cards, associated with a specific culture.
3. The visual format of postcards and picture cards was behind the idea of decorative telegrams, paid for on the basis of the number of words.

The boom of short postal messages lasted more than a century. The era of electronic data transmission coming in the early 21st century, with the speed of paper correspondence being steamrolled by the speed of even shorter text and MMS messages or email correspondence. In this situation, postcards as well as the entire letter mail are abandoning their positions. People are stopping to send written postal messages, and clouds are gathering over the art and everyday use of postcards and picture cards.

Source: Postal Museum

Mgr. Marta Selicharová

Spokeswoman

Czech Post