[Hallicrafters] QSL goldmine

[Ian Webb]

I sure wish I'd kept the 2" tall stack of cards that were never claimed at the
6th call area QSL Bureau about 25 or 30 years ago.

A friend of mine had them. I have no idea how he ended up with them.  He gave
them to me when I asked if he had any interesting DX cards that I could use in
a display on Amateur Radio that I used to put in a display case in the hallway
of one of our buildings at our Community College.  It used to draw a good deal
of interest with cards from some pretty rare DX.

I went through the stack 15 or so years ago and I think I kept a few and threw
out the rest.

I discovered the other day that a BV1 card for one of my contacts from the
1950s or early 1960s is almost unreadable and has faded so badly over the
years that you can hardly make anything out.  The ink on it used to have the
appearance of the mimeograph type ink.  I wonder how many of our "modern" QSL
cards will still have writing on them that can be read in another 50 years?
How permanent is ballpoint ink compared to the old fashioned liquid ink from
fountain pens?

Goes to show you that if you keep things long enough they'll become valuable.
Like the drafting teaching I had in college who still had the very wide ties
(and wore them)  from the 1930s or 40s -- but that's another story entirely!
<grin>

Ian, K6SDE