More Old Real Photo Post Cards

After yesterday's excitement with a real photo post card of the Kaiser, today's seem like a much milder (and more boring) set.  No idea who or what or why they were taken.  Unlike the photo post card of the Kaiser, none of today's post cards match anything similar using Google Image Search.

The first would appear to be from the same era as the post card of the Kaiser, so early 1900's.  Maybe World War I.

It appears to be a soldier, from the hat and coat.  It's winter.  Holding two horses.  Next to a house.  But other than that?

The next is photographically similar.

A person, maybe a farmer?  With two cattle or oxen drawing a cart.  The cart has a tank of some kind on it. But it's too washed out to tell what time of year it is.  Or where.  Or when.

Both of these two have a really generic back side -- like the post card of the Kaiser.  Just a couple of lines on a blank back

The next couple of cards have more interesting backs (at least).  The first is just a picture of a house (farm house?) with a bunch of people -- probably a family.

But the format of the photo -- with a white border around it -- is different from the earlier ones that we saw from World War I in Europe.  Again, no time or location information is obvious from the photo.  It could be just about any rural American location in the early 1900s.

But now, the back tells us something

The "No. 2" is, I think, handwritten in pencil.  The stampbox,

according to the information at David Cycleback's web page on dating real photo postcards says "AZO" with 4 triangles in the corners, pointing up, which says this is from 1904 to 1918.  The divided back, the line separating the Correspondence from the Name and Address, was introduced in 1907.  The white border that we mentioned was "almost always date mid 1910s and after", becoming popular in 1915.  So this is probably 1910 to 1918; possibly 1915 to 1918.

The next post card is portrait mode, not landscape as all the others have been.

Clearly a photo of two people.  A Father and his Son?  Both people are fairly non-descript.  The man's tie is possibly interesting.  And there, on his lapel, is a pin (or button), but even at higher resolutions, there is no detail.

The stampbox on the back gives us some more information.

This is "AZO" but with four squares in the corners, which would be 1925-1940s.


Our last real photo post card is again a portrait mode, of a gentleman sitting and reading a newspaper.

But this looks very much staged.  He is carefully dressed in a tweed or wool suit, posed in front of a background suggesting an orchard or orange grove.

The back provides several pieces of information.

The stampbox is

being "PMO"  with 2 triangles up, 2 triangles down, means 1907 to 1915.

And then on the left hand side, the publisher:

But unfortunately, the Internet has nothing more to say about World Wonders Post Card Studio.

Given the time frame (1907 to 1915) and location of the publisher (Los Angeles), I would venture to suggest this might be a silent film star.   But that doesn't lead us anywhere either.