Local postcard collectors gather monthly in Monterey to share prized finds – and piece together the local history and stories told by ephemera.

It’s just before 9am on a Thursday morning at the Coco’s Restaurant in Monterey as members of the Monterey Peninsula Postcard Breakfast Club arrive with boxes and bags in hand. Once members are seated and greetings exchanged, Rachel Bennett offers to start off the meeting with a selection of postcards she brought, beginning with some vintage postcards of local scenes.

“Did you know Highway 1 was once known as Roosevelt Highway?” she asks as she passes around a card portraying a stretch of the Big Sur roadway. She shares cards displaying the Hotel Del Monte, now on the grounds of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, as well as a mobile home park, now the site of Monterey Lanes on North Fremont.

Chris Amador of Marina brought in two novelty postcards from 1982, Prince Charles and Princess Diana, which double as masks with cut-outs for noses and eyes. Amador works at the Cannery Row Antique Mall, where he finds other items to purchase for his collections, and he also buys items online, like an Ernest Hemingway autograph on a slip of paper he passes around. The treasure is carefully protected in a plastic sleeve.

That slip of paper is what’s known in the collecting world as ephemera, paper items that include things like brochures, flyers, tickets, posters and postcards. What many people might toss, there are those who find such scraps of paper a fascinating look into history. Postcard collecting itself, known as deltiology, has been going on since what’s believed to be the very first postcard was sent in London in 1840. (In 2002, that hand-painted card sold for a record 31,750 pounds sterling.)

At Coco’s, postcards and other ephemera are passed around the table. There are three different cards of the Lone Cypress, one of Pacific Grove’s “magic carpet” pink blooming ice plant and Easter-themed cards – like European prints circa 1920s, signed by the artists, that Gail Ellerbrake brought along. One shows an elegant woman wearing a rabbit-head mask.

The group has been meeting for at least a decade, with about eight to 10 people attending. “This group of people would probably not get together for anything else. It’s a diverse group,” founder Sherrie Welchner says. “We have nothing else in common but we all get along. It’s a really sweet, close-knit group.”

Welchner, the owner of Pickings Antiques in Pacific Grove, started the group after leaving behind a postcard club in Santa Barbara when she moved to Monterey County. She describes the Santa Barbara club, which focused exclusively on Santa Barbara history, as “one of the most fun things I’ve done in my life. I know that sounds kind of crazy.”

The Monterey County club is more broadly focused, with members specializing in different genres or themes. Ellerbrake, for example, specializes in cards depicting ladies in hats – the rabbit-head mask postcard she brought to the meeting fits that niche.

“You can find a postcard for just about anything,” Amador says. “It’s endlessly fascinating.”

Bennett started out collecting Christmas postcards, then expanded to a collection that contains several thousand cards. She notes that fellow club member Pat Hathaway has far more.

Hathaway is best known locally for his archive of more than 80,000 historical photos, including postcards. More than 300 of the postcards he’s collected over 50 years were featured in the 2005 book Monterey Peninsula: A Postcard Journey by Burlington Willes.

For Melissa Theony, a graphic designer and organizer of the annual Camp Vintage Antique Show in Carmel Valley held every June, postcards became a fascination because each tells its own story – sometimes multiple stories. The front image conveys one message, while the back might have a message written to a friend, family member or sweetheart, revealing another story. Stamps and postage marks offer further details.

Theony joined the club a few years ago after meeting Welchner through Camp Vintage. Noticing the only major postcard shows are in San Francisco and Los Angeles (after a longtime annual show in Santa Cruz ceased), the two women decided to organize their own show in 2016. The first year they started small in a hotel meeting room in Monterey. It was so successful that they doubled the size the next year. A third show is in the works for this fall with a date to be announced.

Welchner believes the interest in postcards is on the upswing, even in the digital ages. Postcards were a big hobby in the late 1800s and early 1900s, then waned in the mid-20th century, she says: “I think we’re turning a corner again.”

MONTEREY PENINSULA POSTCARD BREAKFAST CLUB meets at 9am the first Thursday of each month at Coco’s, 300 David Ave., Monterey. montereypostcard@gmail.com