This page is giving some background on my hobby of collecting freecards, which are also known as rack cards, because these are distributed through racks in public places, bars, cinemas etc. I started this hobby in 1994 when I was already active in the area of car advertising postcards and also car cards came to appear on freecards. I then decided not to take just the car cards but I started to collect them all. At first only the Dutch cards of Advertising Post and Boomerang Freecards in Amsterdam, and later also the cards from foreign countries all over the world.
The freecards are a fairly new collectors item, which are only available since the early 1990s. Due to the activities of the V.D.P. (Dutch society for Documentation of Postcards) there is a complete registration of all Dutch freecards since the start. Every year since 1994 a catalog has been published with pictures of all cards that have been issued in the preceding year. Most of these catalogs (8 in total) are still available to help the more advanced collector. In all 8.832 cards are listed and pictured in these 8 books, which are very worthwile for anyone interested in Dutch freecards.
Now that there are hundreds of freecards publishers worldwide and many thousands of cards published every year it has become impossible to get all these cards. Gradually therefore we see a shift towards collecting certain "themes" or "topics" like beer, cars, clothing, safe sex etc. In this way one can form a collection of many cards which come from all over the world without the "need" to hunt for all the cards every week or two. It also stimulates contact between collectors all over the world which is facilitated by Internet, a medium frequently used by the target group for the advertisers, that use freecards for their publicity campaigns.
As indicated above in Holland we have a very good registration of all freecards that have been issued. In some foreign countries this is less professionally organized. Therefore Wim Kroon and I have taken an initative to create a list of all known freecards of the American publisher M@x Racks. Per January 2001 we have a database with over 2,100 different cards listed and we are trying to expand that further to a listing that is as complete as possible. In case you are willing to check your collection with this database to see if you have cards that are not yet listed please contact me by e-mail.
A complete overview of the World of Freecards can be seen by visiting the site of my friend Jan Lagendijk.
