Series Origin
Franz Thiemer & Co.
At left, an ad promoting the upcoming series, sent September 14, 1898, advising that on September 16th the world trip for postcard collectors begins, with an appeal to collectors to be quite punctual with remittance for their subscriptions to the series.
While some cards show the publisher’s name, others, such as the Canadian cards, do not. The series is rife with misspellings and typos, perhaps from the translators used. Errors in card numbers, sometimes fixed by hand with ink, and duplicated numbers, have also been encountered.
The subscription service
How the series worked
The cards were part of a subscription program run by the company, whereby armchair travellers could receive cards featuring views from exotic places with local stamps and postmarks mailed directly to them. Franz Thiemer is thought to be the first company to offer such a subscription service. Die Reise Um Die Welt Maether & Co. Nachf. Berlin and 1. Int’l Ansichtskaarten Gesellchaft Berlin are other companies that Helmfried Luers, a German expert on European postcard publishers, attributes to such a service. Some cards appear to have been postmarked in larger centres where local post offices were not included in the series.
The cards were that were part of the subscription service were mimeographed with the recipients' addresses, and forwarded to post offices under cover to be put into the local mail system. It is sometimes possible to find multiple cards with the same recipient. One particular card back demonstrates how this process may have worked. The card excerpt, at left, shows a postal rubber stamp, whereby cards had been forwarded under cover from the New York post office to the Philadelphia post office to be added to the local mail.
