Antique Valentine's Day cards in my collection range from simple postcards to multi-layered, multi-page items. They feature paper lace and tissue paper in some cases. Some of them appear handmade, perhaps from even older cards that were around the house. I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 cards, though I only found a small envelope of about fifty of them today. The rest are "layered" among the rest of the vintage items around my apartment, lol. The cards posted today date from the late 1800s to about 1915.
This one seems to have a heart-shaped piece cut out from it at the top left. Used on a different homemade card perhaps?
BTW:
The interior verses of these cards is much more sophisticated than the "Be My Valentine" that I remember sending to my classmates as a child. And, yes, most of these vintage cards were sent to children, from other children, as [I think] they still do today. Somehow I feel today's video game addicted youngsters would have no idea whatsoever what these cards' sentiments say, lol. The one illustrated is dated 1896, and was sent to my mother's then ten-year old Uncle Art by a neighbor named Raymond Gay, and states:
Earth's vast expanse doth hold for me,
One only hope—a dream of thee:
Naught that exists hath power to tear
From my fond heart thine image there:
For ever true to thee alone,
For good or ill I'm all thine own.
