New Year Fortunes on Good Luck Dice Postcards
In the early 20th century, colourful chromolithograph postcards were exchanged on almost every occasion, from birthdays and anniversaries to religious holidays and moments of sentimental thought. Such cards belong to the large category called "topicals," so named because they convey a topic of thought or emotion, unlike "views," which are images of places.
Topical good luck cards, like those for good wishes, or good cheer, can be sent any day of the year, but among the most popular of the good luck topicals of the early 20th century were the New Year good luck postcards, for by setting the tome of the New Year, they carried extra importance. Two types of good luck New Years cards were common -- those that showed images of lucky omens, such as horseshoes, four-leafed clovers, and chimney sweeps -- and those that caught the moment that the luck was actually being conveyed by linking it to the depiction of a fortune-telling device, as if the person who sent you the card had just told your fortune for the year, and it was lucky.
New Year's Eve, with its parties and drinking, was allied to the social act of gambling, and postcards in which the sender took on the role of one who was telling the recipient's fortune for the New Year often did so by displaying lucky combinations of cards, dominoes, or dice. Many such cards were printed in Germany with the greeting ar the bottom blank. They were then surprinted with the New Year's message in any of a number of different languages -- German, English, French, Hungarian, Latvian, Czech, and so forth -- for sale through distributors in various countries. The idea was that the knowledge of dice combinations, especially the popular three-dice readings -- as almost universal.
As this page is being written, the New Year is upon us, and so i shall share some lucky dice cards of the New Year.
