Saucy postcards from Welsh seaside towns up for auction
A quirky collection of early 20th century postcards is to go under the hammer in Cardiff on Friday.
Hinting at the racy undercurrent of Welsh seaside towns in the 1920s, the designs feature Barry, Machynlleth, Porthcawl and Aberystwyth.
"It seems that, once on holiday, the British were keen to show their sense of humour as well as a rather risqué side," said auctioneer Ben Rogers Jones.
The auction takes place on Friday.
Depicting courting couples, flirtatious females and lecherous gentlemen, the postcards were sent in the early 1900s and are surprisingly saucy, considering the social mores of the times.
'Twos company, Three's fun at Barry,' says one card - showing a woman with a fashionable bob, escorted by two smartly-dressed young gentleman - sent from the popular south Wales resort with a George V stamp.
With a postmark of 7 August 1922, another postcard shows a couple canoodling under a large red umbrella with the words 'I've clicked at Aberystwyth'.
Early postcards tended to be images of famous landmarks, but by the 1930s, cartoon-style postcards became widespread and at the height of their popularity, the sale of saucy postcards reached 16 million a year.
Mr Rogers Jones said the album was a "fascinating insight into the liberal mood of holidaymakers at some of Wales' most traditional seaside destinations".
"'Postcards were a cheap and fast means of maintaining contact with relatives in the days before telephones were widely used," he added.