Ehrmann, Michael. Illinois Postcard Collection, circa 1955 - circa 2020 | Illinois History and Lincoln Collections

This collection contains over four thousand Illinois postcards collected by Michael Ehrmann that were largely printed between 1985 and 2021.

Michael Ehrmann grew up in Colorado and has been collecting postcards since the 1950s from around the world. By 2021, his collection had grown to approximately 230,000 postcards. Around this time, he began donating portions of his collection to various repositories. Some of these include collections focused on the U.S. states of Georgia, South Dakota, Missouri, Idaho, and Illinois. Ehrmann first visited Illinois in the 1950s and began collecting Illinois postcards in earnest starting in 1978.

This collection contains 4,400 postcards related to Illinois. Most of the postcards in this collection were printed between 1985-2021. The postcards are arranged by categories as received from the donor. Categories include location such as county or city as well as by topics such as historic photographs, art from Illinois museums, and postcard publishers, among others. Among these are about three dozen postcards from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

This collection was donated to the Library by Michael Ehrmann in 2021.