Vintage Cycling Postcards - 1958 Corriere dello Sport

Corriere dello Sport was a main Italian sporting newspaper, and this card promotes the 1958 motorcycle and bicycle show. I've seen this card on eBay for up to 40 euros, I got it in the same batch as the Bartali and Coppi cards in 1994.

On the reverse it has a lovely stamp and postmark.

Vintage Cycling Postcards - Totosport 38th Giro D'Italia

This card is from the 1955 Giro, won by Fiorenzi Magni for the 3rd time. The card promotes Totosport, the Italian betting agency.

Cycling Vintage Postcards - Gino Bartali with Giordani Bike

Another in my postcard collection from that trip to the Giro d'Italia in the 1990s.

The rivalry between Gino Bartali and Fausto Coppi is well documented on Wikipedia, so I won't attempt to add to the existing catalog of observation and opinion on the subject. Gino was a legend in his own right, even without the rivalry that stopped a nation.

Personally blessed by 3 popes, and known as Gino the Pious, he died at the grand age of 85 in 2000 after open heart surgery .

Like all postcards, I struggle to guess if it's a fake or real. Finding it in an Italian flea-market in 1994 gives me some confidence it's not a digital print, as technology was not that great then. Nor had the internet made a global market for cycling memorabilia.

I found one the same recently on eBay in Italy for 15 euros that looks pretty similar, though the signature has some interesting variations and the picture has a pure black and white treatment where mine has a blue tone. You decide which is real!

Cycling Vintage Postcards - Fausto Coppi Emotonico 1946

The story of Fausto Coppi has been written many times, and I've no need to try to outdo any of the authors.

When we were in Italy to see the 1995 Giro D'Italia, we found ourselves stuck in Florence on a quiet Sunday morning. We're read about a Sunday market in the hills nearby, with a bus that went to Fiesole, leaving only a 5km walk along country roads.

One of the treasures collected that day was some bike racing postcards from the 1940s and 1950s - plenty of the stall holders refused to sell us anything being foreigners, but somehow my passion for cycling won out.

This card dates from the period when Coppi was restarting his career after the war. As a prisoner in a low security environment he had enjoyed a small opportunity to get back on his bike, and came out of retirement with the minimum of sponsors, one of whom was Emotonico.

He won 3 stages of the Giro in 1945, competed in several other major races and his career, once in danger of being starved to death by the deprivations of life as a POW was reborn, with life on a major trade team.