Date posted: 1 March 2019

Seamus Kearns was born in Dublin in 1929 and lived above his father's shop on Marlborough Street. By the age of 10 his interest in stamp collecting begun to flourish. Through the next seventy years Seamus developed his interests in stamps, as well as gramophone records, with John McCormack being a special favourite.

Seamus joined the Automobile Association (AA) in 1963 and worked there up to his retirement in 1994. In his last few years there he was involved in the establishment of AA Roadwatch and was on of the early contributors to radio on motoring and traffic news.

In the 1960s he became more interested in picture post cards. A proud Dubliner and keen walker Seamus also had a significant knowledge of the history of his city and he was delighted to regale listeners with his stories and anecdotes from times past. AS his card collection grew Seamus branched into many new areas of interest including comic cards and theatrical cards - he was a great fan of theatre especially musical and opera - and a great variety of other themes.

Seamus was a member of the Old Dublin Society and its president for 5 years in the 1990s. He was on the committee of the Irish Philatelic Society, Past President of the Dublin Stamp Club, Past President of the Dublin Stamp Society, Chair of the Irish National Stamp Exhibition, founder member and Chair of the Picture Postcard Society of Ireland. He was a founding member of the John McCormac Society - his collection of early recordings of famous vocalists runs to over 3,000.

In retirement Seamus did voluntary work at The National Museum of Ireland helping identify and catalogue postcards and photographs. He was in much demand for talks on postcards and put on exhibitions of his cards for local history and other societies and clubs around Ireland.

Seamus's postcard collection grew to over 100,000 cards, the largest in Ireland and encompassed all periods from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 21st. Seamus died in 2014, one of the last great multi-discipline collectors in Ireland.

	Postcard of Killiney Golf Club, dated 21 Sept 2019. Donated to the club by Harry and Sharon Slowey. Feb 2019.

 

I knew Seamus from the time I joined the Irish Philatelic Society in 1966. He was one of my first customers when I started to deal in stamps in 1967. Seamus was the only collector of postcards I knew in the early days, so when I bought an old album of cards I used to sell it to him straightway. There are dozens of those albums still in his accumulation. Later Seamus was a regular bidder at our auctions and a valued client, advisor and friend.

Ian Whyte
January, 2019

(Originally published in Whyne's Auction Catalogue for the Seamus Kearns Postcard Collection, January 2019. Reproduced by kind permission of the author, Ian Whyte.)