Stamp box directory

ARTURA stamp box: dates and marks

If the stamp box on the back of your real photo postcard carries this mark, the paper’s production window narrows the card’s date. A stamp box dates the paper, not the photograph — read the range below as “no earlier than,” and let a postmark set the latest possible date.

Standard mark

1910-1924

The front of a real photo postcard of the Samarkand Persian Hotel, Santa Barbara, California, from the Postcard Origins collection — A real photo card of the Samarkand Persian Hotel, Santa Barbara.Scanned from the Postcard Origins collection

The Artura stamp box on the back of the same card — Its ARTURA box dates the paper to 1910–1924. But the Samarkand was a hotel only from 1920, so a card *of the hotel* cannot predate it — box and subject converge on **1920–1924**. The same hotel appears three ways in our postcard story.From the collection

Ranges cross-checked across: the2Buds.com chart, as republished by Sports Collectors Daily, ‘Dating Vintage Real Photo Postcards’; Postcards Everywhere collector chart (2010); Playle’s Directory of Stamp Boxes (playle.com, frozen reference; marketplace closed 2020); Playle’s detailed stamp-box directory pages (playle.com/realphoto/photoa.php, photod.php; image-keyed, contributor-verified; fetched 2026-07-18). Approximate by nature — see methodology.

All stamp boxes Dating wizard