Holy card collectors!

Holy Cards are small pictures of Jesus, various saints, or religious scenes with a prayer on the back. Distributed at Roman Catholic churches, Holy Cards have been in circulation since at least the early 1400s. Today's Los Angeles Times has an intriguing article about people who collect these religious curiosités. (Seen here, a German holy card, circa 1910, via Wikipedia.) From the LA Times:

To Julie Ann Brown, they are "visual scriptures, visual faith..."

Ten years ago, the Oxnard resident and marketing professor at Santa Barbara City College found a set of 300 holy cards in a Palmdale antique shop. That discovery brought back memories of attending Mass as a child, when she would use dimes meant for the collection basket to buy cards depicting Jesus.

Always an antique aficionado, she fell into an old passion. Now with 40,000 religious cards stored throughout her house and garage, Brown is determined to preserve as many examples as possible of what she calls "people's art" for posterity.

Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)