A few weeks ago, I was talking with an old colleague of mine and dear friend , and as we were catching up we were both commiserating about our short attention spans, our jobs, and of course the internet. I brought up this Grimes interview I had watched a few days prior, because the comments that rolled in in real time were all about how dumb she sounded…

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Radio QSL cards were basically radio postcards — proof that you and someone else chatted over the airwaves. You’d mail them after a successful radio convo, like, “Yup, I heard you loud and clear.”

The name comes from the Q code “QSL”:

• “QSL?” = Did you get my signal?

• “QSL” = I got your signal.

They were typically hand-drawn and people would collect them like souvenirs — pinning them to corkboards, fridges, city posts to acclaim their airwave connection.

Very few people still send out Radio QSL cards today, and if they do it is likely for the nostalgia of when they were the only way to document the connection. Now we have a myriad of ways to upload and document our digital connections to each other, the music we listen to, or something akin to a Soundcloud Mix or NTS Radio Show being reposted onto your Instagram story.

From the 40s to the 80s, Radio QSL cards were at their peak in popularity. A social currency for people within this niche, but were always adorned with custom artwork, jokes, cartoon with other details denoting the time or location of the show.

Here are a few I rounded up that particularly tickled me lol:

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