Postcard Collecting

One of my minor vices-some would call it an addiction-is that I am a collector. One of my collections is of lithographed postcards published by one of a number of firms associated with the family named Schwidernoch. They started in Vienna in 1891, and the business reached a peak in the period 1897-1899.

The postcards were of the "greetings from" variety and depicted places primarily in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. My guess is that they produced in the neighborhood of 6,000 different lithographs.They are beautifully done, and much in demand. Many, but not all, of the cards are numbered, apparently in sequence of arriving first-time orders. Reorders generally kept the old card number.

I should like to estimate how many different cards there were of all places in a particular province. The example I shall use is what was a territory formerly under Turkish administration, and at that time occupied by Austria, namely Bosnia-Hercegovina (BH). How many different cards depicting communities in BH did the Schwidernochs produce?