The Shack restaurant in East Sacramento was packed Saturday, the overflow filling the patio. So many people turned up for the book launch of photographer Tom Myers’ “Postcard History Series: Sacramento,” that he sold the 65 copies he'd brought in little over an hour.

The book is a visual history of Sacramento, taken from Myers’ collection of vintage postcards and supplemented with specific descriptions and historical details.

Myers began collecting postcards about six years ago as an extension of his interest in the history of the Sacramento area. His collection has grown to more than 680 postcards, most of them spanning the years 1905 to 1940.

The introduction to the book was written by Patricia J. Johnson, senior archivist at the Center for Sacramento History. She describes Myer’s interest in postcards as “an inexpensive way to ‘collect history."

The postcards are organized according to aspects of Sacramento, including downtown, railroads, rivers, parks, gold mining and agriculture.

A special feature of the book is a sampling of early-1900 messages found on the postcards.

“The message is sometimes the most interesting thing about the card,” Myers said.

In 2007, Myers, his wife, Sally, and son Jeff Myers published Sacramento Impressions, a collection of images representing the city’s history and culture.

Sally Myers, a professional photographer for Tom Myers Photography, said their book was included in baskets given to doctors considering moving here in order to give them an idea of what Sacramento is all about.

Jeff Myers, also a photographer, said of his parents,

“What they’re really about is stock photography. They have this huge library of hundreds of thousands of images going all the way back to Ansel Adams’ time. They do these books for fun, because it’s interesting and because they enjoy the local community.”

Visit Tom Myers Photography online.