Zdzisław Mirecki, a retired police officer and Vice President of the Polish Section of IPA (the International Police Association), was entered this year into the Book of Polish Records and Oddities. Mirecki has 11,000 business cards in his collection—more than anyone else in Poland.
And they are all kinds of business cards. Starting with traditional, simple ones—black print on a white background—through more elaborate designs, and ending with the most sophisticated: business cards made of metal, glass or wood. In short, Zdzisław Mirecki’s collection shows that even a business card can be a work of art.
Mirecki began collecting business cards in the early 1990s. Thanks to his position as IPA vice president and his membership in various associations and organizations, the collector travels all over the world. Trips, especially abroad, are a great opportunity for Zdzisław Mirecki to expand his collection. All the more so because we live in times when not having a business card in official situations seems like a breach of etiquette.
The hobbyist’s collection includes business cards from such different countries as Lithuania, Korea, Japan, Denmark, China and Israel. Many of them are, of course, business cards belonging to police officers and representatives of other uniformed services. But not only theirs. The Bolesławiec resident has separate binders for the business cards of parliamentarians, local government officials, scientists, teachers and journalists.
A business card brings people together
Zdzisław Mirecki did not obtain all the business cards himself. “People know that I collect business cards, and they send them to me themselves,” the Bolesławiec resident says. What is more, people who know about Mirecki’s unusual hobby often call him and ask for the telephone numbers of their acquaintances. The collector’s binders form a kind of contact database.
The oldest business cards in Mirecki’s collection date back to before the First World War. The modern ones, meanwhile, include many names of figures known from the front pages of newspapers. They include Aleksander Kwaśniewski, Leszek Miller, Jan Miodek, Witold Pyrkosz, Hanna Banaszak, Tadeusz Cymański, Kazimierz Michał Ujazdowski, Cardinal Henryk Gulbinowicz and General Marek Papała, who was murdered in 1998 and with whom the Bolesławiec resident served in the same platoon while studying at the Higher Officers’ School in Szczytno.
One of the collection’s more valuable specimens dates from 1932 and bears the name of the granddaughter of Władysław Bełza, the author of the well-known “Polish Child’s Catechism.” But Mirecki does not want to single out any business card. “As a collector, all of them are important to me. I love them all,” the Bolesławiec resident emphasizes.
(GA report)