It’s been a year since my last Postcrossing post, which was when I passed 750 cards received. I was going to wait for 1000, but since today is World Postcard Day (did you send someone a card?) it felt like a good day to catch up.
As of today, I’ve received (and sent) 943 cards. I’m getting about 25 a month, so I’ll pass 1000 this year. There’s been no change in the top 10 countries from which I’ve received cards, but the order has shuffled a little bit:
Interestingly while I’ve received about 30 cards from Russia in the past year, I’ve sent none. I didn’t realize until writing this post that the service seems to not be assigning Russian addresses, no doubt due to the ongoing war.
The above is a map showing the locations from which I have been sent cards since I joined back in 2018. As you can see every continent is represented, with a strong concentration in Europe. If you look closely you may see one unusual one off the northwest of Africa:
That’s the island of Madeira, which is a region of Portugal. I believe that’s the most remote place from which I have received a postcard so far.
The above shows where I have sent cards, which is similar to where they have arrived from with an even larger concentration in Europe. Once again, one marker is notably more remote than others:
That’s Guam, out there in the Pacific. Although it’s counted as a country by Postcrossing, it’s a US territory and therefore I was able to send a card there using domestic postage! It also arrived very quickly, which suggests the USA doesn’t mess around getting mail to its territories 🙂
As far as cards received, the top two are notable. Both came from Australia, and both were examples of pre-stamped postcards sold at post offices. They date to 1997 and 2001, and the postage on each is much lower than what it costs today to send a card internationally. But since these are forever valid for international use, both made it here without problem. For comparison, it costs about A$3.60 to send a postcard from Australia to the USA today, but the doll one has only A$0.45 postage on it!
I was inspired by the above to test this myself when I found (in an Australian antique store back in May) a similar postcard from the early 1980s with even less postage on it. I mailed it and it arrived here without issue! If I ever see any others for sale, I’ll buy and send them for sure.
As usual I love looking at the cornucopia of stamps on the postcrossing cards, and during this past 10 months there’s been a lot of exceptional examples. I’ve only showed a couple of examples above, but the Diana stamps were unusually included on a postcard sent from Germany. I was under the impression that in most countries it wasn’t allowed to put foreign stamps on postal items so maybe this was simply overlooked by a postal worker or perhaps it’s not a problem at all. I’m tempted to try it myself…
The above show five unusually shaped stamps received in the last year. The standout is the absolutely wild owl stamp from Finland which was a Valentine’s Day issue back in 2011! It was one of five similarly unusual (but differently shaped) bird stamps, and I’m happy the sender hung on to it for so long and sent me one.
The other Postcrossing news from the last year was that for a time I was seriously facing the need to stop due to lack of postcards. It’s become impossible to buy new ones in Albany, so I used to depend on the freeway rest stop shops and used to stock up every time we took a long drive. However they have closed as well, which left only Rochester which itself has run nearly dry. Things looked grim indeed until by a happy twist of fate I learned of the existence of a dedicated postcard shop not half an hour from our house! Two visits later and I’d bought 200+ cards for about $0.25 each, most of which will be used for Postcrossing. It seems my membership can continue for the foreseeable future 🙂