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Postcard Contest: Halftime

Monday, October 19th, 2020

Bernard and I are currently competing in a postcard design contest!

The rules are as follows:
1) Each of us selected 4 one-word categories.
2) We each designed (and professionally printed) one postcard per category and sent them once per week to each other.
3) Each pair of designs will be presented to a team of five elite judges who will select the best card each week.

The judges were not selected until after we’d made the cards, so as to avoid choosing designs to cater to a particular judge.

As of today we’re four weeks into the eight week contest. Four cards judged, four to go. Here’s the current results…

Category 1: Android

The first category was chosen by me, and both entries are shown above. Mine is the lovely shot of Cara D in a chrome suit, and Bernard cheekily chose Aegis in an effort to confuse the judges and maybe nick a point! Neither of these are technically androids, but there’s no rule that said that the cards had to adhere to the categories.

The votes were 3-2 in favour of my card. Here’s one judges comment: (She) has strong eyebrow game, and reminiscent of my purple rock star Barbie growing up!

Category 2: Computation

Bernard chose this category and his design – some esoteric code – is on the left. I chose an artistic shot of Andy Warhol and Debbie Harry at the American Amiga launch in the 80s. As with all my designs I tried to make cards you’d see on a rack in a postcard shop, and this one certainly fits the bill!

Once again the judges favoured my design 3-1 (with one tie!). One judge said: While I appreciate the mathematical notation, which in this font resembles an ancient inscription, I cannot go past Andy and Deb “using” an Amiga.

Category 3: Gold

Once again this was my category, and it was a difficult one to choose an image of! I rejected many options before coming up with the cozy shot of the golden loo. I thought it was funny and would certainly buy such a card myself. Bernard on the other hand forgot to make a specific card and instead chose a flower card he has (coincidentally) printed and sent it as his entry 🙂

And… the judges chose his in a landslide 4-1 win. They were strangely quiet about their decision, so we can only guess as to why they preferred the flower to the toilet!

Category 4: The Holy See

Bernard chose this not-quite-one-word category, and I think both of us regretted it since it was very difficult! He went with a safe choice – the Vatican flag – and I went with a too-clever choice of Francis Bacon’s Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X. This was of course because it was used as the cover of a Sisters Of Mercy record, but I wonder if the judges would know that?

They didn’t, or perhaps they just preferred the flag, since once again Bernard won 3-2! Two judges commented on how they preferred the flag since the Bacon art was scary 🙂

Halftime Score: Tied!

So after four cards the score is even Stevens: 2 points each!

Four cards left! What could the categories be? Will the judges remain as unpredictable as they have been? What about the fourth rule not listed above since it hasn’t come into play yet?

In a month, all will be revealed…

Posted in Art, Postcards, The Unknown | Comments Closed

World Postcard Day

Saturday, September 26th, 2020

October 1 is World Postcard Day! This is a celebration of the joy of postcards, and to commemorate the day you should send at least one postcard!

So – this Thursday – grab a postcard and start writing. It doesn’t matter what you write, so write anything! If you’re short of ideas, here are a few:
– Your favorite animal, food, movie, song etc.
– Your goals for the future, or historical achievement you’re very proud of
– Your favorite memory from before the year 2000
– A joke, poem, limerick or lyric

The stamps are important too. Go for variety if you can, or if you’re sending domestically and only need one stamp try for an unusual or pretty one (this means no simple flags if you’re in the US!).

Send the card to anyone, as long as it’s me. Better yet, send more than one to family and friends. Be sure to mention World Postcard Day. And try to get it in the mail on October 1st 🙂

Speaking of cards, this is as good a time as any for a Postcrossing update.

I’ve now received 248 cards and sent about 260. I check my postbox every 2 weeks or so and they keep coming even during the pandemic. The average time for a card to arrive is longer now (in some cases excessively) but so far I haven’t had any of the cards I sent not arrive.

I’ve got a mini-album I use to showcase the favorites I have received, either due to the card, the stamps or the message. I’ve almost filled it and will have to buy another album before too long.

That’s on the back of an Australian card I received where the sender used vintage stamps. I was quite impressed that they used a $0.45 silver jubilee stamp from 1977! Most stamps are good forever, and it would be fun to buy some older US stamps and do the same one day.

I’m showing off the above due to the astonishing penmanship of Grigorii. Also Russian stamps are always very big and very pretty, and there seems to be an endless variety of them. Not every card is lettered this well, and I’ve receive some I could barely read at all!

The above is the most extraordinary card I’ve received so far, from the Aland Islands off the coast of Finland. There’s very few Postcrossers living there so it’s unlikely I’ll ever get another and receiving this was a genuine treat.

I’ve sent to 41 countries and received from 42. Russia, China and Germany are far ahead on the list of sent and received countries, and I still haven’t received anything from South America. I think I’m loving Postcrossing even more now due to the pandemic, and no matter where the card is from I love seeing it in my mailbox.

But of course the best cards are from those we know. Given we can’t travel now you may think there’s no good reason to send one, which is why World Postcard Day is so timely this year. Please consider sending some, but even if you don’t watch your mailbox since you know I won’t let the day pass without sending a bunch myself 🙂

Posted in Postcards, Stamps | Comments Closed

Postcard Sorting

Sunday, August 16th, 2020

About a year ago I started thinking seriously of sorting my postcards. I’d been storing them completely unsorted in a plastic tub, and while I wanted a better solution I had a feeling the job would be a difficult one.

Then in January while in Oz/Japan I bought some postcard storage albums. Interestingly none of these were intended for my own use (they were gifts) but when I used one to sort some of mums postcards I became impressed by how great it was to have them all viewable at a glance, and knew them I’d certainly get around to it sooner or later.

Fast forward through the pandemic, and a couple of weeks ago I helped JAF sort her postcards into a binder using postcard sleeves. They looked wonderful and at that moment I knew I’d found my solution. Within a week I’d bought binders and ordered sleeves enough for over 1000 cards, and these past few days I sorted and sleeved them all.

I’ve kept every single card ever received, with the earliest being from SMC back in mid 1994. They’re now all sorted chronologically (as best I can) by sender and for the ones sent by me I’ve sorted by country as well.

This process has allowed me to catalogue the collection. In total I’ve got over 850 postcards, about 530 of which I’d sent myself (or KLS did), and about 330 of which was sent to us by someone else – probably one of you!

Unsurprisingly the most cards are from Oz: over 300 in total (220 of which I sent myself). These past few years I’ve sent KLS at least one per day during my trips and I’m sure I’ll continue to do this whenever I can visit again. With so much from one country you may expect repetition but there’s surprisingly few cards represented more than once.

From within the USA there’s cards from many states with the most represented (outside of NY) being CA, FL and HA. There’s lots of cards from Japan, the UK and Ireland and a handful from countries including France, Germany, Canada, Spain, Italy, New Zealand, Korea, China and other exotic locales. (Incidentally I’m not including Postcrossing cards in any of this; I’ve got over 220 but they’re still loose in a box!)

These cards are overloaded with memories. When I first started sending postcards to myself (over a decade ago) I didn’t write much – the goal was the card, not the message. But these days I write a lot and over time the cards have become ‘trip diaries’. Reading them brings back all the memories from the various vacations we’ve taken over the years.

That’s an example card from 2017, written in a Kyoto hotel room after a day trip to Nara to see the deer. I was well into using stickers on cards and the simple description of our day contains details that would have certainly been lost had I not written them down.

There’s an example of a card I sent from Scotland. The card itself is amazing – metallic and shiny – but the message on the back is sublime in its mundanity, and when we read it today we had a good chuckle remembering the (true) event. I daresay there’s no chance we would have remembered this had I not written it on the card in that Inverness B&B! (Incidentally I bought two packs of candy and got a second sticker that I put on another card. Who did I send that to?)

When I travel alone the messages (sent to KLS) are more introspective and I have noticed I have a tendency to dedicate entire cards to moments, as you can see in the example above (and yes, that’s a Ganesh watercolour I painted). I never run out of stuff to write, and in fact last Oz trip I sent an average of two cards a day. Sometimes when unusual or notable things happen I make a note on my phone so I remember to write it on a postcard 🙂

Here’s a similar example from my last stay in Japan:

Each of these cards is a little time capsule and having them all easily readable like they are now is something I should have done years ago. If you’ve got your own collection (and I know many of you do) then I suggest getting them out of a shoebox and sleeving them yourself. Yes it’s a little bit of an investment up front (the supplies cost me under $100) but it’s absolutely worth it!

Oh and send me some postcards! I’ve received almost none in 2020 due to you-know-what but just because you’re at home doesn’t mean you can’t send me a funny/interesting message on a card. I’ve still got empty sleeves: give me some cards to fill them!

Posted in Art, Blog, Collecting, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Postcards, Retro, Time | Comments Closed

Postcard-script!

Sunday, April 5th, 2020

I received two other interestingly-stamped postcards recently, but didn’t include them in yesterday’s post since they weren’t from Postcrossing.

The first was this:

Adam sent me this recently and as you can see it’s got all five of the recent Australian disaster relief stamps on it. And what stamps they are! Australia rarely issues shaped stamps and as best I know these are the only ever Australia-shaped ones. Here’s detail of the best one (and yes I agree with Adam):

Happily the card arrived intact and the stamps are in near perfect condition 🙂

The other card I recently received was from Korea and featured these beautiful lunar new year stamps:

Look how cute they are! Both of them feature dazzling foil effects and they sparkle in the light! I was impressed by both the Australian and American year of the rat stamps but these Korean ones top both! Thanks to Jessica and her dad for sending me these!

Incidentally South Korea prints a lot of very pretty stamps and I always hope to get a card from there via Postcrossing but so far I haven’t been lucky enough. Maybe I’ll need to visit one day and send myself some…

Posted in Postcards | Comments Closed

Postcrossing Update

Saturday, April 4th, 2020

I’ve now been a member of Postcrossing for 15 months and I’m still loving it. I’ve sent 185 cards and received about 175. I can send up to thirteen at a time now, and every weekend dutifully write and send about five on average. Here’s the stats:

And the map (red is sent, blue received):

As you can see I’ve now received cards from Africa, but not yet Australia or South America. Or Antarctica, but I’m not holding my breath for that since there’s only one user (at a Dutch base).

The vast majority of cards I’ve received are standard tourist cards or cards featuring animals. But there’s also been a wonderful assortment of weird and wonderfully strange cards including some vintage ones. I’ve also now got two like these:

Each had lots of messages and signatures on the back. I think people get these at ‘meetups’ and the attendees sign every card in advance to be used in the future. Both of mine are from different Russian meetups. (Incidentally Postcrossing is very popular in Russia and the country even printed an official Postcrossing stamp!)

Here’s an unusual arrival:

The card was ruined! It had gotten wet, torn, folded and mangled in transit. I could barely read the message on the back! I’m astonished it made it!

As for the backs, some people write very little, some write about what they did that day, some write about their hobbies or family or their dreams. It’s always fun to see what they say. And then every now and then truly unique ones arrive like this:

Or this:

Yes, that’s a wax seal!

And of course I’m still loving the stamps. Postcrossers go out of their way to make the stamps interesting and they rarely disappoint:

These days the messages on the cards almost all reference the virus and it drives home that no matter where we live or what our situation our lives are all being profoundly affected. It’s also interesting to note the now common ‘stay safe’ phrase is being used by people all over the world and has become the standard sign off for most cards.

One (of many!) consequences of the virus is the availability of postcards. Luckily I restocked when we went to the Pez museum a few weeks back but of isolation continues for months I’ll certainly run out of cards to send. In anticipation of this I recently bought 200 high- quality cards on Amazon but I won’t tell you what they are since you may receive one yourself 🙂

It’s good to see this service continuing even through a pandemic. More than ever in this era of social isolation it’s nice to have some contact even with people I’ll never actually meet.