Robot Claw

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!