Category: Postcards

Postcards From Japan

February 18, 2024

So far we have received 37 postcards from our recent Japan trip, all of which I sent myself. Here they all are:

The panda one was purchased at Ueno zoo the day we went and saw the pandas. The Godzilla one is metallic and plastic. I have a few more like this waiting to be sent one day 🙂

The top right one is a lenticular postcard of an underwater scene. It’s the only lenticular we’ve received so far, and arrived about 6 weeks after it was sent. There’s at least one other lenticular card I sent us that hasn’t yet arrived, but it’s been about two months now and I’ve somewhat given up hope.

The left one was purchased in the gift shop of Hiroshima castle (which it depicts). The horse one was purchased less than two hours after we had arrived in Japan, and may be my favourite card of the trip (even though it has nothing to do with Japan). It effectively shows how I usually feel at the end of every day on a vacation!

The postcard showing ‘Alice’ is a mystery: I found it amongst some unsent postcards a few months ago and had no recollection or ever buying (or even seeing) it before. Naturally I took it with me so it could fulfill its destiny to be mailed! The Diavolo postcard depicts an Ultraman villian, and is an impressively metallic and textured card.

The cat one was mailed on Christmas Day!

The card at left was found amongst some old items when I was doing some spring cleaning a year or so ago. It’s about 30 years old and (I think) came in a magazine. I wonder if any Japanese postal employees looked and it and wondered where it came from?

The Buddha card was purchased in Kamakura in 2013 (when we visited with Bernard), and had been ‘gathering power’ – unsent – in my collection for over a decade. Now that power has been released into the world!

The Hermione (from Harry Potter) card is a beautiful high-quality all-plastic postcard and I doubted it would actually arrive. I may have purchased a few others at the same time…

I sent 12 New Years cards in different designs. Did you get the same one I sent myself? The Rilakkuma card was purchased at the Miyajima Island Rilakkuma shop which was insanely well-stocked considering how remotely it was located. I bought two in this series and sent the other to someone I knew would appreciate it 🙂

Nothing says Japan like a photo of a quokka! I bought three copies of that cute card but forget who I sent the others to. The card in top left was part of a set purchased at the cinema when we saw the Kamen Rider film, but the set was for another movie (that we didn’t see).

Four of the cards show here – including the middle one above – I had made myself and taken with me ‘just in case’. I do this every trip, but I’m a fool for every supposing I wouldn’t be swimming with options when it came to buying cards in Japan!

And lastly this gotochi (shaped) card of a Buddha. It’s fairly large, and Japan Post is emphatic that these cannot be sent through the mail internationally. And yet I put a stamp on it and tossed it in the postbox with a wish… and it arrived safe and sound. I also bought an oyster gotochi (in Hiroshima, which is famous for oyster), and sent it to AW’s sister who lives in Japan.

“What do you write on all these cards?” is a question I’ve been asked more than once. As an example, here’s one I wrote the evening of the Earthquake (we were in Osaka):

Most of the cards have silly anecdotes or in-jokes on them that we have invariably forgotten about by the time we receive and read them. They’re mini-diaries, and I’ve got decades worth of them now. They’re my most prized possessions!

In case you were interested, here’s (most of) the different stamps on the above cards:

I’ve become an expert at buying stamps in Japan, and always do my best to make sure I get a good variety for the cards. Take another look at the stamps on your cards!

37 (or more?) postcards in 16 days is a lot, but I never plan on sending myself so many. Truth is I always buy too many stamps, and then end up sending a lot of ‘extra’ cards in the last few days. Of course this post is just the ones I sent myself, and dozens more were sent to other people. I hope you enjoyed the ones you received 🙂

World Postcard Day

October 1, 2023

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 🙂

Tea Cards

July 15, 2023

A few weeks back, on the way from fireworks shopping in New Hampshire, we stopped at a flea market in a field in ‘the middle of nowhere’. Imagine my surprise to find – amidst people selling their own unwanted stuff – two postcard dealers! Their cards were vintage and pricey, but I fell in love with a collection of tiny cards one guy had that had been distributed in packets of tea in the 1960s, so I made him an offer and walked away with the entire binder!

The cards were issued by a tea company called Brooke Bond, and in the USA and Canada came packaged in boxes of Red Rose (brand) tea. They were also issued in several other countries, and were most popular in England where 87 sets were issued over several decades!

The album contained 172 unique cards in eight different series. Six of the series (on birds, plants and butterflies) were for the US market, and two (transport and space) are Canadian. I also have dozens of doubles.

The cards are small – about an inch wide and two tall, and are beautifully printed with lots of information about the subject written on the back. Each series had 48 cards, and from what I can determine were available for a year each, so they would probably have been a challenge to collect!

The cards I have range from 1961 (Wildflowers of North America) to 1969 (The Space Age), which is about when they stopped including them in America (they continued until 1999 in England). They’re in incredible condition: some look like they came right off the press and it’s hard to believe they’re 60+ years old!

While these were inexpensive (I paid $25) I don’t plan on seeking out any more, and this will just live in my trading card collection (such that it is) as a lovely little curio from before I was born. As I said I’ve got a lot of doubles: if you want some let me know.

Coincidentally when I was in Australia I bought two cigarette cards from an antique shop. They were also inexpensive ($1) but were almost 100 years old (the above is from 1930) and I couldn’t resist them. They’re the same size as the tea cards, so this one will live in the same binder forever 🙂

Earlier today I went to what I believed was a local stamp show, but when I got there discovered was actually a postcard show! About a dozen vendors were there selling vintage (what I learned was before about 1963) cards to a room of people mostly older than me, but I found a few $0.25 bins of ‘modern’ cards and spent almost an hour sitting next to an elderly gentleman and chatting with him about his collection of 275,000 postcards!

I learned a lot, but perhaps the most amazing thing was that less than a half hour from our home is a postcard shop with 14 dealers selling all sorts of postcards from the 19th century through to modern times. Guess where I’m going next weekend?

Robot Claw