Postcards « Robot Claw

Archive for the ‘Postcards’ Category

Postcrossing Century!

Saturday, October 19th, 2019

The other day I received my 100th Postcrossing postcard! I thought it appropriate to give an update to celebrate the occasion!

In the 10 months since I sent my first card I’ve received cards from 27 countries and sent them to 32. While I have sent cards to Australia, South America and South Africa, I have yet to receive any from there, so I’m still waiting to have a card from every continent (bar Antarctica of course). Here’s the stats:

Cards ‘expire’ after 90 days, which means you can request a new address even if one doesn’t arrive. While the South African one was technically expired, it eventually arrived and was registered by the recipient who lives on a tiny island off the west coast of Africa and said his mail service is sporadic! I’ve had three other expired cards to date, all to Eastern European countries.

You can see Germany is above and beyond the most popular country for Postcrossing, but I have to say I’m most surprised by China. While it’s a bit scary to be given addresses in that country (since it’s difficult to write Chinese characters!) I’ve never had one not arrive so I must be doing ok 🙂

The cards themselves run the gamut, but since I have requested classic tourist cards, animal cards and pinup cards I tend to mostly get those. I’ve made it clear I’m interested in the stamps as well and get a great selection from all over the world.

The Russian scientist stamp is great isn’t it? Germany has a few series of lovely connected landscape stamps and Japanese stamps are always graphic and very pretty. Take a look at the effort this guy put in to cram as many stamps as possible on his card from Japan:

Or these two Chinese cards:

Of the cards themselves I love them all, but some have been particularly notable. I’ll feature two here, both Australian postcards but neither being sent from Australia! This one came from Germany:

And this one from Taiwan:

The latter is particularly great since the card itself is old – maybe 1980s – and I imagine she either found it in her parents collection or in a used bookstore! (And no, there’s no way people sending cards to me would know I am Australian which makes both of these even more amusing!)

These days I can send up to 11 cards at a time, and receive about 10 a month on average. At that rate I’ll get to 200 sometime around next August. Let’s hope at least some of those come from the Southern Hemisphere!

Posted in Art, Blog, Collecting, Miscellaneous, Postcards, Stamps | 1 Comment »

B’s Postcards

Tuesday, August 6th, 2019

Bernard has a large collection of postcards, most sent by me! They date all the back to within the first month of me arriving in the USA, and span a mind-boggling array of trips across many years.

And on many – especially in the last five years – I drew or painted things. This post is a humble showcase of my prodigious skills at postcard art.

For starters, how about some political figures. Can you guess who is shown in the top left?

That’s also Gandhi in the bottom left, not Batista!

And here are some entertainers:

Florian Schneider, Gary Numan, Yeri, Gene Simmons. All astonishing likenesses 🙂

Not impressed? How about Mr T:

Or Tegan Jovanka:

Or even Bowie and Freddy:

Lastly some characters:

As it turns out art has been dominated by two topics: Gudetama and Grimace, and I could have filled a post with pictures of them alone. Instead though, just one of the latter:

Breathtaking!

Like what you see? Leave a request in the comment within the next few days and you may get your very own from San Jose!

Posted in Art, Postcards, Trip | 1 Comment »

Postcrossing Update

Tuesday, May 28th, 2019

I’ve been using Postcrossing for five months now, and have sent and received just under 50 cards. Every time I find a new card in my PO Box it brings a smile to my face, and I’m enjoying the service even more than I thought I would.

I’ve received cards from 25 countries, although a third came from only three of them (Germany, Russia and China). I’ve sent cards to Australia and South America but not received any from either. I’ve neither sent nor received cards to Africa.

The cards themselves run the gamut from typical scenic shots to art, animals, seasonal or pop culture. Sometimes people don’t write much at all, sometimes they write a lot. Occasionally even the simplest messages bring a smile:

Most users are older women, but I did get a card from a child (complete with art!):

Some users are so experienced they have massively streamlined their work via stamps or stickers. Here’s an extreme example of a card featuring only printed stickers and no actual writing:

The variety of stamps is astonishing. Most users seem as interested in the stamps as the card themselves and take the extra effort to use interesting postage. I particularly like the unusually-shaped stamps that often come from EU countries.

Here’s an example of a card from Malaysia that included the non-postage parts from the stamp sheet. They are so big there wasn’t much space for anything else:

So of almost fifty cards which is my favorite? That’s a difficult question but I sat down and had a look and arrived at this one from Moscow:

It’s tiny – like a normal card cut in half! – and is styled to look like a Polaroid. I’ve never seen a card like this so it gets extra points for originality. Given how many I get from Russia I wonder how long before I get another tiny card?

(Of course the very best card in these five months is one I sent myself on which I drew an astonishing Freddy Mercury since the recipient mentioned she was a Queen superfan. She hasn’t received it yet…)

If you’re reading this and wondering when you’ll next have the fun of a postcard in your very own mailbox then the future looks bright! In only two days we’re off on a vacation, and you can look forward to my usual postcards in your mailbox very soon 🙂

Posted in Postcards | Comments Closed

Postcrossing

Saturday, March 9th, 2019

Recently I became a member of Postcrossing, a community of deltiologists that send and receive postcards to each other. It’s extremely simple: you’re given a random address to send a card to, and when it arrives another stranger will get your address and send you a card.

Each card is assigned a code, and when it arrives I enter the code to verify receipt. It’s a simple and effective system.

At first you can only send/receive five at a time but this increases with use. I’m up to seven now. While you don’t have any control over the recipients, you can elect to exclude your country which I have.

At first I wondered if it was weird to send cards to strangers but it’s not at all. I can write about anything and I do, but I often include mundanities such as the weather or what I just ate! Here’s a message that was written to me:

It’s fun seeing people’s preferences (one woman today liked cards featuring buckets, another requested no cards with toucans on them!) and trying to pick cards they like. Mostly though I’ve been sending Albany cards.

Of course another nice aspect of getting cards from all over the world are the stamps! In my profile I’ve requested animal/nature stamps and already people seem to have obliged.

I’ve been doing this only two months and have received fifteen cards. Living in the USA is a disadvantage since it quickly became apparent how slow our mail is. Postcrossing tracks all sorts of statistics that show, for instance, that it takes about 8 days for a card I send to arrive in Germany but 16 days for theirs to arrive here.

Although I’m still relatively new to the service I’m loving it so far. Some users have sent/received thousands of cards! Whether I ever get to that stage who knows, but for now I’m just happy whenever a new card arrives from distant shores 🙂

Posted in Collecting, Postcards, Stamps | Comments Closed