Category: Stamps

The Financial Ruin Of Early Retirement

May 2, 2026

Last night at the drive-in I had a great idea, which I then proposed to Bernard: in exchange for an abundance of postcards from my upcoming trip, he would pay me for each unique stamp I use to send them.

To be specific, the first stamp costs him $0.10, the next $0.20, and each subsequent costs $0.10 more. So if the first card has four unique stamps on it, he’d owe me $1 ($0.10 + $0.20 + $0.30 + $0.40). To ~~trick him into agreeing~~ sweeten the deal, I agreed he’d pay me nothing unless the total exceeded $10.

I laughed like a goon when he signed the contract!

The above is a plot of what he’ll owe me versus unique stamps. It would take fourteen unique stamps for the total to exceed $10 ($10.50 to be precise) and as you can see it rises quadratically. The equation, if you’re interested, is $n(n+1)/20 where n is the number of unique stamps.

Looking at this plot, the amount he’d owe me would surpass $100 at 45 unique stamps. For amateurs this would be a challenge, but he made the critical mistake of forgetting I’m far from an amateur. In fact, due to leftovers from previous trips, I already have enough unique stamps to surpass this amount.

But stopping at 45 is barely a challenge. How far could I push this?

Checking out the Australia Post website reveals several dozen current stamp issues. It’s hard to put a precise number on how many since the website is irritating to use, but I’d say it’s upwards of 40 unique stamps. Just from these alone (and including the ones I already have) I’m well over the $100 return.

But Australia Post also sells collectible ‘Stamp Packs’, one or two of which I usually buy on each trip. From the ones in-stock today there’s 123 unique stamps and I know from experience it’s not difficult to find older packs available in post offices.

So it’s not unreasonable to assume I could relatively easily find 150 unique stamps in Australia alone. Before you ask “What about the postcards?” remember who is writing this. The deal doesn’t specify anything about how the cards bear the stamps, so I’d just buy big cards and put 10+ stamps on each.

If you’re wondering about the cost of all these stamps, then yes it adds up. But a quick analysis of average prices vs returns shows I’d be making money after about the 15th stamp, and likely much earlier if I buy many small denomination ones.

And this is just Australia. Things get truly interesting because I’m also going to Japan…

Japan has a few dozen basic stamps available, all of which I bought on my last trip. Obtaining these is trivial, so getting up to over 175 stamps wouldn’t be much of a challenge (for me).

And they also have these limited sheets, and I know exactly where I could go (Tokyo Main Post Office) to purchase dozens of different ones. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to obtain at least another 100 unique stamps amongst these alone.

And then there’s the licensed limited sheets, and the stamp shop near my Osaka hotel that sells hundreds of old mint unused stamps. The sky is the limit. I could get to 500 unique stamps ‘easily’…

The above is a plot of returns vs unique stamps up to 500, at which point Bernard would owe me $12,525.00. While I believe I could exceed this amount, in the interests of good sportsmanship I’d probably end there.

Of all the ~~crazy schemes~~ good ideas I’ve ~~hatched~~ had, this may be the best. I get to buy lots of stamps, send lots of postcards, and I’ll make five figures (easily) out of it. What could go wrong?

The Japan Postcards

February 7, 2026

I sent home 55 postcards this past trip, and they’ve all arrived safe and sound. I sent an average of 3 per day we were in Japan, plus an extra on New Year’s Day.

Most of them are full of vivid and often humorous anecdotes about the trip, and I know I’ll be enjoying rereading them for years. I never seem to run out of things to write, perhaps not surprising since I estimate that including all travel and Postcrossing I wrote over 800 postcards last year!

It’s become a little difficult to find tourist cards in Japan now – I saw none in Osaka – but the Japanese still seem to enjoy postcards in general so it’s easy to find artistic ones. Based on the stamps used I think I sent about 115 in total.

I write them every evening, although there were times I was too tired and wrote them the next morning. When I travel alone I often write them in restaurants but I only did that once this trip. Here’s the exact card:

I was going to write a ‘sequel’ to the above since as I was leaving an unexpected song started playing but by the end of the day I had forgotten and that card was never written. I often use my phone to record ‘postcard ideas’ but apparently I’d not done it that day.

The above was sent from Arima, and was the day I went to the postage museum. Both eki stamps were collected inside the museum, and of course I had blank cards in my backpack for that purpose! We saw a lot of good eki stamps this past trip, and they all were collected on at least one card. Many of you would have got one in the mail.

Do you remember ‘someone else’s dog‘? The above card chronicled my discovery of a similar gacha machine on the penultimate day! Tiny things like this are a common topic on cards I write.

Many years ago Bernard send me a set of Star Wars rubber stamps and – for reasons long forgotten – I took to the Chewbacca, named him ‘APELINQ’ and have been using him to deliver sage comments on postcards ever since. Maybe you’ve even received one? The above card was written the day we found a sold out drink machine selling cans with stickers of a Japanese idol group. I made it my mission to find them for sale somewhere before we left…

Some two weeks later, I succeeded. Alas it wasn’t ‘the white one’. And if you’re observing that the above card is massive, then that’s because it is:

The above shows the two largest and the smallest cards all compared to a normal-sized one (bottom right). The biggest one is about five times larger than a normal card, and since it’s also lenticular it’s stiff and somewhat heavy. I put ¥918 postage on it and crossed my fingers and as is obvious it arrived in immaculate condition.

As it turns out I have an even larger card – twice the size of that one – that I plan send on a future trip. I’ll probably put even more postage on that one!

As I mentioned during the trip I went into a post office early on and bought a kings ransom of stamps, including one of each of the basic types, which include the ¥10, ¥30, ¥50, ¥300 and ¥500 above. In the end it wasn’t enough and I needed to buy more, but even sending over a hundred cards it still cost only a fraction of what it would from here or Australia.

It costs ¥100 to send a card airmail from Japan, but when cards are oversized or unusually shaped you need to pay extra. In the past I’ve had such cards take much longer to arrive or not arrive at all, so to be safe now I load on extra postage. Someone got a card with a ¥350 stamp on it this trip. Was it you?

The above are the shaped cards I sent this trip. I was very pleasantly surprised the one at the bottom right wasn’t damaged in any way. In fact very few of the cards show any evidence of being damaged by USA mail sorting machines, which gives me hope they’ve improved their automation.

The stamp at the top is massive. In fact it’s so big I couldn’t really use it on some cards. I had exactly four of these (all different) and two came to us so maybe you got one?

The old stamps on the right were purchased at the postage museum. The had a tiny amount (only four) of unused stamps for sale and I bought them all, wishing they had more. A week or so later I found a stamp & coin shop in Osaka and bought several sheets of stamps from a couple of decades ago. They will be used on my next trip.

In fact I’ve even got most of the cards for that trip, since I found a stash of new tourist ones on the very last day we were there. I’ve got three dozen cards and about ¥4000 in postage all ready to go.

I suppose I should return so I can start sending them 😉

Postcrossing Update

November 21, 2025

It’s been about seven months so it’s time for another update on my Postcrossing hobby.

As of today, I’ve sent 1938 postcards and received 1926, an increase of about 300 (of each type) since my last update. My average of about 40 cards per month remains unchanged.

The top countries haven’t changed since my last update – Germany remains #1 – but there’s been a few new countries entering on the low end of the lists. Since April, for the first time, I have sent cards to Bahrain (which took 83 days to arrive) and Chile, and received cards from Chile, Denmark, Macao and Vietnam.

The variety of the cards I’m receiving are the same as always, and you can see a few examples in the above photos. I don’t have a lot of specific card preferences in my request list, and as a result I get a very wide variety of different cards.

I feel like traditional tourism photocards – one of the card types I do mention on my request list – are on the decline. I assume, much like the USA, these are becoming difficult to buy in other countries as well.

There’s been a rise in AI art cards, and I assume some of these are self-made by the senders. AI art for Postcrossing meetup cards is extremely common now as well, and I received way more of them these past few months than in any previous period:

I’ve come to find these a bit impersonal and boring, so I may add to my bio that I’d rather not received them.

The above card was laminated after the stamp was applied and obviously arrived, which makes me feel like trying this myself!

I received the above two cards on the same day, one sent from France and one sent from The Netherlands. While superficially similar the print quality on the left example is better and both came from different printers!

Speaking of advertising cards, the above two are pretty. I’ve got enough advertising cards over the years I could probably do a blog post dedicated to them. Should I?

The above was my very first ‘packaging’ card. It’s not uncommon for users to ask for cards cut from food packaging, and I was surprised to actually receive one. It seems to be a pasta product from Italy (although the card came from Russia) and I took the photo like that to show that the package even has braille on it!

Afterwards, I got the address of a Japanese girl who requested food packaging and said she was a big fan of Wednesday. So I bought some Wednesday cereal and cut a card from the box!

I received six maxicards, which are cards with stamps that match the image. Three are Australian, and the others are from Belarus, England and Estonia.

The Belarusian card had this beautiful postmark!

My three favourites these past months are shown above, all from Japan. The top card features ‘Tawawa-Chan’, the mascot of Kyoto tower, and I believe I’d sent that card to us once myself. The big one on the left shows Ken ‘Matsuken’ Matsudaira and again I’ll possibly do a blog post on him in the future. The rightmost features Sayumi Michishige, ex-member of Hello Project, a Japanese idol band Kristin and I used to enjoy (Yossie was named after a member). The girl that sent the Sayumi card was amazed I knew who it was.

Users still (on the whole) go out of the way to use interesting and varied stamps since most members appreciate that. About a year ago I added (to my bio) a preference for shaped stamps and now I get loads of them! Here’s some examples:

And some more…

And this is only about half of the ones I got these few months!

The above two were the biggest stamps I got this time, and both of them took up over half the card. I wish America printed stamps this large, since I’d welcome the chance to not have to write as much.

For the first time I’ve considered slowing down and sending less, or perhaps taking a break entirely. I’m on the fence though, and will probably continue at least through 2000 sent cards. We’ll see after that.

Robot Claw