Category: Stamps

A Few Unusual Things

March 6, 2022

I had a birthday recently, and got a lot of weird and wonderful stuff. Here’s a few of them…

KLS gave me an electronic card, that plays Happy Birthday and then lets you blow out the candle (yes you blow on the card) to trigger a jumping game! It’s smaller than a credit card and very unique.

This dispenser creates a cat paw pattern using foam soap! It works very well, and the soap from this Japanese item is denser than what we get here in America. I reckon this basic idea will be the first of many of its kind…

This is a set of neon/metallic watercolour paint samples, and I’ve showed what they look like on the right. The glitter ones are extremely cool, but apparently look best on black paper. I wonder if I can use these in the ongoing postcard contest?

This sculpture of a one-eyed raven – possibly one of Odin’s ravens – is made of resin, quite heavy and mounts on the wall. We have a few items like this, and he’ll find a welcome home on our walls. KLS purchased this directly from the artist, and mine is #139 of 300 🙂

The above is a set of stamp sheets depicting American wildlife. They were printed one per year between 1998 and 2009, and Bernard gave me the full set!

The artwork on these is fantastic, and they are printed in such a way that it’s not immediately obvious they contain actual stamps! I’ll never use these; they’re certainly ‘for the collection’ 🙂

And lastly another piece of art: a miniature giraffe sculpture! This is also made of resin, and is hand painted. It’s incredibly tiny: that’s my fingertip on the left and a normal size LEGO minifig on the right. I need to find some sort of mini display case to put him in since he’s so weightless he may just drift off on the wind one day!

As I said this is just a selection of what I received for my birthday. The ‘usual stuff’ (model kits, LEGO, trading cards etc.) will eventually get their own posts right here on this very blog!

Rain Of Frogs

August 16, 2021

I sent Bernard fifty frog postcards at the same time!

I started by numbering them all. The cards were, of course, unique:

I then hand-addressed and stamped all fifty:

At first I was unsure what to write on each of them, but a quick amazon search gave a handy alternate solution:

The (exactly fifty!) frog stickers were then applied, and I wrote the lyrics to Rainbow Connection across all fifty cards:

This took some time as you may imagine, and the cost was about $40 for the cards, stamps and stickers. Given Bernard only paid $20, he got quite a deal.

“Paid?”, you ask? This was part of a deal i offered him: 50 frogs for $20. I never mentioned it was postcards (or indeed any details at all), but he gladly accepted regardless 🙂

I sent them all on the same day from a variety of post offices and mailboxes. Four days later he received 43 in the mail, and I expect the remaining 7 will arrive today. I hear they were a hit with him and Lakshmi. Overall I deem Operation Rain of Frogs to be a grand success!

I’ve still got a few frogs – and many toads – left. If you want one, indicate as much in the comments!

Postcrossing 350!

May 2, 2021

Yesterday I received this card, my 350th from Postcrossing:

I’ve been a member now for 28 months, and in that time have sent 371 cards to 42 countries and received 354 from 42 countries. In total 49 countries have been represented, since there’s some I’ve sent to but not received from and vice versa.

People from 248 countries use the service, so I’ve only interacted with about 20% of the possible destinations. The ‘rarest’ for me has been the Bahamas: with only 20 members it was quite unusual for me to have sent a card there! The ‘rarest’ country I have received a card from is the Aland Islands, which has only 33 registered users.

Approximately one third (114) of the cards I have sent have gone to German users, with Russia (46) and The Netherlands (27) next in line. As far as received cards once again Germany wins (with 93 received) and Russia takes second (48) with China third at 21.

I’ve sent enough cards that the duration of international mail can be determined from my statistics, although I expect these are somewhat compromised due to the covid interruptions. That said Australia has an average travel time of 40 days, Japan 15, Germany 12 and the UK only 8. The longest average travel time is Turkey, at an amazing 85 days (based on 4 sent cards)!

The longest time for a receiver to get a card I sent them is still South Africa (115 days) and the shortest was a user in Lichtenstein who got my card only 5 days after I posted it here at my local post office!

For received cards, I got one from Hungary a whopping 175 days after it was posted, and one from Jordan 126 days after. Both of these were long enough that Postcrossing had marked both as lost, but I was able to register them anyway.

It’s not an inexpensive hobby! Each card costs me about $1 on average (including the ones I have printed myself) and international postage is $1.20, so the hobby costs me about $0.96/day on average. The cost is increasing, since as time goes on I can send an ever-increasing amount of cards (I’m at 16 simultaneous now) and I usually always send a new card whenever I can 🙂

Unsurprisingly the vast majority of cards in the last year have mentioned covid and the effect it has had on all our lives. Some have even mentioned losing loved ones or jobs from covid, and in recent months vaccine frustrations (especially from European senders) has also been common. Postcrossers tend to love travel as well, so a common hope is that we can defeat this virus and people can start traveling again.

It’s still a delight getting every card, reading the messages and looking at the stamps. 350 is a lot of cards to have received (I’m ranked about 3500th amongst USA users) but for me it’s just a start 🙂

Robot Claw