It’s been over six months since I last posted about Postcrossing, so now seems like a good time for an update.
As you can see, I’ve now sent and received about 1150 card, and my monthly activity seems to be on the rise. I usually ‘do postcrossing’ every two weeks, writing about 10-20 cards every time. It’s time consuming and a bit expensive, but it’s always fun getting new cards in my post box.
Here’s the updates on the top sent and received countries where you can see just how much the service is dominated by Germany:
On the other end of the list, here are the countries to which I have only sent a single card: Albania, Algeria, Bangladesh, Costa Rica, Cyprus, French Guiana, Guernsey, Jordan, Kosovo, Malta and Reunion. (I also sent a single card to South Africa but it never arrived.)
And here the countries from which I have only received a single card: Asland Islands, South Africa, Croatia, Denmark, Israel, Armenia, Bahamas, Guam, Morocco, Puerto Rico and Sri Lanka.
The above are the approximately 400 cards received since my last update. It’s always a surprise to see what sorts of cards people send – and what they write on the back – and they range across every possible type of design.
My profile says I like vintage cards and I get a lot of them (like the German one in the bottom left from the 60s) but I also get an increasing amount of cards with art or non location-specific themes, which is likely because tourist postcard printing is on the decline in most countries.
The one on the right above has an actual signature on it of a Czech actor/singer. The message on the back humorously describes her as ‘not famous’ but a quick Google search showed she was indeed in a few films. Apparently the sender got the card at a concert she was giving.
Here’s the most unusual card I received in the last six months:
Yes, that’s the front of the card! It was send from Canada. If you saw this, would you buy and mail it to someone? (I would!)
As for stamps, I recently changed my profile to say I like ‘unusual’ stamps and it seems to have had an effect on the amount of non-rectangular stamps I’ve been receiving:
Most are from Finland, and it seems their post office can’t not release unusually shaped stamps! The two at the top are particular notable: could the one on the left be the only instance of a Commodore 64 on a stamp? The bottom right image is of a lovely wax seal which survived the post completely intact. Maybe it’s time for me to dig out my wax seal kit again…
In other stamp news, I got one of the UK Bowie stamps, an unusual stamp of a singer (?) from Taiwan, and my first King Charles ‘machen’ stamp! The low denomination Canadian stamps are nice as well, especially since most stamps from that country are fairly mundane.
Russia and China also continued their silent war of who can release the largest stamps. Every one of the above is larger than any US stamp I have ever seen – in some cases two or three times larger. It may seem like China is winning from the above pic but take a look at this beauty:
Yes, that’s almost the entire back of the postcard with a single stamp on it! You can see they used the remaining 8 mm of space at left to write a short message and my address. This sender couldn’t have possibly known of my endless quest to fill the majority of the back of a card with stamps, and in one fell blow has surpassed my greatest effort. This is a card that will live in my memory forever!
