On our open poll, many of you asked to see more statistics on the blog, so we thought we’d introduce a new series of posts all about Postcrossing and numbers. And what better way to start than by looking at some of the data from the year that just ended, right? Let’s do this!
5,425,005 postcards received
That’s right — almost 5.5 Million postcards were registered last year, which was pretty neat! We’ve just passed the 45 million milestone a few days ago, and are on track to celebrate the big 50 later this year. Woohoo!
25.7 days (average) and 17 days (median) travel time
Do you know the difference between an average (or mean) and a median? To calculate the average of a set of values, you sum all the values in your set and divide them by the total number of items in that set. This is great if your values are more or less well distributed, but outliers (both large and small) often distort the end result disproportionately.
Enter the median, which can be roughly described as the “middle” value of a data set. If you put all the travel times in a looong ordered line, 17 days would be the value in the centre of this distribution. This is a more reliable value to determine how many days most postcards travel before reaching their destination. Some will be quicker, some will be slower, but on the whole, postcards seem to travel somewhere around 17 days.
27,380,992,088 km (or or 17,013,759,698 miles) of total traveled distance
That’s… yeah. I don’t have words for it neither. We’re way beyond Pluto at this point!
19,985 km (or 12,418 miles) was the longest distance traveled by a postcard
Below is the postcard that traveled the longest distance last year. Can you guess between which countries it was exchanged?
It’s a trick question because of the content… but if you guessed New Zealand and Spain, you’d be right! Postcard NZ-155857 traveled between a pair of antipodal points: from the north tip of New Zealand to the south part of Spain.
916,800 postcards were sent from Germany 🇩🇪
Germany was the most active country last year, with almost a million postcards sent from there! Here are the other countries and territories in the top 20:
| Ranking | Country | Postcards sent |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 🇩🇪 Germany | 916,800 |
| 2 | 🇷🇺 Russia | 776,853 |
| 3 | 🇺🇸 U.S.A. | 606,439 |
| 4 | 🇳🇱 Netherlands | 307,189 |
| 5 | 🇫🇮 Finland | 247,153 |
| 6 | 🇹🇼 Taiwan | 239,432 |
| 7 | 🇨🇳 China | 221,390 |
| 8 | 🇨🇿 Czechia | 204,019 |
| 9 | 🇧🇾 Belarus | 178,794 |
| 10 | 🇫🇷 France | 152,051 |
| 11 | 🇯🇵 Japan | 132,546 |
| 12 | 🇵🇱 Poland | 108,721 |
| 13 | 🇬🇧 United Kingdom | 102,245 |
| 14 | 🇺🇦 Ukraine | 89,283 |
| 15 | 🇨🇦 Canada | 85,731 |
| 16 | 🇭🇰 Hong Kong | 70,432 |
| 17 | 🇧🇪 Belgium | 61,333 |
| 18 | 🇦🇹 Austria | 53,435 |
| 19 | 🇲🇾 Malaysia | 53,050 |
| 20 | 🇦🇺 Australia | 52,137 |
hepman sent the most postcards
Dedication and a speedy postal service helped the Germans climb to the top of the charts, where they took most of the top spots! Here are our 20 most avid postcrossers:
| Ranking | Postcrosser | Country | Sent |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | hepman | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,586 |
| 2 | DJHK | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,547 |
| 3 | uttia4a | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,533 |
| 4 | Willi | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,506 |
| 5 | rosenbusch | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,473 |
| 6 | Klausdiemaus | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,471 |
| 7 | gremlin1 | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,456 |
| 8 | tullipan | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,411 |
| 9 | Antje321 | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,395 |
| 10 | Marcii | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,385 |
| 11 | ned44440 | 🇮🇪 Ireland | 2,384 |
| 12 | Minna71 | 🇫🇮 Finland | 2,348 |
| 13 | mapcardcollector | 🇬🇧 United Kingdom | 2,336 |
| 14 | Matin | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,316 |
| 15 | fisherman | 🇮🇪 Ireland | 2,314 |
| 16 | chrissybaby | 🇮🇪 Ireland | 2,309 |
| 17 | Bock | 🇦🇹 Austria | 2,272 |
| 18 | marie61 | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,255 |
| 19 | radiofan | 🇦🇹 Austria | 2,249 |
| 20 | TimSarah | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,199 |
And that’s it for last year’s numbers! If you’re hungry for more, Postcrossing has a group of pages dedicated to statistics where you can find more data to explore.
75 comments so far
I'd find some kind of guessing game very exciting. For example guessing from and to which country postcard number 50 million comes and goes. Similar to the guessing of the exact time.
Every year, there are always a few postcards being registered at 365 days (and a few that arrive even past that date), but it's usually due to mail issues or other special circumstances.
https://www.postcrossing.com/postcards/US-4815624
That's what the exclusion zone is for... You can send cards, you get cards from them, but the distance between could be a way you go day to day...
You can see the ranking of members in one country (at least the first 1000). When searching for all members of Iceland for example, you get the result "231 members" . Just to the right of that, where it says by default "order by username", you can choose "order by postcards sent" instead. (Took me only 3 years to discover that possibility.)
Wow! What fun. For context—I was living and teaching as an expat in New Zealand, flew home to visit my family in the states and drove through Wisconsin and bought the card there. I brought the card (along with others) back to New Zealand, admittedly forgot about it (and Postcrossing for a bit, hence the nearly year long delay), got back on site and mailed it. So this card has traveled even more than the distance it says! From Wisconsin to Arizona and then a flight to New Zealand AND THEN to Spain :)
I am wondering how new Travel Mode affected the number of cards sent from more exotic destinations. I think a poll asking only those who travel how many (the range) cards they sent from their vacation (or maybe a percentage) could be interesting even though numbers are numbers and they can be misleading. I'm just curious.
Hurray! Ukraine is the 14th last year! :)
Congratulate Germany on such a great work!!!!!!
Happy New Year for all Postcrossers around the World!
Realy intresting information
Thank you for this article. I like reading all the different statistics.
Thanks a lot!
Best wishes!
It is absolutely insane to see that all top 10 most active guys are all from Germany and together they mailed insane amount of postcards, more than 25.000, which is far more, than for instance number of ALL postcards, mailed from bottom 100 countries in Postcrossing EVER.
Get your head out of the sand please and let us start doing something about it.
Speaking of "rich folks" - I have been once told that "the richest people are not the ones who earn the most, the richest people are the ones who spend the least". :))) Clearly none of us fits this category as postcards are something we can do without. Also, if postal service in Russia was as expedient as it is in Germany, Russia would have become the dominant country just by sheer amount of members sending fewer cards per member.
We all have borders with some countries - and the USA has "the exclusive bordering right" with Canada, but it doesn't mean that we have to exclude each other. Not to say that we speak the same language and are hardly distinguishable from one another, though we try!. :)))
But given that richest people can allow to travel, it would make a difference if when they begin sending cards from those countries. Even if Russians will visit former Soviet Republics such as Georgia or Armenia, Azerbaijan - it would be nice to receive a card from there.
I think postcrossing is more about people than it is about postcards and maybe there are advantages to having "dominant" senders? There should be. Maybe the quality of a card is more important than where it is from?
The dynamic of many versus few active users has various reasons, not only money. Tradition, media-coverage, active network. But yes, of course postcrossing is easier in affluent regions.
I am sure postcrossing's managing team appreciates any useful suggestions you bring.
The maximum of possible postcards traveling is 100, btw. So even superusers cannot grow endlessly.
As for Russia, both you and Sellena are within the range of variation we all face. But you might check your 'repeated countries' option - maybe it's active.
Btw last year I mailed 65 postcards, which is roughly 1 postcard a week... I have no problem with people who mail twice or three times more, but to be honest, to mail 2.000 cards a year... I really do not understand the point here...
Average time of member being active, 2 years or 200 cards.. this is kinda hard maybe and there are lots of personal reason.. for slow post countries maybe stop at under 100; etc
Thanks anyway :)
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