Back in the beginning of 2018, I wrote a post about the site’s statistics in 2017. I meant to do one of those posts every year… but seem to have forgotten about it last year. Sorry, everyone! So, without further ado, here are some of the Postcrossing statistics for the year of 2019.
5,100,682 postcards received
For a few years now, we seem to have stabilized at around 5 million postcards exchanged per year, which is pretty neat and puts us on track to celebrating 60 million postcards in late 2020. Who’s looking forward to that party? 🎉
25.44 days (average) and 16.94 days (median) travel time
Do you still remember 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) tend to disproportionately distort the end result.
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. This number hasn’t changed much over the years.
26,836,704,573 kms (or 16,675,555,116 miles) of total traveled distance
That’s enough to go to Neptune and back 3 times! That number is so gigantic, it sure makes me happy that postage is no longer calculated according to the distance traveled…
19,993 km (or 12,423 miles) was the longest distance traveled by a postcard
That’s CN-2803565, exchanged between jessicastier in Xian, Shaanxi and LalyVillablanca in… Wait, can you try to guess which country that postcard traveled to, without looking? Which country is most likely to be the antipodes of a city in central China? 🤔 To check whether you’ve guessed correctly, have a look at the postcard’s page.
964,324 postcards were sent from Germany 🇩🇪
No surprise here, Germany continues to be the most active country in Postcrossing with over 964K postcards sent from there. Here are the other countries and territories in the top 20:
Ranking | Country | Postcards sent |
---|---|---|
1 | 🇩🇪 Germany | 964,324 |
2 | 🇺🇸 U.S.A. | 631,917 |
3 | 🇷🇺 Russia | 600,844 |
4 | 🇳🇱 Netherlands | 243,805 |
5 | 🇫🇮 Finland | 219,883 |
6 | 🇨🇳 China | 206,578 |
7 | 🇹🇼 Taiwan | 184,779 |
8 | 🇧🇾 Belarus | 141,269 |
9 | 🇯🇵 Japan | 135,628 |
10 | 🇨🇿 Czechia | 135,115 |
11 | 🇫🇷 France | 115,193 |
12 | 🇬🇧 United Kingdom | 113,527 |
13 | 🇵🇱 Poland | 89,051 |
14 | 🇨🇦 Canada | 84,649 |
15 | 🇭🇰 Hong Kong | 55,600 |
16 | 🇧🇪 Belgium | 54,741 |
17 | 🇱🇹 Lithuania | 48,795 |
18 | 🇦🇹 Austria | 47,863 |
19 | 🇦🇺 Australia | 47,293 |
20 | 🇨🇭 Switzerland | 45,741 |
Sidolix sent the most postcards
That was close though! Once more, well done to our fleißig German members. To be fair, it’s easy to be an enthusiastic postcrosser in Germany, where postage is still reasonable and postcard shops are plentiful in most places.
Ranking | Postcrosser | Country | Sent |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Sidolix | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,512 |
2 | uttia4a | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,511 |
3 | hepman | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,407 |
4 | ned44440 | 🇮🇪 Ireland | 2,398 |
5 | Antje321 | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,374 |
6 | Matin | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,365 |
7 | tullipan | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,365 |
8 | Willi | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,316 |
9 | Silke45 | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,312 |
10 | rosenbusch | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,310 |
11 | Kekel | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,264 |
12 | DJHK | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,230 |
13 | Rehus | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,207 |
14 | Emillio | 🇨🇿 Czechia | 2,205 |
15 | Bock | 🇦🇹 Austria | 2,194 |
16 | elbe | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,192 |
17 | bas31 | 🇨🇿 Czechia | 2,182 |
18 | TimSarah | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,171 |
19 | ho-modellfan | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,169 |
20 | Rosenquarz | 🇩🇪 Germany | 2,150 |
710 meetups organized in 54 different countries
Soooo many of you organized meetings to celebrate Postcrossing with other members of the community in 2019 — from Italy to Oman, Singapore to Iran, Seychelles or Isle of Man, postcrossers got together in all continents except Antarctica. Hurray!
And that’s it for last year! If you’re hungry for more numbers, Postcrossing has a group of pages dedicated to statistics where you can find more data to explore.
61 comments so far
Keep up the good work on this site. I love it ❤.
Well done to us all and especially to the hardworking Postcrossing Team!!
I was wondering, is there a statistic on total lost Cards? So cards that don´t arrive within the 365Day-frame?
I second the request for information on lost postcards (it would also be interesting to see which origin and destination countries have the highest numbers of lost cards, as I guess most mail gets lost there instead of te travel between countries).
If possible statistics for 2018 would be great as well!
:( :( :(
Germany is on the top rank. This made me smile but depending of the population should not be Finland on the top rank? 😊
What does the stat say? 🤔
Greetings to everyone :-)
But I have to admit, even though the fees were raised last summer: it is still affordable to send cards from Germany.
I went to Norway for some days, buying happily lots of nice cards (I kept some slots for travel mode...). Watching me buy all these cards, my Norwegian friend just said: you are not going to send them all! We can have a nice lunch in a restaurant instead....
We had a nice lunch....and I ended up sending just four cards.
I am used to higher fees in Italy and Spain, but this was really like a shock, realizing not only how much time and effort is put into each single card, but how much money is involved as well.
Thanks a lot to everyone!
from Germany and Russia.
Loved to read it.
I would also love to see the list of the members who sent the most postcards while on travel mode. Since travel mode was introduced at the end of year 2017, there is now a better chance to receive postcards from the "rare" countries. We should applaud the users who contributed the most.
Thank you for all the statistical work :-) Amazing numbers.
Obrigado muito curioso :)
Parabéns pelo trabalho :)
Some manage to send incredible amount of postcards. Wow.
Glad to be part of this 'insanity'!
Russian postcrossers used to write about 1 million postcards a year, too. Now it's not even 2/3 of that!?
How many Postcrossers work in Post Offices? (Any stats on the most frequently asked questions about Postcrossing) Keep the stats coming.
I didn't send many in 2019, but I made some good friends here, though.
Wow, I´m the nr 1 by sent cards ! Yupiiiiiiiiiiiiii !!!
I´m retired and I like to write , send and receive cards . Of cause, it´s not a cheap hobby . To reduce the cost, I let make cards by company from picture taken by myself so I pay just 30 € cent for 1 card.
I´m going every day to the post office and let all cards postmark !
I don´t put the cards in the mailbox.
THANKS to all Postcrossers who read the whole profil and try to send cards I like !
Wish you all the best for 2020 !
-THANK YOU POSTCROSSING FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART -
The german post offices should stop with yearly postage rises and no, rising it higher and then saying "It'll stay that high for 5 years, but we'd have reached that postage if we'd rise it yearly anyway..." isn't the right thing to do.
We beat all years before. :-)
Proud to be a part of postcrossing family
Thanks to all the postcrossers
Best wishes
I wonder, if the distance that card CN-2803565 travelled, was measured in the other direction, crossing the Pacific, would it be the same? Maybe it would, 19.9993 kms, that's half way around the earth! :D
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