Postcrossing Blog

PostEurop is once again hosting their yearly competition to choose the best EUROPA stamp of 2012!

As some of you might know, the theme for 2012 is Visit… and the idea was for each country to showcase itself, and promote tourism.

Here is a small selection of the 51 stamps in the run-up:

Aren’t they all lovely? We already feel like going on a European roadtrip!

To see all the stamps and vote, go to the competition page and pick your favorite. May the best stamp win!

PS – We’re always curious to know… which one did you choose?

Hi everyone!

We know you’ve missed our irregular contests and giveaways – and we’re pleased to announce that we have a great one for this week!

First of all, MOO is having a huge Spring sale, with 25% off selected printed products until the end of this week. That means business cards, stickers, labels, greeting cards and of course, postcards – all with 25% discount!

On top of that, MOO is offering a $30 voucher to three lucky postcrossers, to use on any MOO products!

For a chance to grab one of these, all you have to do is visit their gallery of ready-made postcards at MOO’s website (under Products > Postcards > Browse MOO designs), and leave a comment below, telling us which artist or collection is your favourite. For instance, we really like Blanca Gomez’s Gentle festive greetings!

When the week ends (midnight GMT on Sunday, April 22nd), we’ll close the comments and pick 3 winners at random. Good luck everyone! :)

PS – Every time you make a purchase on MOO using one of the links above, Postcrossing receives a small commission, which helps support this project. So you’ll not only be purchasing outstanding products, you’ll also be helping Postcrossing!

Jany, (aka jany_gurb) is one of the top postcrossers in Mexico. She is passionate about traveling, walking in new cities and discovering foreign cultures.

Here is what she had to say to our interview questions:

How did you come across Postcrossing? What got you hooked?

Since I was a little girl I loved postcards, my dad used to buy some of them when he was in another cities, and with the time his postcards became mine.

I was looking in the internet a place where you can exchange postcards in Mexico, and in one page there was “Postcrossing”, I read about it and I was surprise that one web like this exist; imagine you can swap a postcard with someone in another country – to me it was amazing.

So from that day (that was 3 years ago) I became a huge fan of this page!

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

I like photography, jogging, watching football on TV, reading, listening to music and my passion is travelling. I love walking in a new city and talk with people and know their culture.

Show us your mailbox, your mailman/mailwoman, your postoffice or the place where you post or keep your postcards!

Here is my mailbox:

These are my mailmen:

Here is where I mail and buy my postcards:

And this is where I keep them:

Show and tell us about your favorite received postcard to date, and what makes it special.

About my favorites: all of them are favorites to me, I think each postcard I received is special because everyone has something specific to tell.
But with the very first one from Finland (left) I saw that it was a trusting postcard web project!!! And my favorite postcard #2 is this Neuschwanstein castle’s postcard (right), since it was my first postcard with this amazing castle.

Have you been surprised by any place that you have received a postcard from or sent a postcard to?

Yes when I received postcards from countries like Israel, Qatar and United Arab Emirates they really surprise me. Those countries are so far of mine that I couldn’t believe that i got postcards from them!!

Have you met any other members in real life?

Yes i went to Italy a few months ago and I met DavideGE. He waited for me at the train station and he show me his beautiful city Genoa, also we exchange some postcards. He is an amazing guy I had a great time!!

Everyone does silly things once in a while… and postcrossers are no exception. So we were thrilled to discover a thread on the forum about the little accidents that happen in Postcrossing, and had a lot of fun reading through it! Here are some of our favourite accidents:

Daisy_chain says:

I heard of a friend that someone wanted to send postcards from when they where on holiday and threw them into a red “mailbox” only to find out a while later that these wheren’t actual mailboxes but trash cans!

Lori wrote:

Another time I thought I was writing to a person who liked cat cards so I told them all about my cats etc. Then I realized it was a person who was afraid of cats! So I had to put an address label over the address. Luckily I didnt send the card out!

Zeroday says:

I had a stack of cards ready to take to the Post office. Official cards and some RR swaps. They were sitting on the edge of my sofa with a throw pillow next to them. I grabbed the whole bunch of cards and headed to the Post office. About 10 days later for some reason I reached over and picked up the throw pillow and saw one card that had slipped in between the pillow and sofa. It was a private swap card and when I saw it I was horrified. I mailed it and send a very “I’m sorry” u2u to the person…We both got quite a laugh out of it…

Swollib wrote:

A couple of times I’ve put some of my received postcards in my postcards-to-send pile and sent them out accidentally. Both times the post office was nice enough to return them to me!

What about you? Do you have any interesting postal stories or accidents? Leave a comment below or on the forum thread with your stories!

Every now and then, we get emails asking us about specific types of postcards. Instead of replying to them one by one, we thought a series of posts explaining them was in order. First up, Maxicards!

What are Maxicards? These maximum cards, as they are often known, are postcards that feature an image (a monument, animal, event, etc) along with a stamp of a very similar or related image on the picture side of the card. There are actually thousands of them in circulation today, as they are regularly issued by the Post Offices themselves – with collectors paying big bucks for originals. See some examples on the Virgin Stamps website.

Maxicards have a long and storied history. The first Maxicard was mailed by a tourist in Egypt in 1893, who sent a picture postcard to a friend in Germany. The postcard depicted a pyramid and the Sphinx, and was mailed after he stamped it with a pyramid and Sphinx stamp. He accidentally placed the stamp on the view side of the postcard and thus the maximum card was born from his mistake. Whether later cards were accidents or by design, the craze took off. In 1978, the International Federation of Philately (FIP) officially recognized maximaphily as a branch of philately, basically saying that Maxicards are legitimate.

So, how can you create a Maxicard? You might purchase the postcard and related stamp, put the stamp on the image side and send it, but you have not actually created a Maxicard. Why is this? You are missing another important step that collectors look for: not only do you want the stamp and the postcard to be related, but you also want the postmark to tie in as well! Only then will you have a full-fledged maximum card. Learn more about creating a maximum card on this Maximum Cards website.

Do you have a favourite type of postcard that you’d like to see featured, or are you intrigued by a certain format? Let us know in the comments!