Postcrossing Blog

Did you hear that sound? It was the sound of postcard number 75 million reaching its recipient and being registered!! Woohoo! 🎉 We’re ¾ of the way to 100 million postcards, which feels like a little unreal… but it’ll still take some years to get there, so we have time to get used to that idea. 😅

And since we’re talking about numbers, January is usually a period where we like to stop a moment to reflect and plan, so it’s a good time to go over how Postcrossing did in 2023. Let’s look at numbers!

4,955,460 postcards received

That’s 38,008 postcards less than in 2022… but overall, not that much of a difference, especially considering all the postage increases.

28.24 average travel days and 18.67 median travel days

That’s a little bit higher than last year, with mail taking on average about a day longer to get to its destinations… which may be explained by the next statistic:

26,736,461,421 kms (16,613,266,909 miles) traveled

26.7 billion kilometers (or 16.6 billion miles)! Pretty impressive, right? Even though we sent less postcards overall, our postcards traveled a 5.5% higher total distance than in 2022! There are still quite a few postal routes not working at the moment, which influences where postcards can be sent.

19,960 kms (12,403 miles) was the longest distance traveled

As is becoming tradition, it’s a postcard from Spain to New Zealand that takes the medal for the card that travels the longest distance! Postcard ES-731128 took 50 days to cover the 19,960 kms that separate Úbeda in southeast Spain) to Tauranga, in New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty!

The average distance a postcard traveled in Postcrossing in 2023 was much less than that though — about 5,395 kms (or 3,352 miles).

1,146,458 postcards were sent from Germany

Woohoo! Our German members have once again taken the cake, thanks to their enthusiasm, reasonable postage prices and to Deutsche Post’s Cards for Literacy campaign… but the USA has slowly been closing their distance in the rankings! Could they one day surpass Germany? We’ll have to see!

For the people who are new to this statistic, let me take a moment to explain that this is the number of postcards sent from these countries which were registered in 2023. That means that there are some postcards in there that were sent in 2022 and registered in 2023, and there are also some postcards requested in 2023 that are not counted in this statistic (those are still traveling and will likely be registered over the next few weeks/months). Looking at postcards registered within a certain timeframe and sticking to it makes it easier to compare with previous years though, so that’s what we usually do.

Shelleh sent the most postcards

So here’s a curious fact: this year, the top 5 senders in Postcrossing were all from the USA: Shelleh (2,483 postcards sent), BeckyS (2,391), suegathman (2,357), Djain (2,284) and christelvonderpost (2,145). All of these members have chosen to also exchange postcards with their own country, which, in a big country like the USA, means that they often send postcards domestically, speeding things up. If we remove domestic postcards from the equation, the members who have sent the most postcards internationally in 2023 were CarminaBurana (Canada), ned44440 (Ireland), diams1 (Switzerland), SMatti (Finland) and tiinama (Finland)!

Åland Islands sent the most postcards per capita

And here’s the usual ranking per capita, for countries and territories with more than 10 members. Some shifting up and down the rankings, but not a lot of big changes overall.

October 1, 2023 was the day in which more postcards were sent

No big surprise there! 🙃 World Postcard Day is the day to send postcards, and postcrossers have embraced this cause with relish. Apart from this day (and September 30, which is already World Postcard Day in some countries), the other top 10 days with most postcards sent in Postcrossing are all in the first three months of the year.

January 18, 2023 was the day in which more postcards were received

A lot of postcards from Germany arrive all throughout January, so there are several January days in the ranking of “days with most postcards received”. Other peak days are 11th October (World Postcard Day cards, we assume), 29 of December (post-holidays)… and 31st of May, for some inexplicable reason! 🤔

Postcards were sent from 221 countries and received on 159 countries

So you might be wondering, how can postcards be sent from 221 countries (and territories), when Postcrossing only has members in 201? It’s the magic of Travel Mode! This year, our members really went for those exotic locations, and we saw postcards being sent from places like Cocos Islands, Burkina Faso, Nauru or Turks and Caicos! That said, the number of countries and territories in which our members have received postcards has also increased (from 153 in 2022 to 159 last year), which is good news!

13,015 new forum topics and 805,416 forum posts in 2023

Woohoo! The forum continues to grow, little by little, which is heartwarming. Community is about people coming together, and the forum is the place where that happens for postcrossers.

And speaking of forum, here’s a new statistic for this annual post:

1,826 meetups in 62 countries

Pretty impressive, right? We wish there was a way of quantifying how many friendships have been made in the years the project has been running, but these things are hard to count. Still, it’s nice to know connections are being made and friends are getting together around postcards!

11,731 emails replies

And last (but definitely not least), our support team has replied to an Everest-sized amount of queries by you all, sent to us via the contact form. One of our goals for 2023 was to get some help dealing with these, and we did — Iris (aka scrutiny) is now part of our support team, replying to your requests for help every day… and helping the rest of the team have a bit more time for other tasks.

That’s it for 2023! Time to look ahead, plan 2024 and make exciting things happen! What will YOU be up to this year? And do you have any exciting postcard-related goals you’d like to share?

PS: Some of you might have noticed we didn’t run the usual annual Postcrossing census last December. It’s a lot of work to process all the census data, and since these things don’t tend to change that much in the span of a year, we’ve decided to switch it to a biennial format. It’ll be back in December 2024, but in the meantime, you can send your tips and feedback to the team through the contact form… or on a postcard, for bonus points! 😊

PPS: For those of you who would like to see longer rankings (which are cumbersome to put on a blog post), here they are!

The writing prompts invite postcrossers to write about a different topic on their postcards’ messages every month. These are just suggestions though — if you already know what you want to write about, or the recipient gives you some pointers, that’s great too!

For this month’s writing prompt, Jane suggested a fun idea in the forum topic. Idioms and sayings related to colour are common, but can mean very different things in different countries. For example, “to be blue” means one thing in English (being sad), while in German it means something else altogether (being drunk).

I only speak English well, so I don’t know how well a lot of the idioms I say translate into other languages. For example, if I say “tickled pink”, is there an equivalent of that in French or Japanese or Farsi…? If I talk about “being the black sheep”, would that make sense if it was translated literally into other languages? I feel like “black sheep” might translate quite well, because sheep are usually white (if you ask someone to draw a sheep, they’ll probably draw something white and fluffy), and it’s pretty clear that the black sheep would stand apart from a herd of white sheep… though this, too, is probably regional. If you have mostly black sheep in your country, maybe the term for someone different would be “white sheep”…?

And what about other idioms? That seems a lot less simple. “Red herring”, a favourite term for mystery writers in English, for example… I can imagine that you could say “red herring” in another language and it’d just sound like you were speaking literally of a fish that is red. I’m definitely curious to hear whether that term translates, or how you’d refer to a misleading clue in your language!

It’s a fascinating subject, and we’d love to read your answers here in the blog comments. But you can also use it as a topic to write about this month, if you’re not sure what to say!

So, this is a bit of a different post, but we’re excited to tell you about a school in northern Ghana that is improving the lives of children there through affordable education! While most of us might take education for granted, it is not so in many places. So read on to learn more about this special school and also, to learn how you can also help.

The goal of the Prince and Princess Foundation Academy is to provide an affordable academic environment in Tamale, catering especially to lower-income families. The heart of this initiative is to ensure that no child is denied their future due to high educational fees. The school’s mission is to nurture and develop the prospective leaders of Ghana, empowering them to contribute positively to their nation.

The journey began in 2014, with the school being constructed on a generously donated plot. Thanks to the unwavering support of donors, by January 18th, 2021, the academy opened its doors with six classrooms (for crèche, nursery, and multiple kindergarten and primary rooms), with 185 students at the moment. The school is about 75% complete, and the team is now on a mission to expand the school to the basic level, which will ensure that up to 355 children from the Kunyavilla community and surrounding areas like Shishegu, Dungu, Asawaba, and Nyohini can attend and benefit from it. Currently, classrooms Primary 5 and 6 are being built, and bricks are being moulded to prepare the construction of the computer lab and the library.

One of the standout features of this project is the team’s commitment to transparency. Donors can witness the building progress online, with detailed updates on the construction process and tons of photos. This level of openness is not only commendable but also fosters trust and encourages more people to join the cause. At the helm of this initiative is postcrosser Sisu Haruna (aka dotsiisu), who brings with him years of teaching experience in private schools. Last year, we had the chance to meet him and team member Belén (aka Belen94) in Seville, to chat about the academy and their plans. They both shared stories about the school, which Belén has visited and volunteered at. Their passion to education and commitment to the children of Tamale became clear to us, and so we’re happy to help them make this project a reality!

You can help too by donating to the school! Every contribution, no matter how small, brings the academy closer to its goal. Donations will be used to fund the acquisition of essential resources, building materials and equipment, which you can accompany on their website. And as a bonus for the postcard enthusiasts, for every €10 donated, the school will send you back a nice postcard, featuring some highlights from Ghana! You can find more information here.

By contributing, you’re not just building classrooms; you’re shaping futures. Many of our members have already generously contributed to this project, and as a token of gratitude, the academy has named one of their classrooms after the “Postcrossing Community”, which is a really touching gesture. 🥰 We’re proud of the work that Sisu and his team are doing at the Prince and Princess F. Academy, and hope to see the school completed and their classrooms filled with students very soon!

Jeffrey Brown is a New York Times best-selling cartoonist based in Chicago. He’s written books for all ages, including the Star Wars Adventures book and postcard series that includes Darth Vader and Son, Vader’s Little Princess, and Rey and Pals. So it seemed only natural that we invite him for an interview.

Jeff was kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule to answer some questions from Clarisse (aka CStar9) via email.

Before we get started, what music should people listen to as they read this interview?

My first thought was the “Imperial March” from Star Wars, but I don’t think this interview will be quite so ominous and intimidating, so maybe I’ll say “Make a Picture” from the latest Andrew Bird album, Inside Problems.

Your process starts with a lot of brainstorming. For Rey and Pals, you began with almost 200 initial ideas! How do you know you’re ready to move on to step 2?

The ideas stage of any project is a 24/7 kind of thing. I bring my project brainstorming sketchbook with me everywhere and try to constantly be thinking of ideas and observing the world for anything that might click with a project.

I also dedicate a few hours a day just trying to come up with ideas, which includes reading and watching source material for inspiration.

I know I’m done when I really hit a wall, usually when I have a decent number of ideas – enough to see them making the cut for the final project. I give it a few days and if I don’t come up with more, then I’m ready for the next stage.

Of course, more ideas can still come all the way up until the final art is drawn.

Your work covers a tremendous range of content for all ages, including film. What are some of the elements that define your work across projects? In 5 words or less, what do you hope people take away?

In five words, I hope people take away: feeling and laughing is okay.

I think my work leans toward a slightly expressionist cartooning style. It’s definitely not realistic – I like to draw things that don’t line up quite the way they do in life.

I also always try to have heart and humor, so there’s a warmth, whether it’s autobiographical comics, Star Wars, or middle grade kids’ comics.

Tell us about your studio. What are some of the inspirational elements there?

I have a plush Catbus from My Neighbor Totoro that is always hanging out somewhere. There are lots of Red Wings hockey cards and pucks, a Star Wars card with an Ewoks cartoon animation cell, some fossils and a Neanderthal stone knife, the Dune pop-up book from 1984 (opened to the sandworm scene, of course), my Eisner awards, a Warhammer 40K Space Marine figure…

But the biggest thing is original art. I have pages from favorite artists like Julie Doucet, Geneviève Castree, Moebius, Dave Cooper – and of course some favorite drawings by my two sons. There’s also a drawing my wife made for me for Father’s Day years ago, of my son Oscar… riding the Catbus.

Is there an art medium that you’ve never learned but wish you could?

I like pen and paper the most, and I’ve always liked to work small, so I’m pretty satisfied with my process. Which isn’t to say I’m opposed to trying other materials, but I’m not going to force myself to work differently just because I feel like I should. The right idea would need to come along.

I used to think I’d like to make music, but my family can tell you that I cannot sing.

I once spent a couple months starting to learn how to play bass guitar, and that was enough to show me I should stick to drawing.

What is your relationship to paper broadly, and specifically to postal mail?

I still make all my art with physical materials – pen and paper. I like drawing in sketchbooks, I like the feel of the pen on paper. I use digital sparingly – mostly just for scanning images and maybe correcting minor text mistakes.

I still like getting mail, and I try to write back to everyone who sends me physical mail. Getting mail from kids is the best, because their letters and postcards are like mind collages: beautiful little messes.

When can we expect your next postcard set?

I’m working on a Mandalorian and Grogu book currently, so, fingers crossed that Disney might want a postcard set for that. We’ll see!

You’ve wanted to be a comic book artist since you were in preschool. Who have been your main influencers in comic art? How would you say your work differs from theirs?

There have been so many, from Garfield to Mark Alan Stamaty to John Romita, Jr., to Eddie Campbell, Chris Ware, Joann Sfar, Kate Beaton, John Porcellino.

I think my work tends to be a bit more naive than a lot of the work I like, and it may be hard to see the influence.

Maybe it’s more that I draw on the storytelling qualities of the artists more than any superficial stylistic identifier.

Star Wars was the first movie you ever saw in a cinema, and you’ve remained a big fan of the films. Now you’re also a dad. How do these experiences merge in your Star Wars projects?

Even when I’m working with made-up worlds full of aliens and robots, I always start from a grounded place, something personal and real. Sometimes it’s a specific thing that happened or was said, sometimes it’s capturing the feeling behind what happened. I may write something down right after, but I try to live in the moment and not get ahead of myself thinking about how I might use it later.

But people around me have definitely made comments that I should put something in my books.

One unexpected thing about my Star Wars books was thinking I was writing for adults, only to have kids enjoy them just as much, if not more.

What’s something you are proud of, outside of your art?

I’m proud of my kids, although I read somewhere that parents aren’t supposed to tell their kids they’re proud of them because it ties their sense of self accomplishment to parent approval or something. But I think they’re both great!

What’s next for you?

I’m working on a sequel to my middle grade DC superhero book, Batman and Robin and Howard, and also the Star Wars book I mentioned before – The Mandalorian and Child.

After that, I have a ton of projects I’d like to do. I’m most excited to work on my fantasy adventure epic graphic novel, The Fierce Knight.

To learn more about Jeff and his work, check out his website and Instagram page. Jeff has given a number of interviews, where he talks about being a dad, answers questions from a 5 year old, gives tips for up-and-coming artists, talks about the origins of Rey and Pals, or about his comic memoirs (for grown-ups), about screenwriting… or even gives a live art demo! 😍

And now, for the last giveaway of 2023: Clarisse is going to send 4 postcards by Jeff Brown to 4 randomly picked postcrossers! 🎉 To participate, leave a comment below sharing a Star Wars memory or your favorite character. Come back this time next week to check out the winners!

Some months ago, we received a message from Janna (aka revode) who told us about her visit to a wonderful postcard exhibition at the Porter County Museum in Indiana! Sadly, we couldn’t go there ourselves… but the cheeky Little Mail Carriers were happy to jump in and volunteer for a guided tour. 😍 Here is the report from their latest adventure!

Hello everyone! We have arrived at the Porter County Museum in Valparaiso, Indiana! We heard that the PoCo Muse has an exhibit with hundreds of postcards on display until January 7, 2024 so we decided to come check it out!

The Porter County Museum was founded in 1916 and has over 20,000 objects in their collection related to the history and culture of Porter County, Indiana. With so many objects in the collection they rotate through what is on display frequently in order to tell as many stories as possible. When we visited, the Robert Cain Gallery was featuring art from the museum’s collection, the Eunice Slagle Gallery had the exhibit “Connections: Take a Closer Look”, and the Montague/Urshel Gallery featured (the exhibit that we traveled here for) “Ever Yours: Postcards from the Golden Age”.

Before searching out the postcards, we explored the Robert Cain Gallery, admiring the work of many Porter County artists who worked to capture scenes from the area. The art in the Cain Gallery rotates out every three months, so that there are always new things to see.

Walking through the museum to get to the postcards, we had to journey through the “Connections” exhibit where seemingly different objects from the museum’s collection are paired together with a variety of connections between them. This concept allows for a wide range of objects to be on display. Did you know that there has been a Popcorn Festival in Valparaiso every September since 1979?

One of the first objects we came across in “Connections” was just our size! It is a scale model of the Maxwell/Remster Dairy Barn which was made by John Remster Sr. for his son John Remster Jr. in the 1950s. The barn can be opened up and played with and has been played with by every generation of the Remster family since its creation! Unfortunately, the barn it is modeled after no longer exists, though the milk house that was connected still stands.

These two pieces are connected by being not the final product. The linocut block (right) shows the artist, Hazel Hannell’s home that was in Furnessville, IN. No prints made from this block are known to exist, though you never know what might be in someone’s attic. The “Brenda Starr Reporter” comic strip was written and illustrated by Dale Messick who lived in Ogden Dunes, IN and inserted many local and personal references into her strip. The comic is in the final stage when it comes to the artist but not for the reader who ultimately would have seen this in the newspaper.

I swear that dog is watching us… 🤨

Check out this postmark stamp! It is from a town that no longer exists! The Tassinong Post office was founded the year after Porter County was founded in 1836, making it one of the earliest European settlements in the region. By 1884, almost all of the Porter County post offices were receiving their mail by rail, Tassinong was one of two still serviced by horseback. At the turn of the 20th century, when the Kankakee Marsh was being drained, the people of Tassinong refused to allow a proposed rail line to come to their town. The railroad, instead, bypassed the village and promoted a new town called Kouts. In 1903 the Tassinong post office was discontinued with all of the people relocating to somewhere serviced by rail.

Can you imagine checking someone out on this cash register? This is a nickel plate brass National Cash Register manufactured in 1914 sold to Wark’s Hardware in Valparaiso. The register worked perfectly at Wark’s until the early 1990s when someone broke into the store and broke the machine. Mr. Wark was not one to throw things away just because they didn’t work, so he disconnected one of the cash drawers from the machine and then it became a very large cash drawer until the store closed in the early 2000s.

Turns out she WAS watching us! This is Daisy the taxidermied dog and her eyes follow you! She is 90 years young and belonged to Helen Slanger of Portage, IN. She has been in the museum’s collection since the 1970s and has become an unofficial icon of the museum.

After journeying through ‘Connections’, we finally made it to “Ever Yours: Postcards from the Golden Age” — the exhibition we had been looking for! I don’t think that that postcard will fit in a regular mail slot…

Did you know that the first postcard was created in 1869!?

The PoCo Muse has over 2000 postcards in their collection. How did they narrow it down to the couple hundred on display? The wall of postcards that are behind us here were all received by one man, John Griffin, from Valparaiso, IN!

Did you know that approximately 1 billion penny postcards were sent every year between 1907 and 1915?

All of these flip books have both sides of a historic postcard with transcriptions! This one is a real photo postcard showing Lila and Thaddeus Whitlock posing with their dog Maxie. Lila sent this to her daughter Olive who was studying Nursing in Iowa in 1912. It is nice to see that people have felt conflicted about their selfies from the beginning; “I was so engaged in trying to keep Maxie still, I forgot to look pleasant.”

The exhibit makes the comparison of postcards to social media of today. The message is public since there is no envelope, the amount of text is limited to the space available on the card, and it is accompanied by an image which might be compared to today’s use of memes. Just like social media today there was pushback to the use of postcards with detractors saying that postcards symbolize “the triumph of the commonplace.”

This binder of postcards shows an individual’s collection of historic postcards that they loaned for the exhibit. In the early 20th century it was common to invite guests over and flip through your postcard collection. Similar to showing friends vacation photos.

After reading all of those postcards it was nice to color some for ourselves. Plus once we are done coloring the booklet, it can be turned into a postcard — just tape it shut and add a stamp on the back! On the wall above, the many postcards sent to the museum are on display, which helps to show that postcards are still thriving today! Hurray! 🎉

Thank you to the wonderful team at the Porter County Museum, and especially Visitor Experience Manager Quinn, for opening their arms to the Little Mail Carriers and showing them around. If you’re in the area, the exhibition will be there until January 7th, so don’t miss it!

The little ones are back on their envelope and on their way to their next adventure… who knows where they’ll pop up!