Postcrossing Blog

Last July 14th, was not just the Postcrossing 5th birthday. On the same day, a village in the U.K. was trying to break a Guinness world record: the most postcards sent from one location.

The previous record belonged to the Indian city of Tamilnadu with the already impressive number of 5,216 postcards sent. Not bad at all! But the residents of Keyworth decided they could be better and they aimed for even higher: they are claiming to have sent a total of 8033 postcards in one single day! Quite something, isn’t it?

The event was organized by Brian Lund with the help of the local postoffice staff that started preparing the event 6 months ago, spreading the word and gathering sponsors. Some custom postcard designs were provided and there was even a postmark specific to that event. Postcards were sent all over the world, but some people mail themselves a postcard to keep a memory of participating in the event.

The exact value of the record is currently being submitted for ratification but with 8033 postcards, thinks are looking good – congratulations Keyworth!

PS: Speaking of records, to date the record of postcards sent in a Postcrossing meetup seems to belong to last year International Meetup in Helsinki with 545 postcards, signed (by all participants!) and sent on a single meetup. Do you know of another meetup with a higher number? Let us know!

Anita, a world traveler, joined Postcrossing at the recommendation of a pen pal. She has over thirteen thousand postcards in her collection.

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

Because she knew how much I love postcards, my dear pen friend Aase from Denmark told me about Postcrossing in the summer of 2006. So I thought to myself “why not, let’s try it” – and after I found my first postcards in my mailbox it happened to me: I got addicted to Postcrossing.

I have met so many nice people via Postcrossing but also via private swaps and some of them in real life – robin67 and oldieoma from Vienna, Mozartkugel from Salzburg, ipuenktchen from Iran, Karmi from Slovenia, MARCILIA from Madeira/Portugal, Ziah from Mauritius etc.

Honeybee and ipuenktchen


Graz meetup: ipuenktchen, oldieoma and honeybee


Graz meetup: robin67 and honeybee


Salzburg meetup: mozartkugel, ipuenktchen, oldieoma and honeybee


Vienna meetup: oldieoma, honeybee and robin67


honeybee and robin67

Each time I see a postcard stand I have to stop and to look; so my family and friends have to have good nerves and have to be very patient with me.

I think Postcrossing is such a wonderful and peaceful hobby. A Postcrossing friend from Portugal told me once that he want to suggest me for the Nobel Prize for Peace ;) because I helped people from Israel and Iran to exchange postcards (they both sent them to me and I passed them on). There is no postal exchange between them and some other countries of our earth. So I try to help my Postcrossing friends from time to time to realize their postcard-dreams into countries they never would be able to send a card.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

I love reading and writing so I am very happy to work for a book publishing house here in Graz.

I also enjoy traveling very much and I have visited many countries: Norway & Svalbard, Finland, UK, Sweden, Germany, Czech Republic, Russia, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, France, Greece, Turkey, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, Hungary, Israel, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Jordan, Canada (Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick), USA (Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Washington State, Oregon, California), Africa (Egypt, Morocco, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe). My next journeys will lead me to Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and in summer to Iceland (if the volcano let us go…), Faeroe Islands and Greenland.

Other hobbies: I am fond of playing the keyboard, singing, taking pictures and hiking.

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

Honeybee postman

Honeybee postoffice

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

In my collection I have 13,626 postcards and I love each one of them. I received my first card when I was three years old. I got it from my uncle, who died very young, so it is a wonderful reminder of him. My parents kept this card and all the others which arrived for me until I was ten. Then they asked me if I wanted to collect them and from then my postcard collection grew each year.

Of course there are some favourites – as I love map-cards very much and city views for example. You can visit my map-card collections – Europe, the Americas, Pacific Rim and Asia.

On 14th July 2005, the Postcrossing project started its first steps in spreading smiles through postcards. It was a small project done for the love of sending and receiving postcards from all over the world, and the hope was that there would be more people sharing the same love and interest for snail mail.

Fast forward 5 years and this same project is now responsible for over 4.5 million postcards connecting about 200 countries. It binds together people from different cultures of all ages and genders, with different political and even religious beliefs. Few other hobbies can claim to have achieved the same results, and we are quite proud of this!

Throughout these years, Postcrossing has gone through several milestones, thanks to the work of a team of volunteers as well as the precious support of its members who helped it reach what it is now.

Postcrossing is sending out a bold message to the world today: postcards are not something from the past. In fact, we feel like we are starting a postcard revolution and proving that no technology will ever replace the intimacy of a handwritten postcard. :)

Thank you everyone who made this possible. Let’s make the next 5 years even greater!

Please join me wishing,

…aaaaaaand because a birthday is not complete without presents, we have a big contest to announce! :)

We would like you to take a picture of yourself posting some postcards at your local postbox. Why not go do that now, we’ll wait here for a bit… Done? Now mail the photo to this email address, and don’t forget to add your username, so we can know who you are! That was easy, right? We’re hoping to make a big slideshow of smiling postcrossers around the world!

By July 31st we’ll randomly choose 5 people, who will each receive a pack of 60 postcards from MOO. :)

Many of you already know MOO, but if you don’t you should really check them out – they help you to make batches of professional glossy postcards, with a set of your own pictures or using some of their cool ready-made designs. If you’re a postcrosser who has never tried MOO before, you’ll be happy to know that they are offering all new customers 10% off 20 or 60 packs of postcards with the voucher code POSTBIRTHDAY5! (valid for one order only until the end of July, excludes delivery).

Every now and then we receive stories from our members which makes us smile from ear to ear. Today we want to share with you one related with the current football World Cup. Here’s what Liesel from South Africa told us:

I would like to tell you how my daughter, Meghan, made a friend through Postcrossing and got to meet her thanks to the 2010 FIFA World Cup currently taking place in South Africa. Both my daughters and I are avid postcrossers and when we are not busy sending and registering postcards, we like to browse the website searching for favourites.
While browsing the South African postcards one day, we noticed that a lady called Linda, from Slovenia, really liked South African postcards and frequently commented on how beautiful they are. Meghan sent her a message asking if she can mail her one of her favourites and soon they had exchanged cards. Meghan loves horses and Linda sent her a lovely horse card. While corresponding Linda mentioned that she might be travelling to South Africa for the 2010 FIFA World Cup as part of a group of Slovenian soccer fans. We told her that we would love to meet her and kept in touch until she let us know that she is definitely coming. We were so excited! We had to wait until Linda’s tour group visited our home city of Pretoria (the executive capital of South Africa), which they did on Wednesday 16 June 2010.

Nicole, Ouma, Linda and Meghan

This day is a South African public holiday called Youth Day on which we commemorate the 1976 protests by 20 000 pupils against inferior education for black people.

Linda’s group visited several historical sites in Pretoria and we arranged to meet up with her at the Union Buildings. The Union Buildings is the residence of the South African Presidency and government. It was designed in 1910 by Sir Herbert Baker and completed in 1913. It has been the venue of many important events in our history including the August 9, 1956 march by women chanting 'strike the women, strike the rock’ to protest the pass laws under the Apartheid government.

Union Building Gardens

It was here too that former President Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as our first democratically elected President on 10 May 1994, heralding a new era in our history. Unfortunately Linda’s group couldn’t stay long, but we had enough time for a brief chat and to exchange gifts. Linda gave Meghan a Slovenian supporter scarf and Meghan gave Linda soccer memorabilia and postcards of course!

Meghan with scarf Linda gave her

It was a privileged for Meghan to meet Linda, a friend from Slovenia, something that would not have happened if it wasn’t for Postcrossing and the Soccer World Cup!

Thank you Liesel for sharing this with us!

If you have similar stories, we would love to hear them!

WOW! The response to June’s contest was amazing, we had almost 300 very creative submissions… which made the task of choosing just three of them a very hard job!

The Postcrossing team has chosen the following captions as the winners of MOO's postcards:

Caption: “New flight attendant uniforms for budget airline Dot-to-Dot Air” by ezbub

Caption: “After several viewings of Castaway, Jack began to grow comfortable with his unique love” by katier

Caption: “You clean, I’ll pour” by wakegrace

Congratulations to our three lucky winners and thank you to everyone who participated!

The month of July is a very special month for Postcrossing, and we’ll be back soon with another fun contest and more MOO postcards to give away!