Postcrossing Blog

The day has come, when we finally announce the results of the book and postcard set giveaway we’ve been doing with the Accidentally Wes Anderson project for the past few months!

Hundreds of postcrossers participated, leaving comments or sending postcards to the AWA headquarters in New York, and we couldn’t be happier that so many of you decided to take part. We learned about soooooo many new places worthy of a detour or a full trip… 😍 Beauty lurks at every corner, it seems, if only one knows how to look for it!

So now, without further ado, here are the lucky winners, as chosen by Paulo’s script:

• 3 Accidentally Wes Anderson books: LeslieMN, hola_olaaa, and evenin
• 2 special postcard books, signed by Wes Anderson: D2M2 and MeldaTaspika
• 15 postcard books: thechargingsky, unicorn11, paulinexong, HankHanover, alaskanabbey, elisaserretm, Acorny, BarneyFamily, Mia71321, mounten, IzzyB, jm1122, AdelaisLili, Eden_Reliure, and sights.

Super congratulations to all the winners! 🎉

Because they want to see their new postcards travel around the world to as many hands as possible, the nice people at AWA are running a discount for postcrossers, in which you get 30% off when buying a set of postcards. Just use promo code POSTCROSSING at checkout to receive 30% off your postcards order. A special “Snail Mail” collectible sticker is included in all orders! 😍

And last but not least, thank you for all of your participations and enthusiasm! We hope you will all go out and explore this world we live in, with all its quirkinesses and special places, worthy of a movie scene! Make sure to snap some photos and upload them to the AWA map, to pass them along to other intrepid explorers.

In the US, February is designated as “Black History Month”, intended to highlight the stories of the many African-American people whose stories have often gone unheard. In honour of that, I’ve been looking into the story of the “Six Triple Eight”, the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, a non-white battalion of the Women’s Army Corps, made up of 855 women in total, commanded by Major Charity Adams and Captains Mary F. Kearney and Bernice G. Henderson, who were themselves African-Americans. Charity Adams (pictured right) was the highest-ranking Black woman in the US army by the end of the war. When the army proposed a white man to manage the battalion, due to lack of faith in their ability as a non-white unit to manage the job without supervision, she reportedly refused to countenance this (with the words “Sir, over my dead body, sir!”).

Though the group is often referred to as having been the only all-Black, all-female battalion to be sent overseas during World War II, that’s not quite true. There were also Puerto Rican women in the unit, and at least one Mexican woman. Nonetheless, white women were not a part of this unit, which was active from 1945 to 1946, and sent to the UK to manage a backlog of mail that was not being sent to the soldiers it was intended for. Their motto: “No Mail, Low Morale”.

By all accounts, the task they faced was monumental. The mail was unsorted and just lying around, with millions of items, including parcels containing food (some of which was apparently being nibbled on by rats). This was Britain during the Blitz, so the women were also working in shifts in the dimly-lit warehouses—and the warehouses were also freezing cold, prompting the women to wear long johns and extra layers of clothing. The packages and letters themselves presented a problem: addresses weren’t always clear, and there were often soldiers who had the same name, or mail addressed to men by their nicknames.

Nonetheless, the women got the job done. They created a card index of soldiers’ details to help them in their task, an index which ultimately included around 7 million cards. There were three shifts of eight hours each day, and each shift cleared approximately 65,000 pieces of mail. They used clues in the letters and parcels to piece together to whom they should belong, updating the cards as they went. In the end, they completed their task in three months, rather than the projected six! They took their assignment seriously, and I’m sure their efforts made such a difference to soldiers who thanks to them finally got word from home. If postcards bring us joy now, imagine how much those letters and care packages meant to soldiers in World War II. The Six Triple Eight restored both mail and morale, and in record time too.

After the war, the group was disbanded. They ultimately received the European African Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, the Good Conduct Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, and finally, in 2022, the Congressional Gold Medal. As of 2022, six members of the battalion were still alive: Romay Davis, Cresencia Garcia, Fannie McClendon, Gladys E. Blount, Lena King, and Anna Mae Robertson.

Apparently, there’s going to be a Netflix film about it, so perhaps more people will learn about the Six Triple Eight soon—will you be planning on watching it? Did you know about this battalion’s story already?

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!

We have a forum topic where members can make suggestions for things they’d like to see in our writing prompts. Among the great suggestions people are making, Sabrina (aka Albion) has a question about mantras.

I don’t really have a mantra myself, at least not one that’s motivational or uplifting. I do, however, have a choice saying from my grandmother that I use when I’m getting overly emotionally involved in something that doesn’t really need my input, or where my opinion isn’t going to change anything… Does that count?

It’s really simple, in any case: “You can’t educate pork.” It means, basically, “there are some people you just can’t reason with; no matter how much you explain, they won’t learn/won’t see your point of view.” When I look it up online, there are a few results, but most people I know only know this saying from me! When I’m getting caught up in some silly debate online, I’ll take a deep breath and remind myself that “you can’t educate pork”… and step away. (Mostly!)

So in a sense I suppose I do have a mantra, albeit one that only applies when I’m getting myself overly involved in trying to change someone’s mind about something! What do you think? Do you have a mantra? What does it do for you? Share your answers in the comments, or perhaps use it to inspire your postcard messages this month!

February is a busy month in the mail calendar, and we can’t wait for it to start! Are you ready?

We love a good mail challenge around here, and since February is the Month of Letters, it is time to dust off all that special stationery and put pen to paper! It’s the perfect opportunity for reconnecting with family and friends in these socially-distanced times, sending a Valentine card to your special someone, saying thank you to the helpful people in your life… or simply surprising strangers across the world with postcards! 😉

The rules of the Month of Letters challenge are simple:

• Mail at least one item through the post every day it runs. Write a postcard, a letter, send a picture or a cutting from a newspaper… anything goes!
• Write back to everyone who writes to you. This can count as one of your mailed items.

That’s it! The challenge started back in 2012, after American writer Mary Robinette Kowal decided it was time for a break from the internet. She spent a month offline, and asked her friends to communicate with her through letters. The results were relaxing and intimate, so she decided to invite others to join, sparking a yearly flurry of correspondence.
If you’re planning to join this year, you’re welcome to share your progress with us on this forum topic.

Another happy mail-related event coming up is Mail Carrier Appreciation Day, which happens every year on February 4th. This is the day to celebrate our trusty mail carriers, who make it possible for this hobby to exist by delivering all our postcards!

The date falls on a Saturday this year, so if you don’t have mail delivery on the weekends, make sure to prepare something nice for your mail carrier the day before — for instance, pour your gratitude into a thank you note that you’ll deliver (or affix to your mailbox) for them to discover on their rounds. I’m sure it’ll be the highlight of their day week!

If you can, take a photo of what you did to celebrate this special day, and share a link to it in the comments! 😊

Another year, another opportunity to compile some statistics and look at Postcrossing through numbers! This year we added some new data, so let’s dig in, starting by how many postcards arrived in 2022:

4,993,468 postcards received

That’s 5.6% less postcards than last year… which is completely understandable, given the state of the world.

27.53 average travel days and 17.75 median travel days

The average number of days a postcard travels until it reaches its destination is a little higher than before… but the median travel time is not, which is good news! The median is a better statistic than the average, as it is less affected by the extremes (which are usually outliers). This year’s median travel time of 17.75 days is lower’s than last year’s 18.12 days.

25,338,239,130 kms (15,744,451,857 miles) traveled

A number that is just 1.7% lower than last year, despite the 5.6% difference in postcards received… which indicates that, on average, our postcards travelled a little bit further in 2022. Still, a huge distance that our collective postcards have travelled… the equivalent of 632,270 laps around the world or 32,958 return trips to the moon!

20,001 kms (12,428 miles) was the longest distance traveled

For the third year in a row, it was a postcard traveling between Spain and New Zealand that accumulated the longest distance in Postcrossing. This year, we even broke the 20,000km record, with postcard ES-683224, which traveled between Pontevedra (in the region of Galicia, in the north of Spain), and Greymouth, on the west coast of New Zealand’s south island.

The average distance that a postcard traveled was about a fourth of that: 5,074 kms (3,153 miles).

1,197,918 postcards were sent from Germany

No surprise here, our very enthusiastic German members top the chart once more! So, looking at all the postcards that were received in 2022, where were they sent from? Here’s the top 20 countries on this ranking:

The number of “Postcards sent” is a counterintuitive metric, so let me make a little pause here for a quick explanation: this is the number of postcards sent from these countries which were registered in 2022. That means that there are some postcards in there that were sent in 2021 and registered in 2022, and there are also some postcards requested in 2022 that are not counted in this statistic (those are still traveling and will likely be registered over the next few weeks/months). Limiting this number to a certain timeframe and sticking to it makes it easier to compare with previous years though, so that’s what we usually do.

Willi sent the most postcards

A lot of postcards were put on their way by our German postcrossers, with Willi at the top of the rankings with a total of 2,319 postcards sent (that were received in 2022), followed very closely by OlafArens, with 2,311 postcards — that was a tight race! The rest of the top 5 members with most postcards sent is composed of Sidolix (2,265 postcards), elbe (2,236 postcards), and ho-modellfan (2,235 postcards).

Åland Islands sent the most postcards per capita

No surprise here, Åland continues to be the top country in postcards per capita. Here’s the rest of the top 20 list:

(*) This ranking is calculated per 1,000 inhabitants, for countries with at least 10 members.

October 1, 2022 was the day in which more postcards were sent

World Postcard Day continues to be the day in which more postcards are sent, which makes us extra happy! Other days with lots of postcards sent are December 1st (the start of the Postcards for a Good Cause campaign), and also random days in January and February.

January 12, 2022 was the day in which more postcards were received

Looks like maybe a mini avalanche of postcards arrived to their destinations after the holiday period in December! Other good days are a little scattered throughout January and February, and around the middle of October too.

Postcards were sent from 201 countries and received on 153 countries

Can you guess why the big difference in numbers? That’s right — quite a few postcards from exotic locations are sent in Travel Mode every year. Often, there are no active members in those countries or territories, so there is no one there to receive postcards… but they can still be sent from there by traveling postcrossers, to delight some unsuspecting postcrossers!

12,669 new forum topics and 804,060 forum posts in 2022

This is a new statistic, and one we’re quite happy about! The forum is buzzing with activity these days, with games, chats and swaps happening all around the clock. Hurray!

13,127 emails replies

This is the number of replies sent to emails that came to us via the site’s contact form, with requests for help. That’s a lot of emails, and a big chunk of how the team’s time is spent… so this year, we’ll be looking for some help with support tasks. If this is something up your alley, keep an eye on the forum! We’ll post something there soon.

And I think that’s about it for this year’s statistics! What do you think? Does any number stand out to you, or are there perhaps other things you think we should be tracking and comparing, year to year? Let us know in the comments!

PS: We know it’s always frustrating when your country is not featured in a top ranking… so we published the full country list on this forum post, as well as a few more rankings.

PS – Happy Lunar New Year! 🎊