Postcrossing Blog

Welcome to the last part on this series about Kosmopolit, a “kind of steampunkish 19–20th century Postcrossing sister”, as Claas (aka Speicher3) describes it. He and Christine (aka Reisegern) found a great book by Claus-Torsten Schmidt on the topic, and have been slowly entertaining us with the story of this fascinating association. You can catch up previous posts here, and read on for more juicy details!

While reading the book, I couldn’t resist buying a few Kosmopolit postcards on Ebay. One of them, sent in 1902, is not directly related to the association itself. However, this postcard was published by the publishing house of Kosmopolit founder Fritz Schardt, and the verse on the card is written by Fritz Seemann, who was the secretary of the Kosmopolit when it was founded.

Another one is from 1912. There are several postcards sent by Carl Gerner from Cologne to Louis de Clei in Belgium. This shows that the members not only wrote single cards to each other, but sometimes stayed in contact for longer periods of time. On many of these cards you can see that the stamp was fixed on the postcard’s image side. That seemed to be quite popular. On the reverse side, where the stamp would be located, there is a note: “Stamp overleaf”.

And there’s another similarity to Postcrossing: Some members wrote their postcards completely full and were interested in communication. Others just wanted to add cards to their postcard collection and just added their stamp or a short note. Mr Gerner apparently belonged in the category “Hello, I’m Carl. Happy Kosmopolit!”

Here’s a 1910 postcard from a Kosmopolit member in the United States:

In 1911 Kosmopolit sold a number of different donation stamps to its members. These stamps were used to collect money for building the first picture postcard museum in Nuremberg. The plans for the museum were later on foiled by World War I. The donation stamps had different pictures and colours and were titled with “Buillding stone for the Kosmopolit house”.

Do you remember when the first Postcrossing meetup was held and when the first meetup card was sent? It is fascinating that much of what we do today has been done in a very similar form 100 years ago. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Kosmopolit congresses were organized regularly, where members met to get to know each other and to show themselves their postcard collections. This is what we’d call a Postcrossing meetup today. And not only that. There were even meetup cards! In the book is a postcard from a 1923 Kosmopolit congress, which was signed by a number of congress participants!

Just as thousands of Postcrossing meetup cards were signed and sent out today, Kosmopolit meetup cards were signed about a hundred years ago. The most eye-catching difference: no washi tape in 1923.

Here is one of the oldest meetup cards we know so far:

They also organized some postcard exhibitions over the years, with fancy posters and stamps:

The 1920s were an unstable period with many changes in Germany. Political upheavals, coups, hyperinflation and the founding of the extreme right-winged party NSDAP, which later led into the “Third Reich” and the World War II. These turbulent times also influenced the Kosmopolit. It is not known exactly how long the association existed. In 1925 the association was officially moved from Nuremberg to Dinkelsbühl. The author of the book could not find any files on this in Dinkelsbühl, and in 1927 the file on the “Weltverband Kosmopolit” was officially closed by Nuremberg authorities.

One can still find postcards from the 1930s that carries the Kosmopolit members’ stamps… however, this is probably only a private use of the stamps.

Fun fact: The German Wikipedia article about Kosmopolit even compares the association with today’s Postcrossing!

And this is the last post we have for you on this fascinating association! Thank you so much to Claas and Christine for all your work on this topic, and for digging deep into postcard history for us. We’re still amazed at how many parallels there are between Postcrossing and Kosmopolit, from meetups to profiles or “signature rubber stamps”… Who could have guessed that history would repeat itself so thoroughly 100 years later! 😊

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!

January’s drawing to a rather dark and dreary close here as I write this with Storm Corrie throwing rain against my windows, and that’s been turning my thoughts to tasty warm comfort foods. It’s always something that’s interesting to hear about, because it can vary culturally and between people. So why don’t we all share what we love?

For me, the absolute classic comfort food is always going to be my dad’s cooking, namely the way he makes roast potatoes (or roasties, as they’re commonly called in the UK) that are beautifully crispy without getting them burned. I know how he does it, but we’ve never managed to replicate it in our kitchen. Sometimes I’ll ask my parents to ask us over just so I can get some roasties!

We do have our own comfort food choices at home, too, and the best part is that our absolute favourite is really pretty simple. We found the recipe on the BBC Food site when we were looking for ways to use some chorizo, and fell in love with the simple filling tastiness of it. The chorizo makes it super flavourful, as well! We usually add some nice crusty bread to dip into it, because I really love bread.

What about you? Do you have any recipes to share? Maybe you even have a postcard depicting your comfort food! Let us know here, and you can use this prompt when you’re not sure what to write this month as well.

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 Friday this year, so make sure to prepare something nice for your mail carrier and give them a smile before the weekend — 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! 😊

Did you know that there is such a thing as a Pony Express Museum? The Little Mail Carriers heard about it and wouldn’t stop badgering us to go… so when Duane (aka DuaneThePhilatelist) offered to take them for a visit, they jumped on an envelope and off they went. Here they are, to tell you all the story of that adventure.

Hello from a sunny St. Joseph, Missouri! We’re super excited to be taking a special tour of the Pony Express Museum today, and hopefully will learn a lot about this unique way mail was delivered back in 1860. The museum is actually inside a part of the Pike’s Peak Stables, from which westbound Pony Express riders set out on their journey — how cool!

The Pony Express was a short-lived mail service that delivered newspapers, letters, telegrams as well as government and commercial mail using riders on horses across the United States, between St. Joseph in Missouri and Sacramento in California. Here is a superb map of their route, which you can see in great detail on Wikipedia:

Why was there a need for this service though? Well, back in 1848, gold was found in California, and a lot of people rushed there in search of the opportunities it brought. California was a new state at the time, and its population was growing fast, so there was a lot of demand to connect the west coast with the rest of the country.

At the time, the Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express Company ran a stagecoach service between Kansas and Missouri, and they thought that starting an express service could perhaps earn them a more lucrative contract with the United States government. So the Pony Express was launched on April 3, 1860, when two riders left from the opposite ends of the route, and completed their journeys of 1800 miles (or 2896 kms) in 10 days — an amazing feat that many thought would not be possible!

The Pony Express recruitment announcements were infamous for asking for young, skinny men, and stating that orphans were preferred. Although the payment was high for the time, the journey through the country was perilous, as there were often ambushes and raids. Some riders were killed and many horses stolen or driven off in the Pauite War with the Pauite Indian tribe, whose territory the route crossed. The Pony Express was forced to temporarily suspend its services due to the conflict, and some mail was lost.

Because this was an express service and the journey had to be super fast, riders could not carry a lot of mail with them. To make changing horses quick at relay stations, a special saddle cover (called a mochila) was crafted, which had four mail pouches (or cantinas) on each corner. Mail had to fit in these small pouches, so that the riders could be quick!

One of the most famous Pony Express riders was William Cody… aka Buffalo Bill! He began working for the Pony Express at age 15 and is said to have completed the longest ride, covering 322 miles (518 km) in 21 hours and 40 minutes, using 21 horses. His adventures were immortalised (and are said to have been greatly exaggerated) in a novel that launched him into the spotlight. Many more books and movies were made about his adventures, in which he often wore a “cowboy” hat.

Mail carried by the Pony Express riders had its own cancellation mark, and in the museum you get the opportunity to sort the mail yourself. Postal work is hard, and we were exhausted…

The Pony Express never managed to secure that government contract their founders had hoped for, and became bankrupt after 18 months, closing on October 26, 1861 — just 2 days after the first transcontinental telegraph started its operations. Despite having run for only a short period of time, the service is immortalised in the tales of the American West, and the original route is even a national historical trail that crosses 8 states.

And that’s it for our wonderful visit to the Pony Express Museum — we are off to explore a bit more, and hope you all have the opportunity to visit someday!

And a big thank you to Duane, for hosting the Little Mail Carriers and showing them around the museum! 😀 Who knows where the little ones are off to next… keep an eye on the blog for their future adventures!

According to the census so far, 42% of postcrossers love to see posts about statistics on the blog… so here we are, reporting for statistician duty to give you an overview of last year in numbers! 👷 If you’re like us, you might want to open 2020's stats post on a new tab, to compare the values for the 2 years.

Ok, so first things first, the number of postcards received in 2021:

5,289,716 postcards received

Pretty impressive! This is a good bit (17%) above the total for the previous year, and even better than the number for 2 years ago, pre-pandemic. Woohoo!

26.94 days (average) and 18.12 (median) travel time

Average travel times are slightly faster than the previous year, but the median (a better calculation that doesn’t put as much emphasis on the outliers) is worse… and that is a little surprising to us as we expected both metrics to be lower by now. We hoped that postal services would have had enough time and pandemic experience at this point to sort things out between them, find alternative ways to ship mail, or just close routes temporarily until stuff has been fixed. 😩 Sigh.

25,774,489,281 kms (or 16,015,520,179 miles) of total distance traveled

This number is almost 4 billion more than last year, which is to be expected since we had quite a bit more postcards received as well.

19,929 kms (or 12383 miles) was the longest distance traveled by a postcard

The postcard doing this very very long trip was NZ-224513, which started its journey in Te Awamutu, Waikato, New Zealand and traveled all the way around the world to Cuevas de San Marcos, in Andalusia, Spain, arriving 32 days later! Pretty cool to think that a postcard connected these 2 places which are so far apart that they’re almost perfect antipodes. For comparison, the average distance a Postcrossing postcard traveled in 2021 was 4873 kms (or 3028 miles).

1,269,834 postcards were sent from Germany 🇩🇪

Once again, our enthusiastic German members have surpassed all the expectations and broke their previous record of 1,004,831 postcards sent in a year! This was also the year in which they crossed into Postcard IDs with 8 digits — the first country to do so in Postcrossing. 😊 Here are the top 20 countries and territories, by number of postcards sent:

The number of “Postcards sent” is a little counterintuitive, so I’ll explain a bit: this is the number of postcards sent from these countries which were registered in 2021. That means that there are some postcards in there that were sent in 2020 and registered in 2021, and there are also many postcards requested in 2021 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 we’re going with it.

Although some countries have moved up and down the ranking, the countries in the top 20 are more or less the same as last year, with the only difference being Ukraine entering the list and Hong Kong leaving it.

What about top senders?

Sidolix sent the most postcards (registered in 2021)

Hannes (aka Sidolix) sent 2555 postcards and recovered his top pole position from 2019. 😊 Willi (2480), uttia4a (2476), hepman (2451) and Antje321 (2392) complete the top 5, all from Germany.

We’re not sure how these top members do it, but these numbers are super impressive… If you send a lot of postcards every year, maybe come share your secrets with us in the comments below!

Åland Islands sent the most postcards per capita

Looking at number of postcards per capita, the Åland Islands still reign supreme! Here’s a look at other countries and territories in the top 20:

Note that the number represents postcards sent per 1,000 inhabitants, and only countries with more than 10 members are featured. Not many changes in the list, but Macao and Liechtenstein are newcomers to the top 20!

October 1, 2021 was the day in which more postcards were sent

No surprises there, right? Postcrossers sent more than 60,000 postcards on World Postcard Day this year, waaaaay above what we would consider a “normal” day in Postcrossing. The next best day of the year is the kick off of the December campaign on December 1st, with about 20,000 postcards sent. Apart from these 2 days, a lot of the days with most postcards getting sent seem to happen around March.

While we were looking at these numbers, we thought it would also be cool to look at the day with most postcards received…

December 30, 2021 was the day in which more postcards were received

A total of 21,225 postcards were registered in this day, though we confess we have no idea why this day in particular. 🤷‍♀️ Maybe there was some backlog of mail that got stuck somewhere because of the holiday season, and got delivered just as the year ended?

And that’s it for this year’s roundup of statistics! What do you think? Were you surprised by some of these numbers, or are there perhaps other stats that you’d be interested to hear about? Please do share them on 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 rankings on this forum post.

PS2: Speaking of statistics, the second annual census is about to close, so make sure you submit your replies if you haven’t done so yet. You’ll find the link to it on the email we’ve sent some weeks ago.