Postcrossing Blog

Has it really been a week? It feels like we’re still in a strange daze, dreaming of postcards, stamps and cancellation marks…

Anyway, it was a blast! It felt like the second World Postcard Day was bigger than the first edition, which is awesome — there were a lot more events, but also more postcards being sent in Postcrossing and more buzz on social media all throughout the day as well. The excitement was palpable, and it seemed like everywhere we looked, a celebration was taking place!

Take Jersey Post, for instance, who set up a display at their main post office where people could write words of wisdom in postcards, to share with others. Sage advice has been pouring in from post office visitors, and it’s really heart-warming to see! A few other postal services joined in the day, issuing a number of special cancellation marks and even some postcards, and there were quite a few events taking place in museums too, like the popular “From Me to You” workshop at the London’s Postal Museum’s café, and events for children in Slovenia and Finland.

Where possible and safe, meetups took place to celebrate the day, in places like Mumbai, Lisbon, Taipei or Bonn! If you were in a meeting, please upload some photos to its forum topic – so few people do these days, but we’d love to see your happy faces and your piles of postcards too.

In London, at Stampex (the biggest stamp collector’s fair in Europe), postcrossers got the chance to listen to a couple of interesting talks about postcards, peruse the stands, and enjoy sending postcards from the show. A total of 3000 World Postcard Day postcards were distributed to visitors this year, so everyone could send a postcard to celebrate the day!

This year, we were happy to see more libraries join in as well, with pop-up postcard writing stations inviting visitors to mail a postcard! A few of these were set up by postcrossers, who donated unwritten postcards to their local libraries and let them know about the World Postcard Day. That was really sweet, and it’s something we’d like to try to replicate in more places next year — wouldn’t it be cool if all libraries had a little postcard basket, encouraging visitors to grab one and mail it on the day? Libraries (and librarians) are the best!

Still, some things didn’t quite go as planned… 😅 Postcrossing’s infrastructure wasn’t made for these peaks of activity, so it struggled a bit to come up with addresses to give out on that day. You might have noticed the site was a little slow or unresponsive at times. Paulo kept an eye on the servers, made some tweaks here and there and slowly things improved towards the second half of the day. We hope to be better prepared for this avalanche next year.

That said, a lot of you have already started seeing the badges on your profiles as your October 1st postcards make their way to their destinations, and I’m sure you’re curious to know how many postcards were sent on that day, right? During October 1st in the UTC timezone, 70,381 postcards were sent through Postcrossing, and that number increases to 75,659 if you count with postcards requested on October 1st in other timezones as well. Hurray! This is about four times more than any other day of the year, so we are super impressed with everyone’s energy and readiness to write a few extra postcards! I bet you looked a bit like us in the gif below…

We’d like to think that these are just a small percentage of postcards sent on World Postcard Day though — hopefully a lot of postcards also went out to friends, family members and other people who we treasure and appreciate.

We hope you all had a wonderful World Postcard Day, surrounded by postcards and the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing you’re making other people happy! Thank you for enthusiastically embracing this idea as a community and for making this idea come true, pushing it forward and making the world a better place, one postcard at a time. 💛

PS – Today is World Post Day! UN’s Secretary-General António Guterres said: "On World Post Day, we recognize the invaluable contributions of postal workers to our societies and economies. The vast postal network – involving millions of workers moving billions of pieces of mail through hundreds of thousands of post offices – is woven into our societies, connecting communities the world over. ” It is decidedly so, and we are thankful for all of their hard work that brings us closer together through the mail.

After months and months of waiting, it’s finally World Postcard Daaaay!! 🥳

Do you feel the excitement in the air too? If you sit still and listen very very closely, you might be able to hear the busy scribblings of thousands of pens gliding across these little pieces of paper… And have you tried licking a stamp today? They somehow taste better than in any other day of the year… it’s like magic!

World Postcard Day is the day we celebrate the joy that postcards bring, by flooding mailboxes all over the world with happy mail. We cannot but smile imagining the puzzled look of postal workers everywhere, when they notice the avalanche of postcards, making its way through their sorting machines!

For those who are just joining the celebrations for the first time this year, we invite you to learn a bit more about the history of postcards. Did you know this is the day in which they celebrate their 152^nd anniversary? Yup! Postcards have been around since 1869, when Dr. Emanuel Herrmann suggested that a practical and cheaper alternative to letters should be implemented for shorter, more efficient communications. His recommendations impressed the Austro-Hungarian Post, who put them to practice on October 1st 1869, resulting in the Correspondenz-Karte… and the rest is history!

Postal operators, museums, philatelic associations, charities, libraries and postcard enthusiasts in different countries have all put together a number of events to celebrate the day, so do make sure to check them out too.

Oh, I forgot to mention this on the last post! The best meal for the World Postcard Day (as suggested by Bonnie Jeanne’s aka postmuse last year) is ravioli, because they look like little postage stamps! So, we challenge you to make or grab some on your way home — it’ll be our shared World Postcard Day tradition, part of the day’s lore.

Wherever you are, however you wish to celebrate, we hope you have a brilliant World Postcard Day… and we’ll see you on your mailbox! 😊

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!

Many of us, as Postcrossers, end up seeing quite a lot of our local post office, one way or another. In some ways, they’re similar all around the world, because they have the same basic function: allow people to send letters and parcels, nationally and internationally. But there are a lot of differences, too, from the colour scheme to the things the post office might share a building with—so that’s this month’s prompt!

My local post office is really tiny. It’s in the little shop on the corner that sells a range of convenient things like bread, baked beans, snacks and pre-made sandwiches. There aren’t many other shops close by, so that shop has a bit of everything, including the post office and a small selection of envelopes, writing paper and boxes for mailing things. You have to kind of squeeze in there, and there’s always a wait because there’s normally only one person manning both the cash register and the post office window!

Because of that, I can never quite manage to go to the post office without also coming away with some snacks, a loaf of bread, and whatever else we managed to forget while doing the shopping earlier in the week. Also, you end up hearing about everybody else’s business, because the people in front of you are sending a care package to their daughter at university, returning something they bought on Ebay or picking up foreign currency ready for their trip to Greece. Somehow it’s never just buying a book of stamps, and because it’s a small local shop, everyone wants to chat…

What’s your local post office like? Is it big and impersonal, or do you see your neighbours there? Do you know the people you buy stamps from, and do they know you do Postcrossing? We’d love to hear all about it, in the comments on this post and on your postcards in October!

Who’s ready for the biggest day of the year, next Friday? 🙋‍♀️ We’ve ordered some postcards, restocked our stamp supplies, refilled our fountain pens and made a quick list of people we’d like to send postcards to on this special day, so we’re super ready to spend October 1st spreading the joy of happy mail!

Join us in mailing a postcard to a friend or a relative, to someone who needs a bit of cheering up, a thank you postcard to a person who had a positive impact in your life this year or help a little one send their first postcards! These are some of the ways in which you can celebrate the day and spread some mail joy.

You can also send postcards to other postcrossers, and like last year, if you request an address through Postcrossing on World Postcard Day, you’ll get your a special badge on your profile (or a little something extra on your current World Postcard Day badge, if you already have one). Last year, we made things a bit confusing with timezones (they’re so complicated 😱!), so this year we decided to simplify: if you send a postcard during October 1st in the timezone of your account’s location, it’ll be counted for the badge. That should make it easier: just draw addresses during your October 1st, and when one of those postcards arrives, the badge will show up on your profile!

And last but not least, there are a number of events organised around the world to celebrate the day — from exhibitions and seminars, to children activities, special cancellation marks and even some meetings of enthusiastic postcrossers taking place. Check out the Events page for more details and to join an event near you!

Even if there’s nothing happening in your area, you can still join an online event — like this seminar by Barry Stagg (Chairman of the British Thematic Association) on the various ways in which to collect, store and display picture postcards. Or, you can participate via Instagram Live on a postcard-writing event organised by “From Me to You”, a UK charity that will be writing postcards for people in hospitals. We’ll be online too, quietly writing postcards most of the day on Postcrossing’s Discord server voice channel — you’re welcome to join us there, if you’d like.

Let us know in the comments how you’re planning to spend this special day… and let the countdown begin!

Remember some years ago, when we randomly stumbled on a 19th century postcard exchange club called Kosmopolit, that sounded suspiciously similar to Postcrossing? 🤔 One author described it as a “fraternity of enthusiastic picture postcard exchangers” and there were also reports of “cryptic numbers and initials at the top of a message”, which sounds really familiar…

We were super curious to find out more about this Postcrossing predecessor, but at the time we wrote that blog post, we couldn’t find much more information online about the club… until later, when we heard of a book by Claus-Torsten Schmidt, which seemed to be the definitive guide to the association! Once again, our friends Claas (aka Speicher3) and Christine (aka reisegern) came to the rescue and managed to track down the book in Germany!

They’ve kindly translated some parts of it for us, and now we know much more about Kosmopolit than we did before. So get ready for a few posts about this amazing Postcrossing precursor! Here’s Claas to report on their findings:

The book by Mr. Schmidt is a chronicle that is based on documents and newspaper advertisements, which the author interprets and classifies. At the end of the 19th century there was an incredibly confusing plurality of small picture postcard collector associations, even in small towns. There were also associations that represented the interests of the many postcard dealers.

Years before Kosmopolit was founded, Fritz Schardt owned a trade for paper and stationery supplies and he also sold postcards. Already in 1896 he placed advertisements for the sale of postcards in publications like the “Zeitschrift für Ansichtskartensammler” (Magazine for postcard collectors) and “Der Postkarten-Sammler” (The postcard collector). Such magazines were very important for the huge collector scene at that time.

In 1897, the magazine “Der Ansichtskarten-Sammler” had called for a motto for the salutation between collectors of picture postcards. In March 1897, the proposal by Paul Zetsche from Hanover won: “Gut Ferngruß!” (meaning, Greetings from afar!) was since then the “official” salutation between postcard collectors.

In June 1897, Schardt finally founded Kosmopolit in Nuremberg, using that motto on their logo.

From then on, the activities of the association were documented in the “Internationale Postkarten Zeitung” (International postcard magazine), their club magazine.

The association published member address lists to enable the exchange of cards, organised postcard exhibitions, issued their own postcards on festive occasions and sold the emblem rubber stamps. Here’s a special postcard, issued for New Year’s celebrations:

Kosmopolit representations were quickly established in many regions of Germany, but also in other countries, the so-called “Consulates”. For example in Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden, Hungary, France, Russia, USA, Turkey, Italy, Switzerland, Norway, Brazil, … Interestingly, some of these consulates were headed by Germans (we must not forget that this was the time of colonialism).

Early on, there were thousands of members, and many small associations joined Kosmopolit. But there was also much quarrelling and intrigue… Within the first years, Schardt founded further collector associations, members were expelled, there were complaints and insults. Back then, there were already members who did not send back postcards after an agreed exchange, and so discussions ensued about other members who were not keeping up their part of the deal when exchanging postcards. In the association’s magazine, Kosmopolit is compelled to point to their members that the exchange rules must be observed.

The text reads: “Exchange among members. The daily increasing number of complaints for not returning the cards leads us to point out §4 of the statutes to the members of Weltverband Kosmopolit. We will be uncompromising in our use of the above paragraph.”

Unfortunately, we don’t know what statute §4 was, but here’s an excerpt from other statutes, providing information about the aims of the club:

About the purpose of the association, it is said:

§2
Purpose. The purpose of the association is:

1. "The members receive postcards, scrapbooks, technical literature etc. cheaper by contracts concluded between the association and the publishers.
2. The international character of the association gives the opportunity for exchange and correspondence with collectors from all over the world."

§8
International exchange

“Members who wish to exchange postcards must indicate this at the time of registration and have to reply all postcards with equivalent cards from their town. Not answering may result in exclusion. Rubbish cards and advertising cards are excluded from exchange. Members are expected to complete all received cards within 8 days at least.”

As we already know, there had been repeated complaints that members had not returned cards as agreed. In their magazine, Kosmopolit published an advertisement in which reminder postcards (“Mahnkarten”) were offered, which could be sent to defaulting members.

The reminder postcard states: “If I do not receive compensation by … I feel compelled to arrange your removal from the association.”

Thank you so much to Claas and Christine for this excellent investigative work! It’s so cool to learn more about this 19th century version of Postcrossing, and even notice that it already had a few of the same challenges we see on the site today… 😅 On the second part of this series, we’ll focus on Kosmopolit’s wishlists, statistics and badges — so do check back in a few weeks for more!