Postcrossing Blog

Have you ever imagined what it would be like to live on Mars? Maybe the question brings to mind flashbacks of Matt Damon cultivating his crop of potatoes on The Martian… but what about other important stuff, like mail? Who will deliver our postcards from Mars to our friends back on Earth? And how will mailboxes on the red planet look like? 🤔

We might not be able to send postcards to space just yet, but with the help of Matthew (aka COSmatthew), some families in Colorado Springs, USA enjoyed a fun space & postcard-themed afternoon this month! He organized a workshop at the Space Foundation Discovery Center that helped everyone sign up for Postcrossing, and send their own space-themed cards to people all around the world. How cool is that?!

Here is Matthew’s report of this event:

Greetings from the beautiful city of Colorado Springs in the United States of America! Our City is a large hub for the space industry in our country, so it’s no surprise that we have the Space Foundation Discovery Center, a top-notch space museum here for which I oversee Guest Relations.

This Summer, the Space Foundation Discovery Center is exploring the topic of what it will be like to live and work on Mars. One of our activities is a station where you can create your own postcards to send to others to let them know what you’ve been learning. This station has been so popular that I knew adding in Postcrossing would be a natural fit.

With the help of the Postcrossing staff, our Programs Team went to work learning how to use the Postcrossing platform and how we could best teach our guests how to get the most out of the experience. By the time the “Postcrossing to Mars” workshop came and went, we had a lot of smiling faces and kids (along with adults) who were positively giddy at the prospect of receiving postcards from around the world.

And who knows? One of our custom postcards that was made in the workshop might be coming soon to a mailbox near you!

Well done Matthew for this very cool workshop, and for bringing Postcrossing to the Discovery Center. Those big monitors make it look like a command center, and it’s really neat to see the website up there! Who would have thought that putting two cool things together would make something even cooler?!

Today is the day the Åland Postcrossing-themed stamp makes its debut! Hurray! 🎉

Lots of postcrossers have made the trip to the archipelago to participate in a large meetup organized by the Finnish Postcrossing Friends Association, taking place to celebrate the stamp launch. If you’re curious to check out the event as it happens, there will be a livestream today (June 7th) at around 2pm Helsinki time (UTC+3), on the Association’s Facebook page.

This is the 392nd stamp issued by Åland Post and the first metallic, heart-shaped Postcrossing stamp ever, and we cannot wait to hold it in our hands!

To commemorate this special occasion, Åland Post has kindly offered to give 7 postcrossers one of these fantastic prizes:

• One Postcrossing stamp sheet of 28 stamps.
• Three Postcrossing first day covers.
• Three Postcrossing maximum cards.

Sounds brilliant, right?

For a chance to grab one of them, all you need to do is to discover something new about the Åland Islands, and leave a comment below to share that fact with the rest of the Postcrossing community. Make it a good one — we want the comments to be filled with interesting facts and bits of history about this place that so few people have heard of!

The comments will be open for one week, and around this time next week, Paulo will run a bit of code that will pick 7 random postcrossers to receive their prizes. We’ll announce them here on this blog post.

Good luck, everyone! :) We hope you enjoy learning more about the Åland Islands, and that a postcard with their shiny new Postcrossing-themed stamp will land on your mailbox very soon.

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!

This month, let’s talk about sports. Do you have a favorite sport to practice or watch?

Although football is the sport most commonly associated with Portugal, I have to confess that I don’t find it particularly interesting myself. Instead, my favorite sport is definitely swimming! I love the feeling of slicing through the water, and there’s nothing quite like jumping into a pool on a hot summer day. I try to make time for it at least once a week, and often bring a friend along, so we can chat while we lazily make our way across the pool.

If I had to pick a sport to watch though, I would be most interested in watching a game of Quidditch, which I recently discovered is a real sport with tournaments and everything. I hope it’s as fun to watch as they make it look on Harry Potter!

What about you? Which sports are your favorites, or which do you like to watch? Share them with others in the postcards you send out this month!

June is just around the corner and around here it feels like summer already! 😍 This is the start of the holiday season in the northern hemisphere and many postcrossers and their families are probably planning or getting ready for their vacations. So it’s time for our yearly reminder that the Inactive State and the Travel Mode are here to help!

If you’re going to be away from your address for a while or simply need a break from Postcrossing, we recommend that you switch your account to inactive a few weeks in advance. You can still send postcards if you’d like, but you won’t be sent any until you’re ready to receive them.

In addition to using the Inactive State, if you’re going on holidays somewhere and would like to send postcards from that location, then the Travel Mode is for you! When you get to your travel destination, connect to a local internet connection to set your account to Travel Mode, grab some local postcards and stamps, and enjoy sending them with the right Postcard IDs, maps and statistics.

While you’re using either of these modes (which you can easily switch on and off on your Account Settings), Postcrossing will not give your address to other members. Don’t worry though — we’ll still keep track of all your due postcards, and will send them all to you when you’re home again and your account is back to active.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out through the forum. Enjoy your holidays!

May is here, and it’s time to vote for the best EUROPA stamp of the year!

This year’s EUROPA stamp competition is all about our feathered friends: kingfishers and storks, eagles and cranes, robins and swallows, they all have their place in the philatelic spotlight. Here’s a small selection:

Even if this is a topic that has been covered many times before, there are still some interesting illustrations and colorful sights in this year’s choices. A few of these stamps can even be scanned with an app, so that you can hear the birds chirping away!

Voting is open until September 9th, so go have a look at the all the pretty stamps and cast your vote!

PS – If your country is participating this year, what did you think did of your national bird stamps? And which one did you vote for? 🐦 Let us know in the comments below!