Postcrossing Blog

The PhillipsFamily lives in a small town Minnesota, USA, where they homeschool their daughter Maya and use Postcrossing to teach her about geography and cultures all over the world. Some months ago, we received a very nice email from them, letting us know that Maya had won 1st place on her county fair’s 4-H project by submitting a presentation about Postcrossing and her postcard collection! 🥇 We were so proud of Maya that we decided to interview her for the blog — here she is:

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

I found out about Postcrossing from a friend who thought I would like it because I really like geography. I was hooked right away! I LOVE getting postcards from all over the world and learning about different countries and people. I’m always excited to get the mail everyday to see which countries I can add to my collection. Recently I received my first postcard from Spain. I have postcards from all 7 continents!

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

My family really likes geocaching together. We have seen so many beautiful places hunting caches. I also really, really like to read and play board games. My favorite books are the Harry Potter series. I play Legos a lot (thanks Denmark!), and also scrapbook.

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

I keep my postcards in a nice box. They are sorted by continent and country. My mama really likes that I can have such a big collection without taking up much space.

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

One of my favorite postcards is from Gordon the Great. He is a cat from New Zealand who has to put up with Fat Dog and Skinny Dog. I’ve showed his postcard to lots of my friends because it’s so funny.

Have you inspired anyone else to join Postcrossing or start collections of their own?

I entered my postcard collection into the county fair as a 4-H project. I made a big display showcasing some of my favorite cards and wrote a description telling everyone about Postcrossing and how they can join.

I won first place in my age group and second place overall. I got a big ribbon for it! I was so excited because it was my first time entering anything into the fair. I hope a lot of people signed up after seeing it.

Have you been surprised by any place that you have received a postcard from or sent a postcard to?

I was surprised when I received a card from San Marino. I didn’t even know it was a country until then.

Is there anything that you are passionate about?

I am passionate about reading. I like reading new books and rereading old books. Besides Harry Potter, some of my favorites are Calvin & Hobbes, Anne of Green Gables, and A Series of Unfortunate Events. I’m currently reading through Mensa’s Excellence in Reading book list. It has a lot of classics my parents like.

Remember the Sister Cities of Düsseldorf call for postcards we did a few months ago? The day of Düsseldorf, Haifa, Chemnitz and Reading’s jubilee finally arrived last weekend, and with it the opening of the fantastic exhibition created with all your postcards!

Sonja (aka Sonne89) from the Mayor’s office reported that it was a perfect sunny day when Düsseldorf’s mayor and delegations from the other sister cities opened the exhibition, and the atmosphere was happy, with lots of enthusiastic visitors. She sent us some nice pictures that their intern Claire took, so that we could share them with you! Without further ado…

In total, they received almost 500 postcards from 79 different countries, all with messages of joy and celebration. They even took a few quotes from the postcards and printed them on the walls, with the postcards hanging from the ceiling!

Doesn’t that look amazing? All those postcards within easy reach, the quotes, the wall of postcards they built… they even set up a little mailbox, so that visitors could send a postcard on the opening weekend, and over 60 people took the opportunity to write to their beloved ones! :)

I confess I’m getting a little teary eyed looking at all these photos… Isn’t this amazing? We brought a world of kind wishes to Düsseldorf! 😊 And if you’d like to experience it yourself, there’s still time to see it: the Sister Cities exhibition will be shown on Café Europa (Marktplatz 6A) for the next 3 weeks. If you’re in the area, don’t miss it!

Our huge thank you to Sonja, Claire and Vera of Düsseldorf’s Mayor’s office for this wonderful experience. On top of putting all of it together, they’ve generously written over 100 postcards back to postcrossers who included their email addresses on the postcards. Thank you! ❤️

All photos by Claire Brantley

The writing prompts are an ongoing experiment that invites postcrossers to write about a different topic on their postcards 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.

Everyone has a few dreams that they’re aiming to accomplish in their lifetime, right? They can be big or small or even a little crazy. For some, their dream could be to climb a big mountain, or to visit a special country… or maybe meeting the Queen!

Following this line of thought, July’s writing prompt comes from a suggestion that Sprinkledonut left on a blog comment:

Personally, I’m a serial list-maker and have so many plans on my bucket list that I don’t even know where to start. I want to eat all the egg dishes in the world, knit a temperature scarf, sleep on a mountain hut, see some of the fantastic places featured on the postcards I’ve received… I could write about a different goal on every single postcard this month, and I don’t think I would run out of crazy ideas. 😜

Whatever your dreams may be, they’re special to you for a reason. So we invite you to share something your bucket list and inspire others this month!

Some years ago, we published a different ranking for postcrossers, one that focused on the concentration of postcrossers per 100,000 habitants in the different countries. Essentially, this ranking answers the question: where are you more likely to find a postcrosser in the street?

Things have changed since the last time we’ve compiled these statistics over five years ago, so we thought it was time for an updated ranking. Paulo ran the numbers and here it is:

But first, some disclaimers: some countries or territories on this list don’t have 100,000 habitants (eg. islands), so the number of postcrossers per capita there can be a bit misleading. And as with the last time, to calculate the data above we took into account only countries with more than 10 members and excluded countries for which we did not have reliable population data.

As expected, some things have stayed the same, and some have changed. Finland is still the place with more postcrossers per capita, although Taiwan is slowly making its way up to the top of the chart. Czech Republic is the only new country in the top-10, with a very impressive jump to 6th place.

Some newcomers to this ranking include the Isle of Man, Andorra, Bermuda and the Faroe Islands, all of which now have more than 10 members. Hurray!

From those countries which were already on this ranking, Slovakia climbed an impressive 12 places (from 36 to 24) and Guernsey and Guam both went up 7 places (from 19 to 12 for the former and 41 to 34 for the latter). Other countries that moved up significantly include Russia, France and Bulgaria.

The biggest slides down the ranking happened in Brunei (38 to 47), Spain (39 to 48), Croatia (35 to 44), the USA (from 32 to 40) and Malaysia (from 37 to 43).

And apart from Finland, Germany is the only other country that has maintained the exact same position over the past 8 years, with a firm grasp on 17th place in the ranking. 😊

Curious for more data? Check out the Explore countries page for all the numbers!

Good news from Moldova, the most recent country to issue a Postcrossing-themed stamp!

Isn’t it a cute one? We love how the postcards zoom all around the world, taking a happy Moldovan postcrosser with them.

The stamp was drawn by Lilian Iaţco, and 120,000 stamps have been printed, as well as postcards and first-day covers to mark the occasion. Sadly, we believe these will only be available in local post offices for now, as Moldova Post doesn’t have a philatelic online shop yet.

As is becoming a tradition, a meetup is taking place today to celebrate the launch of the stamp and use the cancellation mark made for the occasion. The event will take place in Chisinau’s Central Post Office, which might be familiar to some from last year’s event that brought together Moldovan and Romanian postcrossers.

We look forward to seeing this new stamp make its way around the world on many future postcards!