The Postcrossing Forum is a big and lively place, full of different corners where postcrossers connect, share tips, and have fun together. For newcomers, it can sometimes feel overwhelming to know where to start… so we thought it would be nice to highlight some of its sections in a series of blog posts, giving everyone an easier way to explore and join in. To kick things off, here’s an introduction to the Spread the Joy section by Clarisse (aka CStar9), a fellow postcrosser who knows it well!
Shortly after beginning my Postcrossing journey, I discovered the Forum. There’s a lot to love there—especially for newbies experiencing the slow wait between official cards—but for now I’ll focus on one corner of the Forum that I’d recommend to everyone.
Spread the Joy is a caring place where postcrossers make requests for postcards for loved ones who need a little cheering up, who are celebrating a special milestone, and more. Often, the person making the request will send a thank you postcard to those who contribute.
Over the past several years, I have posted two requests. Both times, the outpouring of love from the Postcrossing community has made a real difference for the people who received the cards.
Postcards for Alanna, a young person who needed a boost during a difficult time.
I now visit Spread the Joy weekly, and collected some opportunities for you to spread the love below. This is a gentle nudge to consider watching the Spread the Joy corner for future posts that might resonate with you.
Note that if you haven’t been active on the forum before, you’ll need to browse around a little bit first, to “level up” your account and get access to this part of the forum. It’ll be worth it!
Skittykitty (USA) is collecting postcards for her husband, who is undergoing cancer treatment. He is interested in music, anime, manga, video games, horror movies and books, military history, local myths and legends. (See the original request.)
Anirudhpostcollecter (India) requests postcards with nice wishes for his high school teachers as a token of appreciation for their dedication, guidance, and hard work. Help him make their Teachers’ Day special! (See the original request.)
letterin (Uganda) is requesting postcards – and any other expressions of support – for youth at a children’s home he founded in Uganda – called St. Dorothea Kinderheim – for children in the Masaka region who have lost parents to COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS. (See the original request)
The children of St. Dorothea, after receiving postcards from postcrossers.
Esteparia (Spain) is gathering postcards, written in English or Spanish, for her niece who will turn 13 years old in March. She’d like to introduce her to the many different countries of the world! (See the original request.)
Kyylie (Canada) is collecting mail for their grandma who loves cooking and baking, and has had a challenging few years. Especially welcome are any recipe cards, food/cooking/baking-themed postcards, an envelope of recipes you love, or a postcard sharing a famous local dish! (See the original request.)
Volvomom (U.S.A.) is a teacher looking to connect with other teachers anywhere in the world with students who speak Spanish or are learning Spanish. She would like to facilitate a Spanish-language classroom postcard exchange in the upcoming school year (See the original request.)
BlueMeeple (U.K.) is collecting postcards for her mum, who is enduring a long, slow, and frustrating recovery from a knee operation. Her mum enjoys images of flowers, art, the colors blue and turquoise, Lego, Russian dolls, illustrated animals, handmade cards, religious art, and book covers. (See the original request.)
mohansn (India) is a hobbyist nature photographer who loves to send cards to local libraries and bookstores to thank them for their service to the community. He’s not looking for cards from you, but rather seeks your recommendations of a local, quaint (not famous) library or bookstore that he should send a card to. (See the original request.)
Kimberlly_Carvalho (Brazil) will celebrate her 21st birthday in September. 2025 has been a difficult year for her, and she’s looking for postcards with extra cheer to help her celebrate her special day! (See the original request.)
Interested in spreading some joy? You can navigate directly to the original request in the Forum, or message me (@CStar9) or the original poster for more information and the mailing address.
What do you think? Have you had an experience with these sections of the forum? Are there other opportunities you’ve found online to spread snail-mail joy, such as https://loveforourelders.org/ or https://www.moreloveletters.com/? Leave a comment below to let us know — 5 commenters will be randomly selected for a postcard giveaway from the new set, Most Fascinating Museums, this time next week.
Do you remember last year, when we mentioned there would be a special souvenir on Geocaching for official events taking place around World Postcard Day? Well, it was a huge success: 19,260 geocachers attended at least one event during that week, and the number of events nearly doubled compared to 2023. We were blown away by these numbers, and are thrilled that Geocaching is continuing this collaboration in 2025! 🎉
So here’s the scoop: from September 28 to October 4, 2025, if you attend any official Geocaching event and log your attendance, you’ll receive a special World Postcard Day souvenir on your Geocaching account. The dates line up perfectly this year, with October 1 (World Postcard Day) falling right in the middle of the week.
For those who might not be familiar with it, Geocaching is a global treasure-hunting game played outdoors with the help of a GPS or smartphone. Players search for hidden containers (called “caches”) all around the world, sign their logbooks, and then share their adventures online. Much like Postcrossing, the community meetups on Geocaching are all about connection around a common hobby.
And what better way to celebrate that than by combining the two hobbies? Geocaching events are a great opportunity to meet fellow geocachers, exchange stories, and maybe even write a postcard or two. Some groups even organized joint Postcrossing + Geocaching meetups last year, and we’d love to see more of those in 2025!
If you can’t find an event nearby, you can always organize one yourself. Just remember that events need to be submitted at least two weeks in advance and meet all of Geocaching’s guidelines.
For inspiration, check out Geocaching’s wrap-up post from last year, filled with photos (and postcards!) from events all over the world.
Whether you’re out hunting for caches or sending a postcard across the globe, mark your calendars for the last week of September. Grab your GPS, pack a few postcards, and join the fun!
Some time ago, the Little Mail Carriers got wind that Andry (aka Andry1961) and Maret (aka Cerres) were preparing for a very exciting trip to the Pacific. As dedicated travel mode enthusiasts, they jumped at the opportunity to join them on their journey!
Hi everyone! The goal of the trip was to visit Pacific islands belonging to various countries where Postcrossing was not yet well-known. The journey took off from Tallinn Airport, and of course, there are no direct flights to these desired islands, so our route also included other major country post offices along the way.
The first stop was Istanbul, Turkey. The Turkish Post (or PTT) has a presence at Istanbul Airport. Most postcards sent from the country are shipped to other nations via their national airline, Turkish Airlines. We also took the longer flights on the same airline during this trip.
The plane landed in Singapore, but it’s easy to travel from the airport to the neighboring country of Malaysia via public transportation… so that’s exactly what we did on our layover! Across the border in Johor Bahru, a friendly postal worker lady Farah helped us stamp our postcards at the local post office. While the stamping was done at the post office, the postcards themselves had to be deposited in an external mailbox, from where they were sent to the sorting center.
Back in Singapore, there are post offices with varying opening hours all over the city, but to ensure we made it to the next flight on time, we decided to mail the postcards from the airport post office. By the time we arrived, it was already closed, so we dropped the cards in the mailbox before jumping on our next flight.
After 10.5 hours in the air, we were approaching our main destination. What motivated people to sail on their small vessels to unknown waters thousands of years ago is still a topic of debate among scientists. We support the idea that curiosity and the desire to explore foreign lands drove us, just as it did for those early explorers.
Our first stop in the South Pacific was Grande Terre, the largest island of New Caledonia. New Caledonia is a French overseas territory (technically, a sui generis collectivity) situated in the Pacific Ocean. It encompasses over 300 islands and islets and is located between Australia and Fiji. The native population is the Kanak people, but there are also many inhabitants of French origin and their descendants living on the island.
British explorer James Cook became the first European to visit New Caledonia on September 4, 1774. In the mid-19th century, it transformed into a French colony, and by 1946, it became a French overseas territory.
Nouméa welcomed us on the morning of September 26 with cheerful and windy 20-degree Celsius weather. However, since it was a Saturday, we had to rush to the post office. Only some post offices are open for half a day on Saturdays, and they are all closed on Sundays.
Apart from us, there were many other visitors at the post office. The official name of the postal operator in New Caledonia is the Office des Postes et Télécommunications, which manages mail, phone, and internet services, as well as banking services. We were the only ones on that morning sending postcards.
We were graciously assisted by the lovely lady Melatia. Postcards sent from here are routed to Europe through France, while direct connections are available to the USA and Australia. To our delight, we discovered that New Caledonia, despite being a French overseas territory, has its own unique postage stamps… so it was a nice opportunity to see these distinctive stamps!
Nevertheless, the visit to the post office was not the sole item on our agenda. We also joined in to support our travel companion Cerres, who participated in the 7th Marathon International Mobil of New Caledonia 10 km run, where she achieved a personal record. YAY! 🎉
To close the trip, we checked out the Great South Lagoon of New Caledonia, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2008. We also had the opportunity to explore one of the many exquisite national parks on this remarkable island — Blue River Park! It was amazing to see the river meander through the backdrop of red earth and the ancient kaori trees, some of which are more than 1,000 years old!
This was just the first leg of our Pacific adventure though, and our hosts Andry and Maret tell us there’s still a lot more to come… so if you’re curious about small islands and their post offices, stay tuned to see where we’ll land next! 😊
We’ve mentioned #xtremephilately and #xtremedeltiology on the blog before — they’re those pictures you take when you put a stamp or postcard in front of the place featured on them. Like these:
But here’s something extra cool: piXPost is a new app that allows you to put those stamp and postcard pictures (as well as pictures of postboxes, post offices and events) on the map, to share with others! Graham Beck (from Youtube channel Exploring Stamps) shows you what it’s all about:
I’ve been taking pictures of postboxes and postcards for a loooong time now, mostly for fun, and I know lots of you do this as well. But now we can share them among us and with other postal lovers around the world, to let everyone know where these special places are! Ever since signing up, I find myself going out of my way to photograph even more postboxes, post offices, stamps and postcards everywhere. I can’t help it — I want them aaaaall on the map! And I can definitely see myself checking the app before traveling, to plan my trip around the local postal highlights. 😍
There are a few gamification aspects of the app that work really well too. First of all, you can “claim” a postbox by being the first person to pin it on the global map with a photo. That will make you “XP1” — explorer number 1! But there are also tons of fun badges to collect, for pinning a certain number of items in each category or country. It’s really fun to collect these… and a little addictive too, I must say.
piXPost is free and available on the App Store for iOS devices or on Google Play for Android ones. We hope lots of you will give it a go, so that the map gets full to the brim with fun spots for future postal adventures!
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!
August has snuck up on me this year, but it’s actually my birthday month! Which means I’m hoping to get good and spoilt, of course, and that will hopefully include some chocolate and sweets. Which inspired me to pick this month’s prompt: maybe you can all give me some ideas about what to try!
In August, write about your favourite candy/treat!
I thought this would be an easy way to answer, but hmmm, what’s my favourite?! I guess at the moment it’s a ridiculously sweet little bar my dad started buying for me: the McVitie’s Gold Bar. They have a biscuit centre, covered in a caramel-flavour coating. They really are very sweet, but I like that, and I especially enjoy how crunchy the biscuit part is.
For a slightly more traditional British sweet, well, I’d have to go with the aniseed flavour chewy sweets called Black Jacks, and the related fruit-flavoured Fruit Salads. I don’t get them a lot, because it’s not very professional to go around with my tongue stained black… but sometimes, as a little pick-me-up!
What about you? What’s your favourite treat? Is it something global, or a local secret? We’d love to hear from you in the comments here, and if you’re stumped for something to write a postcard, you can use this as a prompt!
