Postcrossing Blog

The Little Mail Carriers are back on the move with postcrossers Maret (aka Cerres) and Andry (aka andry1961)— and this time, their island-hopping adventure brings them to New Zealand! After their stop in Wallis and Futuna, our tiny postal duo crossed a big stretch of the Pacific and landed in Auckland. Naturally, they went looking for mailboxes, postcards and some nice postmarks — with a detour to some rather famous postboxes along the way.

We landed in Auckland (in New Zealand’s North Island) on the first of September. The history of sending post in New Zealand dates back to 1830, initially without regulation, but by 1860, the first private mailboxes had already appeared.

We set out to explore what’s happening directly inside at least some of the NZ mailboxes. We chose the Hobbiton mailboxes as our destination (in the Shire!). It appeared that they had just been emptied. Bilbo Baggins was still busy preparing for his birthday, as there was a sign on the gate that read 'No Admittance Except on Party Business.'

Although we didn’t encounter any hobbits themselves, it seemed like they would return very soon, but we couldn’t wait, so we rushed on.

Auckland’s antipode is Setenil de las Bodegas in Andalusia, Spain, which means we were almost on the other side of the Earth from our home in Portugal. So, we were about as far away as one can get. Naturally, we set out to find a place to send postcards.

We chose a Post Shop where we had the opportunity to hand-cancel postage stamps. We were assisted by the lovely lady Wendy, who was very excited to hear about Postcrossing. Turns out, it’s no easy task to obtain hand-stamped cancellations on postcards from New Zealand!

That’s all we had time for in this visit, but this wasn’t our first time in New Zealand — check out our previous adventures here! Ok, time for another jump on a flight to another exotic nation in the Pacific… Can you guess our next destination? 😉

Submissions for The Graceful Envelope Contest are open for 2026! If you’re interested, don’t forget to check out the rules for this year even if you’ve participated in the past, as it looks like there have been some changes from previous years. This year’s theme is “great beginnings”, so sounds like a great year to start joining in, too!

In honour of the event, we wanted to highlight some of the beautiful envelopes from last year’s contest that caught our eye. The theme was “go fourth”:

There are links to all the winners and honorable mentions on the 2025 contest page.

As I mentioned above, this year’s theme is “great beginnings”, celebrating historic events which marked the start of something new. Although it’s about beautiful envelopes, everyone can participate: the judgement is based on the overall effect and the interpretation of the theme, including the way you incorporate the postage stamps you use. There are different categories for different age groups, so kids are encouraged to participate and their work is judged on its own merit, not in comparison to adult calligraphers and artists.

Anyone can participate by mailing in an envelope (inside a cover envelope) by March 31, 2026. This is the postmark deadline, so you should be OK as long as it’s mailed by that date, but make sure it gets stamped with the postmark if you’re cutting it close! You can check out all the rules on the Graceful Envelope Contest website.

Good luck!

Every year, the “Cards for Literacy” initiative leaves us with that warm fuzzy feeling that comes from seeing postcards do what they do best: connect people… and, at the same time, help support something bigger!

This time, the yearly partnership we run with Deutsche Post was slightly different from previous years. Instead of counting each card towards a final donation amount, Deutsche Post put a cap on the donation of €10,000 right from the start (as we announced back in November). Even though the donation wasn’t tied to a per-card total this year, the number of postcards sent still matters to us: it shows the enthusiasm behind the project, and it’s a lovely snapshot of how many people chose to take part — whether by sending one postcard or a whole stack.

With all that said, over the course of the campaign, postcrossers in Germany sent 111,561 postcards, which is brilliant! 🥳

This donation will support Stiftung Lesen, a German foundation that works to strengthen reading skills and foster a love of books from an early age. Through projects with families, schools, libraries, and volunteers, they help create more opportunities for children to discover stories, and to grow up with reading as a natural part of everyday life.

Deutsche Post is also giving away three adorable paper postboxes to postcrossers in Germany who took part. As always, Paulo will run his magical script to randomly pick the winners from everyone who sent at least one postcard during this initiative. We’ll contact the winners by email soon, so if you’re in Germany and sent a postcard last December, keep an eye on your inbox… you might be one of them! 😊

So, on behalf of the whole team: thank you to everyone who joined in, shared the campaign, and helped keep the momentum of this initiative. And a big thank you to Deutsche Post for supporting Stiftung Lesen and making the €10,000 donation possible.

Here’s to more happy mail and good causes in 2026!

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!

How much do you know about the history of your own country? There are things that every schoolchild seems to be taught, for every country: in the UK, I think everyone is taught that 1066 was the year of the Battle of Hastings, for instance. But we don’t always learn the little things, the quirky facts, the odd corners of a country’s history. So this month’s writing prompt is a chance to share what you know!

In Wales, between 1839 and 1843, there was a series of protests collectively referred to as the “Rebecca Riots”, which resonated throughout Britain (the illustration I found and included here is apparently from the Illustrated London News, as late as 1855!). The protests were directed at toll-gates, during a time of low prices for farming products coming right after a famine. To pass the toll-gates to take goods to market to sell, the farmers had to pay high fees, which weren’t adjusted according to the hardship people were experiencing.

In response, farmers dressed as women, calling themselves “Rebecca’s daughters”, and marched to the toll-gates. At the gate, one of the group would act as “Rebecca” and lead a sort of mini-play ending with the “daughters” forcing the gate open to let Rebecca pass (and usually trying to destroy it so it couldn’t be immediately closed again).

The Rebecca riots occurred in a really serious context, of course… but it’s still rather cool to picture these burly farmers dressing up in women’s clothing as a way to protest and destroy the toll-gates. In writing this post, I learned that it was likely linked to methods of community justice called Ceffyl Pren; apparently getting dressed up in women’s clothing in order to hide their identities was a key part of how communities regulated themselves and called out bad behaviour. I don’t know how much it would’ve really helped to hide people though. I feel like I’d still know my neighbour even if he wore a dress!

Is there anything quirky you know about your own history? Some little-known fact, or something everyone in your country learns about in school? Let us know! You can write about it in the comments here, as always, or use it as a prompt for something to write on your postcards this month!

When I saw Helen Baggott’s Posted in the Past recommended, I knew I had to give this one a shot and write a review for the blog. It took me a while to get round to it, but here we are at last!

Posted in the Past promises to “reveal the true stories written on a postcard”, and it turns out that this is mostly through tracing the people who wrote or received the postcard, and working out their genealogy. That means we get some hints about their lives, including their occupations and ages, but the author doesn’t really dig into the circumstances mentioned on the postcards, which sometimes seem pretty tantalising.

It makes sense that the focus is on just identifying who the people are, and tracing their families and potential descendants, because that’s a lot easier to research (comparatively speaking!) from census records and similar than trying to figure out what someone might’ve meant by a cryptic message on a postcard. With so little space, people don’t go in for a lot of filler, and often postcards are just a way to say hi from a distant place.

Still, genealogy isn’t really an interest of mine, so I wasn’t as hooked on this as I’d hoped to be. The idea of finding someone’s old postcard in a shop and figuring out who they were seems attractive, but when it’s done this way it gets pretty repetitive, and it’s hard to feel a sense of getting to know people from the kind of sparse details you get from census records and parish records.

That said, this probably is one that people interested in genealogy would appreciate, and I learned something about the whole process, so I did enjoy that aspect! And I especially enjoyed when Baggott found links between different postcards, showing they were sent by people who knew each other (even when found separately).

Not a winner for me, but maybe for you! On to pastures new for me—I have a couple of books lined up to read sometime soon that discuss the post or aspects of the mail, but I’m always looking for recommendations for books themed around mail, postcards and postal services. You can drop them in this forum thread to make sure I see them! (You may need to browse a bit on the forum first, to open up this section, but that shouldn’t take long.)