Postcrossing Blog

The Indonesian Postcrossing stamp was issued last week, and a few meetups took place around the country to celebrate both their new stamps and Postcrossing’s birthday. We have pictures to share with you!

Here are the local postcrossers in Bandung…

…in Jakarta…

…in Semarang…

…in Surabaya…

… and in Yogyakarta!

Looks like a great day was had by all, and there was even geplak and gethuk, some typical Indonesian treats! 😍 Pretty stamps, postcards and “cake”… sounds like the recipe for a perfect birthday celebration!

Ever heard of Postcrossing Ambassadors? They’re members who go the extra mile to spread the word about the project to help it grow, writing articles on newspapers or magazines, giving interviews to TV stations or organizing events to popularize the hobby, among many other remarkable contributions.

Jifeng (aka shijifeng) from China, is one of our most enthusiastic ambassadors, and this summer he was involved in the organization of a huge art exhibition + event that is all about postcards and Postcrossing!

“Postrip — Post a word, mark the world” is the name of this fantastic exhibition that is currently being shown in Shanghai, celebrating postcards as a way of connecting the world, sharing memories and creating travel mementos. The exhibition features postcards, sketches, souvenirs and travel journals from five local postcrossers (arlynab, shijifeng, SuzyLiu, uranusreborn, wangjiayimike). Their items were beautifully put together in displays, which were then surrounded by their testimonials, as well as explanations on how Postcrossing works.

Have a look:

Isn’t it just stunning? The care and attention to detail on these walls and displays is awe-inspiring.

Pulling off something like this would be enough to make anyone proud… but Jifeng decided to push it a bit further, and used the occasion of the exhibition to organize also a meetup, postcard fair and set of talks about Postcrossing, in which the five postcrossers who participated in the exhibition were invited to tell the stories behind the postcards they chose to display.

As an added bonus, a special themed postcard was printed, and Shanghai Post even created a cancellation mark for the occasion so that postcrossers could send their commemorative cards with it. The event took place this past Saturday (July 15th), and judging by the photos, it was a huge success!

Hurray! 🎉 Though the event is now over, you can still visit the exhibition until September 24th, on Shanghai Mass Art Centre (125 Guyi Rd, Xuhui Qu, Shanghai). If you’re in the area, don’t miss it!

Our huge thank you to Jifeng for doing all of this — but also to arlynab, SuzyLiu, uranusreborn and wangjiayimike for their collaboration both in the event and the exhibition. It sounds like a brilliant team effort, and we hope it will inspire other postcrossers to follow their lead! 😊

Last year, the Little Mail Carriers went on a splendid adventure… that we forgot to tell you about! 🙈  We firmly believe in “better late than never” (and we know how much you all miss them!), so here they are to tell the tale of their trip to a little known archipelago in the Baltic sea…

Hi everyone! We’re in Åland,  a group of islands mid-way between Finland and Sweden. It’s definitely a special place, with very few postcrossers — and no wonder, as the population only amounts to 29,000 residents. They’re a Swedish-speaking autonomous region of Finland though, and even have their own postage stamps since 1984, mostly featuring local nature, culture, history, society and autonomy-related themes.

We had already been in Sweden and Norway, but never in Finland, which is still the country with the highest number of postcrossers per capita in the world… so a visit was well overdue!

Finland is known for many things, from their sauna culture to the Moomins, but it’s also the country where, in October of 2015, a group of enthusiast postcrossers gathered in the Postal Museum in Tampere to create the first national association of postcrossers: the Finnish Postcrossing Friends (reg). Among many other activities, they’ve taken up the task of organising meetups in their country, so that postcrossers can get together to write postcards and explore new places — including the Åland Islands.

So it was an early Thursday morning on June 9th last year, when a group of 22 Finnish postcrossers met in Turku harbour. The cruise from Turku to Mariehamn (the capital of Åland) takes about five hours… perfect timing for a meetup, right? So the very first “Postcrossing at sea”–meetup was arranged in a cozy conference room of the M/S Amorella.

The hours flew quickly as we wrote tons of postcards and shared Postcrossing experiences while admiring the sunny sea landscape. The association also had a challenging Postcrossing-related quiz… with prizes for everyone! The cruise ship arrived to Mariehamn in the early afternoon. After settling in at the hotel, the rest of the day was spent shopping for postcards, exploring the island and enjoying the local delicacies. June 9th is Åland’s Autonomy Day, which is why there were 🇦🇽  flags everywhere we looked!

The next day, we got a wonderful chance to visit Åland Post postal terminal in the island. The visit was hosted by Anita Häggblom, the director of Åland Post Stamps. While enjoying coffee and doughnuts, she told us about the interesting history of stamps of Åland, and how topics are chosen to be issued. She also revealed some wonderful details about 2017 stamps.

We got the chance to ask Anita some questions, and she also introduced us to their facilities, so that we could see where all the postal magic happens and how it happens. It was truly interesting to see the machines for first day covers, maximum cards and special cancellations. We thanked Anita and Åland Post by leaving a couple of hundred signed meetup postcards there, so that they could get nicely cancelled and sent forward around to the world to other postcrossers. In the afternoon we took the cruise back to mainland on another boat, this time the M/S Viking Grace.

The visit was a huge success… so they’re planning to do it again this year! So if you’ve always wanted to explore these special islands, mark your calendars: June 7th to 9th is when the Finnish Postcrossing Friends will arrange a new visit to Åland. This time, the trip will include an extra day to fit a bus trip to Eckerö Mail and Custom’s House, Kastelholm Castle and Stallhagen brewery.

Aaaaaaaand, as if that wasn’t enough, Åland Post Stamps is planning to issue a special cancellation for the new meetup, together with a custom stamp. Stamp, cancellation and meetup card were designed by local artist Ammi Krogius.

Pretty cool, right? So… who’s looking forward to June? 😊

A big thank you to Marko (aka insp3ktor) and Hanna (aka hazzitus) from the Finnish Postcrossing Association for organising this meetup, and to also to Martta (aka MarttaD) and Minna (piparminttu) for sharing their lovely photos. Great work, everyone!

February 24th will go down in (Postcrossing) history as the day the Romanian Postcrossing-themed stamp was launched! George (aka Nazareanu) and Mihnea (aka MihneaR) were there to participate in the events and wrote back to tell us all about it!

The stamp launch day started at the Romfilatelia Headquarters (the National Stamp Issuing Authority) with the stamp concept/identity presentation by Luminita Toncu, who is the head of the department. For this event, postcrossers came from all over Romania: Bucharest, Ploiesti, Suceava, Gura Humorului, Oradea, Zalau, Constanta, Cluj-Napoca, Brasov, and even 3 from outside Romania, from Czech Republic, Italy and USA.

The day continued with a conference of 2 presentations and 5 speeches organised by members of the Romanian Postcrossing Community for the people present in the audience.

The first presentation was about “The Postcrossing Diversity: Connecting people”, presented by George Năzăreanu (Nazareanu), which marked the various stories and emotions transmitted through postcards, the benefits of Postcrossing meetings, recreative & cultural events possible, and the importance of sharing the Postcrossing hobby at local schools & kindergartens for the children’s education by exposing them to “hands on” learning activities. The presentation ended with the message from Paulo Magalhães & Ana Campos for the Romanian Postcrossing Community for this once in a lifetime event.


After the presentation, five speakers took the stand (in order from left to right): Ovidiu Bucse (aka Ovidius), talking about “Postcrossing meetings in the world“, Andra Ardeleanu (aka AndraArd) who examined “The need of stamps diversity”, Eugen Mihai (aka aeumihai2003) discussing “Photography and postcards”, Michelle Ordeltová (aka Michellie) taking about “Building bridges across nations” and Cornel Jipa (aka corneljipa), a member of the Romanian Philatelic Federation since 1976, telling the story of “Romanian philately along time".

The second presentation was “Postcards: hobby & people” by Mihnea Raducu (MihneaR), sharing his experience with postcrossers meetups during his travelling inside and outside Romania.

Making History: The signing of the official special panel, which will be displayed on the “Hall of Fame” Stamp corridor at the Romfilatelia Headquarters.

Otilia and Noar (noarvladimir), the future Postcrossing generation exploring and discovering the visual wonders found on postcards.

Group photo with both the Postcrossing community and the philatelic team that made the stamp possible.

Over the next couple of days, the community gathered to properly celebrate this milestone… and of course signed lots of postcards with the new Postcrossing stamp!

This is a stack of stamped meeting postcards, which got filled up with signatures, Postcard IDs and addresses ready to be sent out within minutes! This is how much we awaited this memorable event. In total, over 1400 postcards were signed and sent over into the world.

At the end of this lovely day, with the heart filled with joy and the mind filled with unique memories, the Romanian Postcrossing Community can only say: Happy Postcrossing everybody!

Thank you Marius Smadu (msmadu) for the nice photos, George (aka Nazareanu) and Mihnea (aka MihneaR) for the report and to everyone who participated — looks like a very nice event! 😊 Hurray!

All Postcrossing meetups are special — but sometimes, postcrossers really go the extra mile to do something a little different on their own gatherings. We love hearing all about meetups taking place in trains or deserted islands… and now, a meetup that happened in two countries simultaneously!

This special meeting happened on January 15th, and was organized by Shiyun (aka Sybones) from Singapore and Jifeng (aka shijifeng) from Wuxi, in China. Distances are relative in the internet era, so despite being 3770km apart, Chinese and Singaporeans postcrossers were able to chat as if being in the same room via their mobile devices.

Shijifeng’s friend Arlyna (aka arlynab) designed a special postcard featuring elements from both countries to commemorate the event, which were distributed among the two groups.

Both groups held mini-presentations, wrote postcards and then talked to each other on Facetime. Despite some internet and language hiccups, a great time was had by all!

That sounds like a lot of fun! A big thank you to the organisers and all the attendants for putting such a special meeting together. We challenge you to outdo them on your next meetup — and tell us all about it! :)