Postcrossing Blog

Yup, you read that correctly: postcards are celebrating their 150th anniversary this year! Hurray!! 🎉

October 1st, 1869 was the day the Austrian Post decided to implement Dr. Emanuel Herrmann’s recommendations for a practical and cheaper means of sending short messages. Up until then, letters were the norm, but they were expensive and filled with formal etiquette, taking some effort to write. So postcards were born to simplify things… and the rest is history.

For some months now, we’ve been busy behind the scenes researching the history of postcards and putting together a special website to commemorate the anniversary of our favorite means of communication, and to encourage the whole world to re-discover the joy that is finding a postcard in a mailbox.

We know that October is still some months away, but a sesquicentennial anniversary is a pretty big deal and it definitely deserves a party — which is where YOU come in!

Your mission, if you wish to accept it, is to plan a meetup with other local postcrossers to celebrate the 150th anniversary of postcards. Meet new friends, make some postal-themed activities, or just send postcards together. It can be as small or as big as you’d like — the important thing is to have fun and celebrate the postcard. This is a birthday party, after all! 😉

If you’ve never organized a meetup before, don’t worry, it’s easy! Reach out to other nearby postcrossers via private message or on the forum, and when you’re more or less set on a plan, make a post about it on the forum (here’s a quick how-to guide to meetups). There are already a few meetings being planned for this special celebration, and we look forward to adding lots more to the events page.

This next part is optional, but in the spirit of connecting the world, it would be super cool if these meetings were connected with other meetings happening simultaneously, or with other postcrossers celebrating the day. If internet is available in the place where you’ll meet, consider livestreaming or reaching out to other meetup hosts in advance, to set up a video chat so everyone can say hi! Let us know what your plans are, and we can help spread the word about it.

Ok, I think this is all for now! We’ve written a bit more about these meetups on this forum post, where you can ask further questions.

Come discover the history of postcards on 150yearsofpostcards.com, and spread the word about this remarkable #150yearsofpostcards anniversary — let’s make it a party that the whole world will remember!

Hurray! 🎉 It’s Postcrossing’s birthday! 🎉

On this day 14 years ago, Paulo typed a command on his computer, and just like that, the Postcrossing adventure had started. Fast forward fourteen years and nearly 53 million of postcards later, we now have many happy mailboxes filled to the brim, and smiles all around. As Uncle Alex used to say, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is”.

On this day, we are feeling especially warm and fuzzy inside, so please forgive our sappiness. We’d like to take a moment to say thank you to everyone of you out there, who joined us on this journey.

Thank you for your trust in this big idea, for every postcard that you send to a grandparent, or a child, or a stranger that you don’t know much about. We firmly believe that all these postcards, small as they might be, have an important role to play in helping us see our common ground, while simultaneously broadening our horizons.

Thank you to our forum moderators as well, and to everyone who puts in the time to help postcrossers on the forum. Thank you to our Ambassadors, for coming up with new ways to spread the word. And thank you to all our supporters as well! You keep our servers running, and the project moving forward.

Thank you also for the many messages of support that we receive every day, through your emails, comments, tweets and posts, testimonials or postcards. Your words of encouragement and joy are what fuels us to keep going. Thank you, thank you, thank you. ❤️

Our fresh year that starts today is going to be an exciting one, as we’ve been busy working on some big projects behind-the-scenes. So stay tuned for some good news soon!

🎉 Hurraaaaaay! 🎉 We did it everyone! We reached the big 50 million, and we couldn’t be prouder of all of you for delivering us to this milestone with your avalanche of postcards these past 13 years!

Did you know that if we put all these postcards together side by side (assuming they’re all regular size), we would get a line connecting New York to Moscow? Yup! And all the distance they’ve traveled would put us way beyond the Solar System at this point… though still very far from Alpha Centauri, the next big thing in space. Maybe by the time we reach it, they’ll have a post office there! 🤔

Anyway, I know you’re all waiting to discover which postcard was the lucky one, so here it goes:

Postcard number 50,000,000 (IL-60207) was sent by nostase in Israel on 29 November 2018, and registered today at 19:13:01 (UTC) by RassDim in Russia!

The postcrosser with the most accurate aim was Isacle, whose guess was spot on! Well done, your new box of 100 photo postcards is on its way.

But we’re not done here yet — there are loads more prizes to give away! The other fourteen lucky postcrossers who came the closest to the right time were pele32, Admiral_Penguin, vasilcho, stokana, uintaterium, Mari-Pyon, makeuplover, ingunciks, Washisaur, RinClare, estromberg, Alexiel-chan, raraelli and starrynight1111 — great job! You will each receive a set of nice postcards as well.

And last but not least, the sender and the recipient of this special card will also receive a pack of 50 postcards, to celebrate their good luck. Hurray!

We encourage you to enjoy your contributions to this historical milestone by eating one celebratory cookie (or 50!) and sending some postcards on this very special day. Thank you so much to our team of volunteers, to all the supporters and ambassadors, and last but not least, to every single one of you, for believing in this project and keeping the world’s mailboxes filled with smiles. 😊 Onwards to Alpha Centauri!

Some of the most observant postcrossers might have noticed we’re getting really close to the remarkable milestone of 50 million postcards received. With less than 250 thousand postcards to go, it’s time to start guessing when postcard number 50,000,000 will be registered.

Our guessing game is really simple:

Every member has a chance to submit a bet for the day and time on which they think the postcard number 50 million will be registered. The bets need to be submitted on the contest page.

Whether you’re proficient in maths or divination, your bet need to be accurate to the minute… so run the numbers on a spreadsheet or ask your lucky stars, but don’t forget to place your bet soon! Pro tip: December is a usually a slower month in Postcrossing, so you might want to check our postcard statistics page to make a more accurate prediction.

What’s in it for you, you may ask? Well… see all those postcards sets behind the Little Mail Carriers? One of them could be yours if your calculations are correct and you pick the right time slot! There’s lots of them and something for everyone’s taste, from botany to bicycles, photography to Star Wars and beyond!

The postcrosser whose bet is the closest to the exact minute when postcard number 50 million is registered will win a box set of 100 postcards, and the 14 next best hunches (before or after the registering time) will receive a pack of 20–30 postcards each. It’s a postcard extravaganza up for grabs! 🎉

Some rules: each time slot can only be chosen by one single person, so the first person to pick that slot gets to keep it. You can change it at a later stage if you’d like, but only from the available time slots left. We will close the bets when there are 1000 postcards left to postcard 50,000,000. Check the contest page for more details.

So, give it your best shot… but be quick about it as the good slots usually run out quickly. Keep sending postcards, and good luck everyone!

Postcrossing’s birthday month may now be over, but what a great month it was!

With almost 2000 entries, the birthday party map got pins in all continents (apart from Antarctica)! Sometimes though, even better than the photos and videos are the attached comments… everyone shared a kind word or experience, and we cherish each and every single one of them.

The submissions were closed yesterday, but you will still be able to browse the many lovely photos and videos from around the world in the coming months. At midnight UTC, these were the 10 entries with more votes*, which will receive some nice postcard sets, scratch maps and MOO postcards:

“Happy Birthday, Postcrossing, and to the next ten years!”

Linabella (from Germany)

“Happy birthday, postcrossing! We’ve known you for only three years, but you gave me the whole world! I communicate with people from different corners of the earth and it’s very interesting! I receive postcards from different points of the planet, I expanded my horizons and knowledge of the basics of the English language, I found a lot of friends – and it’s all thanks to you! If it were not for you my life would be boring, filled with gray weekdays…
I wish you prosperity and long life, my favorite postcrossing!
Happy birthday!”

Shchuchka (from Belarus)

“Happy 10th birthday Postcrossing! Here I made a cake with 10 postcrossing-coloured candles to celebrate ^^ I cut my finger and burned my thumb in the process but it was totally worth it. Postcrossing is an amazing project and a great part of who I am, so thank you and I’m looking forward for the next 10 years!”

hankadl (from Czech Republic)

“Happy birthday POSTCROSSING !
10 more years… and we’ll see what to wish ;-)
A really nice way to discover people and countries, thank you for all these meetings !
BON ANNIVERSAIRE !!!!”

jean-mimi (from France)

“Tadaaaa… Happy Anniversaryyyyyy. I’m so excited making my wall of fame from the very phenomenal cards of the year. LOL. Wishing for the great more years coming in the future and a lot of nice postcards. Cheers and spread smiles through postcards. Yeayyyyyy ^_^”

connz (from Indonesia)

Happy Birthday Postcrossing :)
We are from UTAR Postcrossing, Malaysia :)"

ming_zhe0423 (from Malaysia)

Postcrossing, you are the best! Happy birthday!"

Ereona (from Russia)

“Happy 10th Birthday wishes Postcrossing from us all here at Kereru Children’s Learning Centre in New Zealand.
We love getting cards in our mailbox and have made Continent boxes to store them all. :) We love learning all about the world around us and every day we 'read’ our cards. Thank you :) What a great learning experience you have given us. we can’t wait to see many more cards in the next 10 years!
One of our biggest joys is to choose which postcard to send to everyone. Once we learn what they would like, all the cards are put on the table and we select the perfect card to send. We hope you all enjoy our choices we have made. :)”

Kereru (from New Zealand)

“Happy birthday Postcrossing and all of the postcrosser around the world.”

dwicahyaningtyas (from Indonesia)

“♪Happy \(^o^)/ ┌ii​ii┐ \(^o^)/ ​Birthday♪
Thank you for sharing 10 years of postcards, surprises, creativity, smiles and friendships with the world.
I hope to enjoy Postcrossing for many years to come!
Hartelijk Gefeliciteerd, allemaal!
Happy Birthday, everybody!
Big hug from Barbara”

Ejderha (from Netherlands)

So much talent, so many smiles!! A big thank you to everyone who posted, favorited and shared, for making this party such a big success. Our gratitude to MOO as well, for sponsoring this giveaway with their lovely postcards.

We had so much fun going through all your entries that we’re planning to highlight more of them throughout next week… stay tuned!

* Naturally, we won’t count our own entries! :)