Postcrossing Blog

The much-awaited day is here, and the new German Postcrossing stamp is finally out! YAY! 🎉 This is a very happy day for the community, who have been persistently asking for this stamp for many years. As Germany is home to the most active country by number of postcards sent, this is a well-deserved honor and a special milestone, which makes us incredibly proud. Our heartfelt thank you to the Federal Ministry of Finance, for deeming Postcrossing and this community worthy of this recognition, and for working with us throughout this whole process.

We know some of you in Germany have already received your pre-orders to Deutsche Post’s philatelic department…

… and we assume the rest of German postcrossers will march to the nearest post office today, to proudly ask for the Postcrossing stamp — like we are going to do as soon as this post is out. The print run for the stamp is 3.5 million stamps, so at the current rate of sending from Germany, these should last for 3 to 4 years a year or so… so there will be plenty to go around. Given how fleißig our German members are at writing postcards, we’re sure it’s just a matter of time until everyone else in Postcrossing receives a postcard with the new stamp… so keep an eye on your mailbox for this little gem! 😍

The stamp is available here, but sadly, Deutsche Post’s online shop does not ship their products abroad… so while it is theoretically possible to order the stamp from abroad through the phone or email, it is both cumbersome and costly. If you’d like to order some stamps, we recommend arranging a swap with a postcrosser on the forum instead.

Tomorrow (October 7) is a day for celebrations, and we’re getting together with a group of enthusiastic postcrossers for a big meetup, kindly hosted by the Museum of Communications, in Berlin. The Little Mail Carriers have been there before, and can confirm it’s a really neat museum for a visit… there are so many treasures to discover! If you’re in town, please do consider joining us — everyone is welcome!

And none will hear the postman’s knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

Night Mail, W.H. Auden

The day is here at last — it’s World Postcard Day! 🎉 This is the day in which we celebrate the humble postcard, a means of communication so simple, and yet carrying so much joy and thoughtfulness within it. Today marks the postcard’s 153th anniversary, and amidst this era’s instant messaging and email, they continue to be a treasured way to keep in touch and show someone we care for them.

Around the world, thousands of us are going to be busy writing to the people we treasure or miss, to those who need some joy or appreciation, to children and the elderly and to other fans of postcards! Some are joining one of the events taking place in museums and libraries, others are meeting in person to write some postcards together, visiting stamp shows or go fetch a special cancellation mark. It is a day to remember! And at the end of the day, there will be thousands of postcards dropped in postboxes all around the world. It makes us happy to think of all those well-fed postboxes, brimming with postcards and just waiting for the next visit of a mail carrier. What a surprise they will have the next time they empty the postbox!

If you’re in Estonia today, you’ll also be celebrating the launch of your own Postcrossing-themed stamp, so your World Postcard Day cards will feature this special stamp and be just extra cool. Enjoy!

If this is your first celebration of the day, we suggest taking some time to learn more about the history of postcards, from the popularization of the printing press, to the modern offset printing methods… and all the way to Postcrossing. 😊

If you need a break from writing so many postcards, do come share with us how you’re getting along on your World Postcard Day celebrations on this forum topic, on the comments below, or on social media using the hashtag #worldpostcardday. We’ll be reposting and highlighting some photos and testimonials throughout the day, and we hope they spread the word about the day, and inspire others to write a few postcards as well!

Happy World Postcard Day, everyone! Wherever you are, however you wish to celebrate, we hope you have a great one!

PS: Don’t forget the ravioli! Or maybe some Leibniz cookies, which someone pointed out are also shaped like postage stamps! 😋

Today is the day the new Postcrossing-themed stamp from Luxembourg makes its debut, in all its philatelic glory! Don’t their printed stamp sheets look pretty?

Ah… I wish teleportation existed already, so we could quickly buzz ourselves there to send a few postcards! 😍

On the September issue of PhilatéLux (the philatelic magazine from Post Luxembourg's), designer Stina Fisch gave a short interview, sharing a little bit about herself and her work on the Postcrossing stamp. Here is an excerpt of the page dedicated to the Postcrossing stamp:

This is not the first postage stamp you have designed. What did you find particularly challenging, and how did you overcome that?

One particular challenge was the extremely small format and the need to ensure that it would still be legible. I really wanted to get across the idea of the handwritten message and to express the serendipity of the Postcrossing project — that is, discovering something new and surprising without looking for it.

Do you write and send postcards yourself?

Yes, I love sending postcards because I love to receive them. I keep all my postcards, use them as bookmarks, and leave the postcard in the book when I‘ve finished it. I love coming across them years later. Is writing postcards still a thing? Sure, a text message does the same thing… but a handwritten note means a lot to me… the short walk to the postbox… and then the recipient’s delight at getting a personal message amid bills and flyers.

Congratulations to all Luxembourg postcrossers, and a big thank you to Post Luxembourg, for deeming the Postcrossing community worthy of this honor. The stamp is now available on their webshop, and we look forward to seeing it in postcards flying around the world. If you’re in Luxembourg, do send us some photos of the stamp — we’d love to see these in the hands of postcrossers, or close to one of your yellow postboxes!

They say “good things come in threes”… so after Luxembourg and Germany, here we are again to present you with the third Postcrossing-themed stamp of 2022, a lovely specimen from Estonia!

We like it a lot! 😍 A big happy postcard front and center, being carried around by birds! It’s a fun and quirky design, that I think radiates the joy one feels when sending or receiving a postcard.

The designer Triin Heimann is a familiar name in Estonian philately, having designed quite a few popular stamps on a variety of styles. Most notable, she is responsible for the Estonian Lunar New Year series, which has been published for over 10 years! Maybe we’re a little biased, but we think this Postcrossing stamp might be one of her most lively works yet.

The postage on this stamp is for international mail, and Omniva picked October 1st as their stamp launch date, which makes us extra happy as it is also World Postcard Day! And there will also be a cancellation mark and special First Day Postcard available on the day.

If you’re in or around Tallinn on that date, there will be a Postcrossing stamp launch event and meetup taking place at the conference room of the Original Sokos Hotel Viru, in the afternoon — including a mini-postcard fair, with illustrators, designers and publishers selling their postcards! Check out this topic for more details.

We’re excited to see all these happy new stamps making their way across the world… and also to think of them in the albums of philatelic collectors, standing out a little bit from all the other stamps around them.

Two stamps announced on the same week… it must be our luckiest week ever! 🎉

The wave of good news continues, and we are pleased to announce the issuing of Germany’s very own Postcrossing-themed stamp, on October 6th! Many German postcrossers already knew this was coming, as the stamp is one of the most eagerly awaited by the community. After working with the German Finance Ministry for several months in its making, today we are happy to finally be able to reveal its image. Here it is:

We absolutely love it! Designer Greta Gröttrup did a great job of conveying the essence of Postcrossing in a colorful way, that accurately reflects the joy of the project. Once again, the diversity and the different facets of the project are presented, from writing to mailing to receiving.

This stamp will be out on October 6, and a big launch party/meetup is planned for October 7th kindly hosted by Berlin’s Museum of Communications. Paulo and I will be there, and there’s plenty of room at the museum… so everyone is welcome to join us in the celebration of this milestone for the German community! There are special cancellation marks planned for the event, and Deutsche Post will have a little booth on site, to sell stamps and put the first day cancellation marks on them. It’ll be a fun afternoon!

This Postcrossing stamp was brought about through the efforts of the Postcrossing community, but in particular through the relentless dedication of Ralf (aka Linus58), who wholeheartedly adopted this cause. Back in 2015, Ralf started a campaign on the old forum for a German Postcrossing stamp, in which he invited and encouraged everyone to write a postcard to the Finance Ministry (who is the entity responsible for issuing stamps in Germany) asking for the stamp. Every year since, he renewed the campaign with the same enthusiasm and as a result, the Ministry received thousands of postcards from all over the world in the last decade, asking for a Postcrossing stamp to be created… until last year, when they finally relented and said yes. This stamp is truly a work of love from a dedicated postcrosser, and the many others who supported him and believed in this idea.

Sadly, Ralf is no longer with us, having passed away late last year. We lost a friend and passionate postcrosser, and it makes us sad to know that he did not get to see the stamp that he campaigned for… but his legacy will live on, on all the postcards we will mail with this lovely stamp.

Given how many postcards are sent from Germany every day, we expect everyone in Postcrossing will sooner or later hold a postcard with this stamp in their hands. We look forward to it arriving in thousands of mailboxes everywhere, and we hope you are as excited as we are to see it out and about!

(*) Any reproductions of the stamp (on online or offline media) must be authorized first, and requests can be sent to LB5@bmf.bund.de.