Postcrossing Blog

David (aka david2051) is passionate about giving, be it through micro-lending or by sponsoring children in poor countries. He likes to share his Postcrossing cards with his sponsored kids, and says they love to receive them! :)

Here is what he had to say to our interview questions:

How did you come across Postcrossing? What got you hooked?

My very close friend Ryan told me about Postcrossing and the wonderful postcards he had received and it sounded like fun so I thought I’d give it a try.

I was so surprised when, shortly before going on a vacation to New York City, I received Ryan’s address for an official card! I had a great time finding a postcard for him and then mailing it from the United Nations post office with UN postage.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies? What are you passionate about?

I’ve been interested for some time in doing my part to help fight poverty. For several years I was very involved in microlending on Kiva.org and I co-captain the Postcrossing team on Kiva, along with Ana and Paulo. As a team of 100 members, we’ve made 946 loans in 66 different countries. It would be great for more postcrossers to give it a try!

In the last few years though I’ve gotten very involved in child sponsorship through Children International. A small monthly donation helps provide medical and dental care, clothing, shoes and supplies for school, some tutoring and after school classes as well as access to safe playgrounds, sports and financial literacy programs, libraries and computer labs. In addition you can exchange letters and of course postcards and photos with your child and their family. I now sponsor six children in five countries: Ecuador, Guatemala, Chile, Zambia and the Philippines. In addition I belong to three sponsorship groups (where up to 12 people sponsor one child) for kids in Zambia, Mexico and Colombia.

This collage shows all my kids plus two children sponsored by my friends.

For me one of the most satisfying aspects of sponsoring is being able to provide assistance beyond the monthly support. Whether through individual donations or fundraising efforts, this can include anything from assistance in shopping for food, clothing or birthday and Christmas gifts to digging a well to provide safe drinking water, from helping a single mother establish a small restaurant or cafe…

…to paying off a pedicab loan so a father can retain an additional 35% of his daily income or putting a new roof on a home to keep out the typhoon rains.

Of course I wanted to share Postcrossing with my sponsored kids too! I asked on my profile if anyone would want to send postcards to my sponsored kids, as an official card or for swaps or just as extra cards, and the postcrossing community has really come through. Since July of 2012 I’ve received well over 200 cards for my kids! Several people have sent envelopes containing one card for each child, and some people have sent them cards more than once. It’s just amazing how kind and thoughtful the members of Postcrossing are!

I think this is a fantastic way to widen the horizons of these kids, to share views, greetings and words of encouragement from countries all over the world; it really inspires them to learn more about the world and set bigger goals. When my kids write me letters they always express so much appreciation for the cards and sometimes they include messages back to the senders as well.

There is a wonderful community of Children International sponsors and I blog about my sponsorship experience and the postcard I’ve received for my kids so many sponsors have learned about Postcrossing at the same time many postcrossers have learned about child sponsorship. I think we all benefit and the two go so well together since the sponsorship experience revolves around exchanging letters and cards with these wonderful kids.

Show us your mailbox, your mailman/mailwoman, your postoffice or the place where you post or keep your postcards!

This postcard shows our old post office, sadly no longer used as such, but it’s still a major landmark of downtown Evansville.

This is my mail slot. I can’t wait for the mail to arrive each day! I couldn’t believe I got 6 official cards today! :-)

Show and tell us about your favorite received postcard to date, and what makes it special.

Oh, I’m sorry, I can’t pick just one…

This one means so much to me as I love Seattle and gnomes! It just brings back so many good memories!

The card below is a favorite because of the immigrant story the image of the steamship RMS Majestic can tell us if we take the time to see it. I like to do family research, so I thought it was fascinating to read about a family researcher whose grandmother brought her children here on this steamship, and the postcard image is actually the cover or jacket for her ticket to a new life in America.

And this is a wonderful handpainted card. It’s such an honor to receive a card that took so much effort and love to make. I think this shows how postcrossing brings out the very best in people.

But there are so many awesome viewcards too…

What is it your favorite part of the Postcrossing process?

All of it! When I get a new address I love reading the profile, learning about the recipient’s location, and viewing their favorites to find the perfect card or making one for them. When I receive a card I also read the sender’s profile and study their favorites to get to know them better. I love to study the location depicted on the card and usually look up as much as I can online and place the links I find in the comments and I love the beautiful stamps. Whether meeting nice people in a brief exchange or becoming penpals and cherished friends, it’s all a wonderful experience.

BlackDrago (aka Natalie) hails from Sevastopol, in Ukraine. Besides being an avid postcrosser she’s also a devoted photographer and a Star Wars fan! :)

How did you come across Postcrossing? What got you hooked?

It was a post in my friend’s diary on journals.ru. I have always been attracted to something unusual… and what can be more extraordinary than paper postcards in the age of electronic correspondence? And then it turned out that this is a very interesting process, you can see a lot of interesting postcards, stamps, read the people who live on the other side of the planet Earth.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

I’m interested in the Star Wars universe – I am the administrator on a site and forum dedicated to this world. I translate short texts and beta-read works of other authors. I like to assemble plastic models of the real and the fantastic vehicles. Photography. Cross-stitching. Sometimes I even manage to find some time for all these things… sadly there are only 24 hours in a day!

Show us your mailbox, your mailman/mailwoman, your postoffice or the place where you post or keep your postcards!

This is Post Office from which my postcards often hit the road:

Show and tell us about your favorite received postcard to date, and what makes it special.

I think that almost all of my cards are favourites!

What makes them special? It’s the fact that someone took the time to read my profile and tried to pick up the card in accordance with the wishes, and wrote something just for me.

I have favorite authors as well, for example, French artist Severine Pineaux. She has a very beautiful dragons and cats.

And if we talk about the subject of cards, there is a series of “Darth Vader and Son” that I really like:

Have you met any other members in real life?

Yep. I participated in postcrossers meetings in Sevastopol and in Yekaterinburg (Russia, Ural), when I was there on business. This is in Sevastopol:

And here we are in Yekaterinburg:

Is there anything that you are passionate about?

Sevastopol.. I really love my city and his great history. It is really my passion and obsession. Sevastopol has always been a military city, the base of the Black Sea Fleet of Russia. I hope that he will once again be such, and not turn into just a resort.

Warships standing in bays and covered with morning fog is one of the most beautiful sights I can imagine.

We’ve had the pleasure of meeting LadyP1964 (aka Penelope) on several Postcrossing meetups. She has a bubbly personality and a contagious laughter that cheers everyone up! :)

Here is what she had to say to our interview questions:

How did you come across Postcrossing? What got you hooked?

I used to play “Human Pets” (a Facebook game) and auctioned off postcards to get points to feed my pets (something you will only understand if you were a pet yourself). Someone there told me about Postcrossing – I have to admit though, that I don’t remember who.

Show us your mailbox, your mailman/mailwoman, your postoffice or the place where you post or keep your postcards!

This is my postman Michael:

And here’s one of my postcard walls:

And you can see my meetup photos on this gallery.

Show and tell us about your favorite received postcard to date, and what makes it special.

I have just looked through my complete collection (which is here btw) and I really cannot decide which is my most favourite card. I think I often have a favourite card received this week but of all time? Impossible! There are only few cards which I don’t like. Most of those can be found in my “others” album but that doesn’t mean that all cards in my “others” album are not liked. Sometimes people send me cards that don’t fit into any of my normal collection categories but I still think they are great. They are the cards that end up landing on my postcard walls. I have postcard walls in my kitchen and in my ironing room (I’m sure many men will joke and say that’s where we women spend most of our time – in my case its true, but mainly because that’s where my postcards are!)

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

Job, partner, teenager, dog, cat and I organise a travelling envelope group on the Postcrossing forums – doesn’t actually leave much time for other hobbies.

I do like to visit new places and I have discovered that Postcrossing helps me there too. I like to go to meetups in various towns. That way I get to see new towns, meet postcrossers and buy postcards to swap with others.

I love playing various board games too and a whole group of friends get together every 6 weeks at each others houses to have a games evening.

Have you inspired anyone else to join Postcrossing or start collections of their own?

Yes, a friend of a friend asked about my collection and after browsing through it, she signed up to Postcrossing and also joined me at the meeting in Würzburg last year. Her username is barfusstramperin.

My son got slightly addicted too. His Postcrossing name is Pixelpups. He sometimes joins me at meetups and that’s when he pulls his addresses to send. His cards are all stuck to his wardrobe:

Have you met any other members in real life?

I have met several postcrossers before as I have attended meetups in Würzburg, Nürnberg, Köln, Frankfurt and Bielefeld. I have had mini-meetings in Mainz, Berlin, Luxembourg, Salzburg, Bad Schwartau and Wiesbaden. In fact, once I had a mini-meeting somewhere on the motorway near Kassel. I stopped off on my journey for a cup of coffee and posted “I’m here” on Facebook. Another postcrosser replied within minutes that she worked up the road from where I was and would be with me in 5 minutes.

andrea209 (aka Andrea) lives in Bielefeld, and is a regular at the Postcrossing Bielefeld meetups. It was there that she first introduced us to her curious hobby: bottle-cap collecting! Her massive collection is now in the tens of thousands specimens, from 147 different countries… very impressive!!

Here is what she had to say:

How did you come across Postcrossing? What got you hooked?

It was a family-meeting around Christmas when my sister and her kids told me about postcrossing. And my sister showed me her first postcards from countries I never expected to get postcards from. So when we come home (it was around midnight) I started my computer and signed up right away.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

My husband and I have a very crazy hobby – we collect bottle-caps. Yes, your are right; these little things you find on beer-bottles, soda, pop or something else. You want to know more? Feel free to look at www.asippel.de. As other Postcrosser support our collection we now have bottle caps from Iran and North Korea.

And I love to paint. More than 100 of my sent postcards are painted ones and I’m very happy about every postcrossing-profile which asks for handmade cards.

Show and tell us about your favorite received postcard to date, and what makes it special.

After being a member for some time I find out that I love very colorful cards or paintings by some special artists, like Leonid Afremov (I’m still waiting for my first card) or Victoria Kirdiy. And I love lighthouses and teddy bears. As I received so many gorgeous cards it’s hard to say which one I like most…….

My husband gave me this rack as a birthday present – the perfect place to keep and show my received cards.

Show us your mailbox, your mailman/mailwoman or your postoffice!

This is my favorite mailbox. Just next to the shop where I buy all my stamps.

Have you met any other members in real life?

Oh yes, I have met a lot of other postcrossers and every time it was wonderful. I’ve attended all four International meetups in Bielefeld (the meeting-point is just 2 km from my home), also meetups in Cologne, Münster and Soltau.

Last year I also organized the first meetup for postcrossers from Bielefeld and surroundings. And since we had so much fun we will meet again next spring!

Have you inspired anyone else to join Postcrossing or start collections of their own?

Yes, I have, up to now 4 people. My sister-in-law and her sister and also two ladies I met when I stayed at a rehab in 2010. And 3 of them are still active postcrossers!

Come meet annet10 (aka Anne) from Finland. She loves postcards so much that she has a fantastic postcard and stationery shop in Jyväskylä – you can see some photos here, it’s like postcard-wonderland! :) Here is what she had to say:

How did you come across Postcrossing? What got you hooked?

I heard about Postcrossing from another member and friend of mine Marjatta9. One day, she came over to show me the lovely cards that she had received through Postcrossing and I got curious about this unique hobby.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

Handcrafts have always been a passion of mine – including making handmade postcards. I own the Harjun Paperi postcardstore since 1996. Originally this store was opened 1954 and since that it has been at the same location. For a postcard-lover, it was a dream come true to become the owner of this store! You can check it out at www.harjunpaperi.fi.

Show us your mailbox, your mailman/mailwoman, your postoffice or the place where you post or keep your postcards!

I send my postcards mainly from Jyväskylä´s main postoffice and I ask the cancelation stamp to be pressed on the card by hand – not by machine.

This picture shows the typical Finnish yellow mailbox. We also have blue mailbox for 1st class mail, but the yellow one is equally effective.

Show and tell us about your favorite received postcard to date, and what makes it special.

I like colorful cards that tell story about where member is from and part of their culture and country. Beautiful stamps always make me happy, they complete the card. Here are some lovely examples.

Have you inspired anyone else to join Postcrossing or start collections of their own?

People who come to my store often get to see the newspaper interview about Postcrossing given by dollart. I have made also leaflets to spread the word about Postcrossing and I love to chat and show my received cards to my customers. Postcrossing meetups in Jyväskylä are often held at the store. Also my co-worker AiriK started doing Postcrossing as her grandson collects stamps and has received lots of lovely cards and stamps.

What is it your favorite part of the Postcrossing process?

All phases are nice. But it is always nice to receive new address and finding the perfect card for receiver. And of course nice cards in my mailbox always make my day!

Have you met any other members in real life?

At Harjun Paperi, I often meet Postcrossing members looking cards to other members and I have taken part of many Postcrossing meetups as well organising some of them.