Postcrossing Blog

Maroussia, a French Postcrosser who lives in China and is collecting postcards since she was 12 years old.

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

I have collected viewcards and had penfriends since age 12, the cards always made me day dream about places I might never see with my own eyes and a penfriend of mine from Sweden (but actually Finnish) thought I would be interested and introduced postcrossing to me. I loved the idea, the mystery of where the next card will come from, and the opportunity to make new friends, to “meet” interesting people. I must say I have NOT been disappointed and I love postcrossing! To my happy surprise, 99% of the cards I have so far received have been good and valuable for my collection, and many came with really great words written on the back!

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

Yes, I am crazy about cooking and baking, and collecting cookbooks and cookery magazines, recipes. My favourite passtime is trying new recipes. My other “hobby” is history (which I teach along with geography), and reading history books and magazines, also archaeology, learning about people in other times and places, and postcards here come very handy and are a real help. Many cards I received are directly linked to historical events and it is very thrilling.

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

I live in a village 30 km from the city and mail deliveries are not reliable where I live, to say the least. So I receive my letters and cards in that 1–2–12 box in the photo which actually is my husband’s office mail box in the city, where mail is delivered safely.

This is the one I mostly patronize when I have to send things a bit out of the ordinary like packages or registered letters. Otherwise I mostly drop my cards in that post-box in San Li Tun street, but occasionally in other ones. I know the location of about ten convenient mail boxes.

Well they are quite messy, but at least organized by countries. In boxes for the countries from where I have really many like Germany, France, the Czech Republic, the USA, Austria and such. The others are in two chests of drawers, also classified by country. My big hope (when I am retired, maybe) is to put them all in albums, with explanations about the place shown on the card!

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

Hard to tell! There are so many I particularly love either because the picture is really fantastic, or because I love the place or it makes me day dream…

As most Postcrossers, Judit enjoys getting surprises in her mailbox in Belgium. And despite being mom of four, she still finds time for Postcrossing! Here’s what she has to share with us.

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

In June 2006 there was a message by Postcrossing member szirmaik on a Hungarian Forum site. I was curious and checked it out. Since then I’m hooked on Postcrossing. As I don’t get a lot of mail, it’s a nice way to get “unexpected” surprise mail.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

My other hobby is cross-stitching which I also started in 2006. Right now, I have little free time because I gave birth to my 4th child in June 2010.

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

This is where I receive mail:

And this is where I send it:

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

Through the years I have received so many beautiful cards that I can’t decide which is the most precious. Some cards tell me about something I’ve never known before. Some of them are what I really like. Some of them show things I’ve never thought of before.

German Postcrosser, Isabelle, had a love for horses before joining and has seen her horse postcard collection grow through the kindness of other Postcrossing members. She quite enjoys attending Postcrossing meetings.

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

My pen pal (since ages) and Postcrossing member tinewoest, from Belgium, told me about Postcrossing in a letter and I immediately got infected! Thank you sooooo much Tine!!!! I got hooked from the kindness of the Postcrossers and found the forum pretty soon. After finding the forum I was a complete addict! I attended as many meetings as I could get to. For example, I joined meetings in Helsinki, Cologne, The Netherlands, and Belgium. I have learned so much about the world, the people, kindness and habits in the Postcrossing world. I became sick in the summer of 2009 and needed to slow down a bit but Postcrossing is still my BIGGEST hobby.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

Before Postcrossing, collecting horse postcards and writing letters were my biggest and only hobbies. I stopped horseback riding in 1998. Since I am now a Postcrossing addict my horse postcard collection has grown bigger and bigger (over 15,000 cards now) and I have no time to sort them properly because I spend all my free time on the Postcrossing site. I have about 22 shoe boxes full of postcards from the last 4 years. They are unsorted but most of them are in my head or in my computer lists. I also started scanning my postcards when I discovered Flickr through Postcrossing but it is impossible to scan my whole collection because most cards are in folders already. My pen pals now only get a letter once a year and many ask if I am still alive. Writing a postcard is so much faster than writing a letter. Sorry girls!

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

I don’t like the girls working at the post office and mostly order my stamps online so no pics of the office but the following pics show me at the mailbox I usually use. I mail the mail before i go to work there and this mailbox also get lifted on Saturday and Sundays. :D

My home mailbox

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

My absolute favorite:

Second favorite:

Third favourite:

But I also love all the non-horse postcards. There are so many that are so beautiful.

David “the mad postcard collector” from the United Kingdom has amassed over 100,000 postcards for his collection. This 56 year old multilingual Postcrosser is also a world traveler.

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

I have been hooked on collecting postcards since I was a teenager. I joined two postcard-collecting groups within Mensa, one who was already also a Postcrosser, introduced me to Postcrossing, and I have been totally hooked ever since! My wife, Jeannette, keeps telling me off because I spend so much time writing postcards! I have always enjoyed having the postman deliver mail, so Sundays and public holidays are sad because there is no mail. I am so well-known by my local postmen that I even had a postcard addressed simply to 'The mad postcard collector, Felixstowe' delivered to me!

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

I love travelling and have visited more than 70 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. I love music. I learned to play the guitar (but not very well) and wrote my own songs. I even recorded several of my songs, although they are not available commercially. And I love languages too: I studied French, German, Spanish and Latin at school, taught myself Dutch, Italian, Russian and several other languages; I’m learning Japanese at evening classes too. So my hobbies of travel, languages and postcards are all related.

This is a picture of me playing my guitar and 'performing’ at my 50th birthday party!

This picture, taken two years ago, shows me when I changed a small amount of money ($100) at a bank in Uzbekistan.

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

One picture shows Bent Hill Post Office, Felixstowe. It’s a short walk from where I live. I buy most of my postcards there and all of my stamps, so I’m their favourite customer! The other picture, which is not so clear, is a scanned copy of a picture taken for a newspaper in 2006; it shows me with a few of my postcards and with some of the crates in which I store my collection.

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

I have received nearly 3000 official postcards through Postcrossing, many more through swaps, Round Robins etc. I cannot single out one postcard as so many are my favourites!

Before joining Postcrossing, Yvonne from Cape Coral, Florida, USA, had never sent or received a postcard. Now, she has over 1400 in her collection.

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

I had heard about Postcrossing from a forum post on Bookcrossing.com. I had visited the front page of the website several times without joining. Since, at the time, I had never sent or received a postcard in my entire life, I wondered who still sent postcards? Apparently the answer is me! I was hooked by about the 15th postcard I ever sent through Postcrossing. Finland, Germany, Brazil, New Zealand, Portugal, and Japan were all very foreign countries to me and I was so excited to be able to exchange postcards with people who lived there. The fact is that 1,400 postcards later, I am still excited to send and receive postcards to and from the common-to-Postcrossing but foreign-to-me countries.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

I do enjoy reading quite a bit particularly mystery/thriller type books set in the area where I live. There is a very successful author. Randy Wayne White, that writes specifically about Southwest Florida and many others who set their books in Florida like Tim Dorsey, Carl Hiaasen, Jonathon King, Harlan Coben, Laurence Shames, and James O. Born.

I also enjoy nature photography and concentrate my efforts on the huge variety of birds that call South Florida home either year round, during migration, or during the winter. I also have a weakness for Reality TV shows that involve contests (for example, Survivor, Project Runway, or Top Chef). Here is one of my favorite photos.

After joining Postcrossing I realized that postal stamps and cancellation marks are very unique things. I got my own Mailer’s Postmark Permit so that I can cancel my own mail.

(although I live in they city of Cape Coral, we do not have a Postmaster; as such, my postmark is issued by Fort Myers which is the city that manages our mail)

Lastly, I enjoy volunteering my time. As many of you might already know, I am part of the Postcrossing Team and most of my volunteer hours are dedicated to them. For a local club, I created a website including content and now maintain it. I also record articles for Wikipedia through the Spoken Wikipedia project. I randomly select articles that interest me. The resulting spoken article can be heard online or downloaded.

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

I have a post office box and have never met the person who delivers my mail to it.

My post office from the outside.

I keep my postcards in plastic tubs sorted by country. When I took this picture I only had two tubs … now I have three almost full ones.

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

You can get an idea of the types of postcards that I like in my favorites list but I cannot really pick just one favorite. There have been so many amazingly kind people who have read my profile and have been able to pick the perfect postcard and pair it with beautiful stamps. I do seem to have a preference for handmade or self-made postcards.

If I must pick one to show and tell, then I will pick the one that combined my love of maps (which predates Postcrossing) and self-made postcards (DE-282950). The person who sent me the postcard is a cartographer and she created a postcard out of a map that she had designed!

This next postcard I love because it combined things I love – cats, computers, and humor. It also happens to be the fifth postcard I ever received from Finland (FI-33265).