Postcrossing Blog

Have you ever been to a stamp show? It’s a bit like being in a magic wonderland, filled with (postal) treasures to be discovered! Although we are not collectors ourselves, browsing the stands brimming with old postcards or curated sets of stamps is irresistible, and we are always pleasantly surprised by how knowledgeable and patient the vendors are… even to clueless newbies like ourselves. 😅 There are also exhibitions on interesting philatelic topics or rare stamps, and often also talks or seminars on different themes.

The biggest stamp show in Europe is Stampex International, which takes place in London twice a year… but, in this atypical year, they’re doing something new and turning its Autumn edition into a virtual show! Everything will happen online: the talks, the exhibitions, the perusing of catalogues and even the chatting with the vendors. This is unprecedented but definitely good news, as it gives everyone the possibility to safely participate no matter where they are in the world.

Which brings me to the topic of this post: October 1st is both World Postcard Day and the first day of Virtual Stampex — and we will be there!

Paulo and I will be participating in a Stampex talk, in which we will talk about Postcrossing, the World Postcard Day and why we love postcards. We’ll be joined in this conversation by Constanze, who is both a postcrosser and a philatelist, and Graham Winters, chairman of the Association of British Philatelic Societies, who will show us some special postcards from his collection.

We’ll then open the mic to everyone who would like to show their favorite postcards… which means YOU can participate too, if you’d like! We invite everyone to register for Stampex and join us there on October 1st at 4pm (London time, GMT+1), on the Spink Auditorium for an hour or so filled with postal fun.

Don’t forget to bring your favorite postcard to show & tell!

PS – Graham from the Exploring Stamps Youtube channel did a great video to show everyone how Virtual Stampex will look like, and ran into our World Postcard Day booth. 😍 Check it out:

It’s no secret that we have a huge soft spot for children writing and enjoying postcards. There’s something about their awe at the mysteries of mail, the delight at checking the mailbox, and the effort they put into each word that just never gets old. 😊

This year for the World Postcard Day, we thought it would be a good idea to do something for the little ones, and after some thinking, we hatched a plan try to help teachers give a class about postcards. Because we’re not teachers ourselves, we enlisted the help of Kristin (aka volvomom), who is an educator in the Boston area. She introduced us to the idea of Understanding by Design, a backwards education concept that focus on the results before considering which learning activities will best meet those goals.

The goals are simple: we want students to understand how mail works, and invite them to send a postcard on October 1st! So we’ve laid out a few ways of achieving this result, listing videos on mail topics as well as tasks that teachers and students can try. We’ve done our best to make the lesson plan flexible enough to accommodate different grades and also different subjects, in order to fit as many classrooms as possible.

We’ve also enlisted the help of some postcrossers to translate the lesson plan into different languages, and so in addition to the English version, there are now versions in French and Russian (by michelle_2012), Dutch (by avanesdonk), German (by frewen and killewips) and Spanish (by Loli-ts) — you can find them on the World Postcard Day page. Thank you ladies, you’re awesome! 👍

If you’re a teacher, feel free to grab the World Postcard Day lesson plan and use it in your classes on October 1st! And if you’re a parent of school children, we invite you to send it to your child’s teachers — it’ll be a great way for them to participate in the celebrations, and be a part of this global movement.

PS – 22 days and 12 hours until the World Postcard Day!

Today, we’re happy to introduce the official postcard for the World Postcard Day event! It’s the winning postcard in a design competition that Postcrossing run together with Finepaper, a neat printing and design company based in Lisbon.

One of the goals of the initiative was to introduce postcards to a young generation of designers, so the students were taught about the postcard format, types of paper as well as possible printing techniques, before going about imagining a postcard that would represent the World Postcard Day. The submissions poured in throughout July, after which the juries had the difficult task of picking just one winner. And now, without any further ado, I give you the selected design!

Isn’t it super cute? 😍 The chosen postcard was designed by Leandro Ferreira, a 3rd year student of Design & Multimedia at Universidade da Beira Interior. Congratulations, Leandro — the coveted Pantone catalogue is yours! If you’re curious about the other submissions, you can see some of them on the contest page (Portuguese-only, sorry!). This year’s competition was mostly a small scale trial run, which we plan to expand to other countries next year, doing it earlier in the year as well.

If you’d like, you can download a high resolution version of this postcard (front and back) to print on a local printing shop or online service (like Vistaprint or MOO) — the files and details are available on the World Postcard Day page. If you use it or receive it, do share it online with the hashtag #WorldPostcardDay! We’d love to see this postcard reach all corners of the world.

In other exciting news, the Portuguese Post (CTT) has created a special cancellation mark with the World Postcard Day logo to celebrate the day! We’re very excited about it and planning to use it on all the postcards we write on October 1st! If you’d like to receive the official World Postcard Day postcard from the “headquarters” with the special cancellation mark, leave a comment below — we’ll randomly pick a few postcrossers to be the lucky recipients of these postcards, written by us on the day! 😊

29 days and 14 hours until the World Postcard Day!

PS – A few postcrossers have asked us how they can get this cancellation mark on their postcards, given that they don’t live in Portugal. If you have access to IRCs in your country, here’s how you can get it.

The writing prompts invite postcrossers to write about a different topic on their postcards’ messages every month. These are just suggestions though — if you already know what you want to write about, or the recipient gives you some pointers, that’s great too!

We’re slightly anticipating September’s writing prompt as we have some exciting stuff to share in the coming days. 😊 So, without further ado…

The first World Postcard Day will take place in just one month, and we want to hear all about your plans to celebrate this special day! Are your postcards and stamps ready? Have you made a list of nice people or good causes to whom you will be writing?

Our plans so far include mailing as many postcards as possible, mostly to postcrossers out there! We’ve also bookmarked a page that promotes writing to old people’s homes in Portugal, to offer some much needed cheer in these troubled times. Is there perhaps a similar initiative in your country?

Beyond writing postcards, some other ways to celebrate the day include teaching a lesson about mail and postcards, visiting a postal museum, helping set up a library event, or simply spreading the word!

What will you be up to, on October 1st? Share your plans with the community on the comments below, and also on the postcards you write this month. Let’s get this party started! 🎉

Remember last year, when the Postcrossing community celebrated the 150^th anniversary of postcards? Thanks to you all, October 1, 2019 was a day filled with festivities, cake, friendship… and so, so many postcards! It was truly a happy day, in which our favorite means of communication was celebrated across the globe.

So when the day was over and the party was done, we thought… wouldn’t it be great if there was a permanent day in the calendar in which postcards were celebrated every year? 🤔 A day in which we send postcards and talk about them non-stop, teach kids how to write their first cards and just generally spread the joys of happy mail! The more we thought about it, the more it made sense, and many of you seemed to agree, going by your enthusiastic response to last year’s events.

So today, we’re happy to announce that October 1^st, the day in which the first ever postcard was sent, will henceforth be known as World Postcard Day! 🎉

A “World Day of…” becomes a thing if enough people celebrate it, so it’s up to YOU to help put this day on the calendar — and truthfully, we couldn’t think of anyone better than the Postcrossing community to start this movement.

So how can you take part and celebrate this special day?

First of all, mark a big red circle around October 1^st on your calendar and be prepared to write LOTS of postcards! This will be the day of the year to send postcards to all your friends, relatives, people you admire, those who could use a little support or cheering up, your mail carrier, or even to strangers. Plus, if you request a postcard through Postcrossing on October 1^st, you’ll even receive a special badge on your profile when that postcard arrives.

Last year, quite a few of you got in touch with your local libraries and offered to showcase your postcard collections, resulting in lots of colorful displays. If there is a library or another suitable location in your area, we encourage you to contact them about the possibility of doing a display, or maybe even holding a small postcard-writing workshop (if it’s safe for you to do so where you live).

Although in-person meetups are not encouraged this year, we can still get together online to show our favorite postcards or write them as a group. If you’re thinking of organizing an event, consider planning some activities ahead to make it more interesting (maybe a quiz about the history of postcards, or a game of postcard bingo) and let us know about it so that we can add it to the World Postcard Day’s calendar of events.

Together with a few postcrossers, we’re currently working on a lesson plan for teachers to introduce the little ones to the joys of making and writing postcards, and help the next generation get started on the art of postcard writing! If you’re a teacher or a librarian and have suggestions, or you’d like to make sure you receive it as soon as it’s done, do get in touch.

Also, we’ve been working with our friends at Finepaper who have been running a postcard design competition for Portuguese art students to make an official postcard for this year’s event. In a few weeks, the final design will be chosen, and this postcard will be made available on the World Postcard Day website, for all to download and print.

And last but not least, help spread the word! There’s a lot of us, and if everyone tells someone about the World Postcard Day, we’ll turn the day into a huge postcard party. 🎉 Send your friends to worldpostcardday.com, or use the hashtag #worldpostcardday on your social media posts.

If you have more ideas on how to celebrate the World Postcard Day, feel free to get in touch or leave a comment below. That’s all for today — stay tuned for more updates soon, and let’s get this party started!