A little over 10 years ago, I stumbled upon a site that connected people from all over the world. Not MySpace, not Facebook, but a modern day pen pal type site with an old school twist….mailing postcards. Postcrossing is a site where you can send and receive postcards all over the world. A month or so ago, I was chatting with Princess Unicorn about how neat it was to get postcards from all over the world and thought I would check out the site again to see if it was still up and running. And it is still going strong. They boast over 700,000 members from 214 countries across the globe. Pretty impressive from what I remember the site being back in 2005.
We signed up and I went on a hunt to find local postcards around where we live to mail out. In 2005, that was a fairly easy task. In 2017, not so much, unless you live in a touristy area. I found a small store that sold a few postcards for about $2 each. I only bought a couple there, but I just so happened to have a friend traveling to a vacation spot in our state and she picked up a handful for us. If you really have trouble finding some, good old Amazon has some great sets of postcards, like the "Greetings From (insert state/country)" vintage style postcards.
So how this whole Postcrossing thing works, is you have to send postcards in order to receive any. Each address you request, which is random, is given a unique ID that needs to be written somewhere on the postcard for the receiver to register when they get it in their mailbox. Once your postcards are registered, your address will get added in to the pool to receive. I really like this system as it prevents people from scamming and only receiving postcards without having to send any out. You are only allowed to have a certain number of "traveling" postcards, which can be a bit frustrating when you're maxed out and it has been weeks waiting for someone to register your postcard.
We sent out the first batch of 5 postcards to Russia, Hong Kong, Germany, Australia & Colorado, U.S.A. You can adjust your settings to send & receive postcards from your own country as well. We opted in as, being in the United States, we have the chance to collect postcards from all 50 states. Although, it was quite funny that the very first postcard we received was not only from the U.S., but from the state literally right below ours that we travel through every summer. Out of the first 5 postcards we sent out, only 4 made it to their destination. If a postcard never gets registered, it expires after 60 days, and then it will no longer count against your "traveling" postcards. After one year, it will be removed completely.
Your profile consists of an "About Me" page that you can tell users a little about yourself and what type of postcards you would like to receive, like cat postcards or something. Some profiles I've come across are very specific as to what type of postcards they want (or don't want) to receive. The profile page also lists all the postcards you've sent & received, a photo wall if you upload images of your postcard, and a nifty map that shows where all your postcards have come from and gone to. There is also stats page that breakdowns the countries you sent postcards to & from.
Postcrossing map. Red is sent & Blue is received.
The Postcrossing site gives some really great writing prompts on their blog and I've found some great tips & tricks on the site as well. For example, using Google's Photoscan app to scan the postcard images for uploading instead of just taking a picture. The app actually takes 4 pictures & combines them, and also crops & removes glare.
We received 2 postcards from 2 different users in Belarus on the same day!
We have received some really awesome postcards from all over the world. And a few senders have taken the time to write some very interesting stories about themselves. We got one postcard from Germany that the sender told us about traveling to East Germany after the Berlin Wall was torn down. It is a fun, somewhat inexpensive hobby that we've decided to continue at least until the postcard album I bought is full.
I am going to sign up now! Thanks for posting!