It’s time for the biannual update on Postcrossing!

Since my last update – almost exactly six months ago – I’ve sent and received a little over 200 cards, which means my rate of both sending and receiving has dropped compared to the last few years.

There was a reason for this: Postcrossing made an error in my account, and for a few months I wasn’t receiving cards. I didn’t notice this for a while, and when I did I assumed it was due to USPS hijinks, but when I contacted Postcrossing and they corrected it I ended up getting over 100 cards in a few weeks!

Since last update I received my first card from Argentina, but didn’t send any cards to ‘new’ countries. Interestingly two-thirds (8 of 12) of the cards I’ve received from South Korea arrived in the last six months, despite me being a member now for eight years. I wonder if it’s a sign postcards are becoming more popular there?

I changed my profile to include a few more preferences, including “1970s/1980s celebrities“. It appears to have worked, as you can see above. I especially like the (retro) Marc Almond card at the lower right. The top left is a Taiwanese singer who became famous in the 1970s.

The above are some pop culture cards, and I’m sure you agree that Hairy Pothead and The Marijuana Stone (which came from Portugal) is hilarious! The top right one is a minor character from the Star Wars universe.

Look at this lovely card from China. It’s shaped and made of strong cardboard, and if I saw this for sale, I’d buy several of them!

Above are all the maxicards I’ve received this past half-year. I’ve been saying I’d dedicate a post to these for years now. Maybe I’ll even remember to do it 🙂

Here’s an enormous stamp affixed to the back of a double-sized card, and the Yowie card (from Australia, of course) is shown for size reference.

As usual, most of the shaped stamps came from China and Russia. I like the food one in the lower left, which filled about a third of the card.

These were the stamps affixed to the Argentinian card. I’d never seen this method before and according to an expert at a local stamp show, overlapping stamps isn’t legal postage in most countries (including the USA).

As I write this there are 48 more of my cards on their way to Postcrossing members, and about 52 on their way to me. I write about 10 a week now, and a few months back I purchased about 200 random cards from our postcard store which will keep me going several more months.

I’ve mentioned before that I keep all the cards, and above is a photo of the boxes in our attic in which they are stored. Our attic is good for storage since it never gets too hot/cold or humid so they’ll be safe up there until the inevitable day I toss them all!

Incidentally the personal cards (the ones I sent us or you sent me) are stored in large binders in my office. Maybe I should do a post about them one day…