Postcrossing Blog

Wow, go Germany!

I'm wondering the shortest distance between where cards went? And also, the longest time it took for one to be registered?

Thank you for all the statistics! It was interesting to find out about it. I love to see them on the blog.
I'd find some kind of guessing game very exciting. For example guessing from and to which country postcard number 50 million comes and goes. Similar to the guessing of the exact time.

Why are Belgium and Austria ranked equally on the 17th place, when Belgium has more cards sent ? Typo I guess ?

Loved this blog - super interesting!

@lejo yup, a typo! Sorry about that, I've fixed it.

I think there is another typo. Germans took the top 10 spots in the top 20, not 20 spots.

@karryan Because Postcrossing enforces a sort of "exclusion zone" around the place where a member lives, the shortest distance a postcard can travel is the radius we've defined for that area. So it's not exactly a random number... and thus less interesting.

Every year, there are always a few postcards being registered at 365 days (and a few that arrive even past that date), but it's usually due to mail issues or other special circumstances.

@SylviaM Sorry about that! I was trying to say they took most of the top spots... but it came out wrong somehow. Ok — fixed that too! 😅

Fascinating!

Wow, Czechia is the 8th last year! I thing in 2018 it will be worse: our dear Czech Post increases the postage from 1.2.2018 again - we will pay 35 CZK for Europe and 41 CZK for oversea (ten years ago, when I started with postcrossing, it was 17 and 18 CZK). A lot of postcrossers are planning to limit sending postcards.

Like Karryan asked, what is the shortest distance? between two postcards. My guess is Germany!

Awwww just read the answer, I kind of hoped for two neighbours discovering they were both postcrossers and not even needing a stamp...

On the extra statistics pages I noticed a bit of a pattern, March and August seem to often have more postcards sent, any ideas as to why? I can see December having fewer due to xmas post delaying things... but not why it is consistently those two months...

March (Easter) and August (Summer) usually biggest school holiday periods so a lot more people like teachers are off so more time to send cards. I get a lot of cards mention they are teachers as they note from my profile my daughters’ are teachers.

This is great! Thank you for sharing this statistics.

I already wonder if 2018 statistics will be different due to the new traveling feature.

Do you have the other end of the spectrum? Slowest delivery? Shortest distance? Top 10 countries with the lease number of postcards sent? etc?

Interesting! A couple of people asked about short distances. I drew a member who lived within an hour of my home (36 miles). I mailed the card within hours, thinking it would get there within a couple of days. Wasn't so. It took 11 days. I could have walked it there in less time! (The user registered cards regularly).
https://www.postcrossing.com/postcards/US-4815624

Talking about short distances, this was also a funny coincidence - one day I received two cards in the mail, both from Czechia, from users who lived 40 km from each other. :D

reimira: one day, I sent postcards to two postcrossers who lived on the same street (house 31a and house 43) in the same town in Russia (Voronezh)! (I asked the second one whether she knew the other one - she didn't)

🙌 Love this blog 👍. I love comparing stats so I am looking forward to a similar report next year for 2018 😀

@karryan - that exclusion zone is good, because there may be multiple users even within a city which technically could send postcrossing cards to each other. - I mean, I wrote cards to Hamburg (Germany) before traveling to there - I could have delivered the card by hand (which could be a great idea). Or cards to Bremen - that's the city where our post from our city gets sorted - so they're arriving there when I post them.

That's what the exclusion zone is for... You can send cards, you get cards from them, but the distance between could be a way you go day to day...

This is very interesting information. Thank you for sharing!

Amusing stats! Keep going, Postcrossing! Keep going, Taiwanese! I'm proud of you guys!

Thank you, love it, I would love to read more posts like this one on the blog, is it possible to put last logged in on each country site instead of random users and is it possible when you when you search users in each country to see the ranking of all users there, you can now see them in alphabet order but it would be great to be able to choose als to see them in ranking order.

I love the stats, it is so cool how much postcards are exchanged. With the new, USA government shutdown, postcards to and from USA will probably be delayed a bit, so if you are sending to the USA then you should probably, wait for the government to get back on track, it will not take a long time though. Maximum is months. Just so you guys can know.

The US government shutdown does not affect the post office. The post office already posted on their Facebook internal news site that mail delivery will not be affected at all. The post office is not government funded.

Added thought: mail delivery occurred at my house about ten minutes ago. The post office is autonomous in the US. It isn't funded by tax dollars. It's funded entirely through sale of product. As the slogan goes, nothing stops the US mail. ;)

I love statistics and numbers in general, so this was a very fun article! Thank you so much, and I look forward to this year's postcards and stats!

@Mapsoo:
You can see the ranking of members in one country (at least the first 1000). When searching for all members of Iceland for example, you get the result "231 members" . Just to the right of that, where it says by default "order by username", you can choose "order by postcards sent" instead. (Took me only 3 years to discover that possibility.)

Why to go Postcard lovers. Thank you Post-crossing.

Amazing data!!!! May every Postcrosser have happy mailbox in 2018😆

I would be interested in the most popular postcards of the year

More info about my card -- the longest distance traveled one:

Wow! What fun. For context—I was living and teaching as an expat in New Zealand, flew home to visit my family in the states and drove through Wisconsin and bought the card there. I brought the card (along with others) back to New Zealand, admittedly forgot about it (and Postcrossing for a bit, hence the nearly year long delay), got back on site and mailed it. So this card has traveled even more than the distance it says! From Wisconsin to Arizona and then a flight to New Zealand AND THEN to Spain :)

Thank you for this great post, I love the statistics. And a special thank you for teaching me about antipodes! What a fascinating concept!! I found a site where I could locate antipodes and discovered that the antipode to my home in Seattle is in the ocean southeast (and nearest to) South Africa and Madagascar. Maybe I will pull a postcard from one of those countries someday.

Yeah ! The postcrossing makes a lot of joy all over the world. ♥

Thank you @ Mosshumla :)

Thank you for publishing statistics! We all tend to be mesmerized by numbers (unless we have to take a math exam or an exam on statistics!) I think countries rankings will change given that some countries send more cards than the ones close to them by the overall number. For example, I think soon Czechia will overtake Poland and China will overtake Belarus. Or Hong Kong will overtake Portugal. It's hard to say without being able to operate the actual numbers, but these are my predictions.

I am wondering how new Travel Mode affected the number of cards sent from more exotic destinations. I think a poll asking only those who travel how many (the range) cards they sent from their vacation (or maybe a percentage) could be interesting even though numbers are numbers and they can be misleading. I'm just curious.

Thanks, thay was an interesting read...we want to see more numbers and stats :)

I think Germany post is cheaper than other in Europe, and this help! between Germany and Italy we have a big difference for non european countries ( and also for european, not so big but enough)

thanks postcrossing for those numbers and facts!!

Thank you very much for the interesting statistics!!!!
Hurray! Ukraine is the 14th last year! :)
Congratulate Germany on such a great work!!!!!!
Happy New Year for all Postcrossers around the World!

Only 765972 postcards from not top 20 countries were received... As for me it shows that postcrossing is not well known in most of countries. Or people there simply don't have free money to send postcards.

How is it possible to send 2000 cards n one year? I’m just curious because with the random system and the amount of days in one year, it doesn’t seem possible. How does it work?

Woah!!!

Wow! Thank you!
Realy intresting information

@robinmp Our most active members can send have up to 100 postcards traveling simultaneously... and many of them do! That, combined with an efficient postal system, is the secret to sending 2000 postcards in a year. :)

@robinmp: I think it is more a question of money and leisure time. The participants in the top 20 have all the maximum of 100 slots, so they can draw enough addresses. And even the all time top sender Willi has "just" send about 23,808 cards so far, while there are 714,831 members participating. So there are even for him still enough addresses to draw.

Wowwwwwwwww, thank you so much for your responses :) I had not idea :) @meiadeleite and @RalfH

So interesting! Thank you for sharing

Great job Germany. But I'm also very proud of our own small country on 4th place with over four times less people in the country as Germany ;)
Thank you for this article. I like reading all the different statistics.

Thanks, Postcrossing for this interesting blog, it was really fascinating to read. Also thanks to American postrossers, who told the information about your mail service regarding the recent government events. I will take a note on that, post will be served normally.
Thanks a lot!
Best wishes!

Excellent work. Great performance presented even better. I loved reading it and felt proud to be part of this community. Happy Postcrossing!

How many card was sent from Brazil in 2017?

I think you should really do something about the financial and cultural dominance of several large PC communities. You should much more actively promote cultural diversity here, otherwise this excellent and lovely "more-than-a-hobby" will eventually become nothing more than an outlet of rich folks from northern hemisphere, who can afford astronomic amounts to spend for postcards... Seriously, even if I would like to, I cannot afford mailing 2500 postcards a year, hell no, this would represent almost FOUR MONTHLY SALARIES here!
It is absolutely insane to see that all top 10 most active guys are all from Germany and together they mailed insane amount of postcards, more than 25.000, which is far more, than for instance number of ALL postcards, mailed from bottom 100 countries in Postcrossing EVER.
Get your head out of the sand please and let us start doing something about it.

Wow! Interesting data! Also, I never expect Hong Kong ranked 16th for postcard sent. I am one of the contributors. So good.!

I want to see received statics of 2017 Actually.

I am a postcrosser from Ukraine and I am always offered to send many postcards to Russia, which borders my country. That's unfair. Mail service in this country is slow as hell and I have to wait 50 days on the average to have my postcard registered even at the smallest distance. I'd rather prefer to receive addresses from countries such as Austrailia and Zealand, which are quick, rather than Russian ones.

Olya, I can feel your pain :-) I unfortunately also get a lot of Russian addresses and average delivery time in Russia is atrociously long... plus many cards get lost on their way...

I think every member has approximately the same distribution of Sent/Received cards from a particular country, especially when there are enough cards to even the numbers out. After all, it's "a numbers game". I saw only one member who sends 45% cards to Russia and I believe it's by choice (given his experience - more than 2,000 sent cards).

Speaking of "rich folks" - I have been once told that "the richest people are not the ones who earn the most, the richest people are the ones who spend the least". :))) Clearly none of us fits this category as postcards are something we can do without. Also, if postal service in Russia was as expedient as it is in Germany, Russia would have become the dominant country just by sheer amount of members sending fewer cards per member.

We all have borders with some countries - and the USA has "the exclusive bordering right" with Canada, but it doesn't mean that we have to exclude each other. Not to say that we speak the same language and are hardly distinguishable from one another, though we try!. :)))

But given that richest people can allow to travel, it would make a difference if when they begin sending cards from those countries. Even if Russians will visit former Soviet Republics such as Georgia or Armenia, Azerbaijan - it would be nice to receive a card from there.

I think postcrossing is more about people than it is about postcards and maybe there are advantages to having "dominant" senders? There should be. Maybe the quality of a card is more important than where it is from?

Which card travelled the longest distance of all time?

@post_tenebras_lux: Czechia sent ~ 20% the cards of Germany with ~12,5% the inhabitants. So per capita, you guys in CZ are even more 'bad' than some others.

The dynamic of many versus few active users has various reasons, not only money. Tradition, media-coverage, active network. But yes, of course postcrossing is easier in affluent regions.
I am sure postcrossing's managing team appreciates any useful suggestions you bring.

The maximum of possible postcards traveling is 100, btw. So even superusers cannot grow endlessly.

As for Russia, both you and Sellena are within the range of variation we all face. But you might check your 'repeated countries' option - maybe it's active.

I recognize that House of the Rock Postcard. We visited it on a vacation over 20 years ago. I'm sure i sent the same card to someone back then. Impressive statistics.

@karryann and @meiadeleite, in 2016, I received a postcard from a User in my region (or rather "Landkreis", a kind of political district). She wrote that would have come round if she had had to do something near my place. And it's funny when you draw a User you already know from private swaps via Facebook and/or meet-ups.

excellent statistics. pleased that Belarus is the 9th largest in the number of postcards sent

Great info, I would be interested in the number of cards that fail to get registered and to what countries they originate from & where they are going ☺

Amazing info! WOW for Germany!!!! :) Can't wait to see you all break the record of 1 million cards! :D Go for it! :D Congratulations to all of us, Postcrossers! :)

So the real challenge seems to be, how to increase participation among the lower rank countries. It would be great for everyone to help send/receive from smaller and less common places.

Czechia 🇨🇿❤️

I am fascinated by the coincidences that happen in postcrossing. I had a postcard written in German, so I took it to my German born friend and she was telling all about the different buildings on the card - "WOW is that all written in there?" I asked thinking it wasn't that many lines for so much information! "No" she said "That is where I lived for 20 years and my mum still lives there!..." She was as excited as me about that postcard, we have shown it to all the people we work with!

Afrique: Yes, exactly... In my opinion our main task should be increasing cultural diversity and participation...
Btw last year I mailed 65 postcards, which is roughly 1 postcard a week... I have no problem with people who mail twice or three times more, but to be honest, to mail 2.000 cards a year... I really do not understand the point here...

It seam like Minna71, uttia4 and hepman are going to take the lead on the world list in rhe near future together with the three irish people, that is if they keep on sending so much, the three people on top of the world list have dominated for a long time but Minna71 from Finland is soon taking over third place it seam, top three on the world list has been the same since I started over five years ago and top two is still going strong in the lead.

I'd like to know active member. Who has logged in past 6 months.
Average time of member being active, 2 years or 200 cards.. this is kinda hard maybe and there are lots of personal reason.. for slow post countries maybe stop at under 100; etc
Thanks anyway :)

I like to know about the average and median travelling time of postcards to and from the different countries though I know that there are many factors influencing it.