Postcrossing Blog

Two stamps announced on the same week… it must be our luckiest week ever! 🎉

The wave of good news continues, and we are pleased to announce the issuing of Germany’s very own Postcrossing-themed stamp, on October 6th! Many German postcrossers already knew this was coming, as the stamp is one of the most eagerly awaited by the community. After working with the German Finance Ministry for several months in its making, today we are happy to finally be able to reveal its image. Here it is:

We absolutely love it! Designer Greta Gröttrup did a great job of conveying the essence of Postcrossing in a colorful way, that accurately reflects the joy of the project. Once again, the diversity and the different facets of the project are presented, from writing to mailing to receiving.

This stamp will be out on October 6, and a big launch party/meetup is planned for October 7th kindly hosted by Berlin’s Museum of Communications. Paulo and I will be there, and there’s plenty of room at the museum… so everyone is welcome to join us in the celebration of this milestone for the German community! There are special cancellation marks planned for the event, and Deutsche Post will have a little booth on site, to sell stamps and put the first day cancellation marks on them. It’ll be a fun afternoon!

This Postcrossing stamp was brought about through the efforts of the Postcrossing community, but in particular through the relentless dedication of Ralf (aka Linus58), who wholeheartedly adopted this cause. Back in 2015, Ralf started a campaign on the old forum for a German Postcrossing stamp, in which he invited and encouraged everyone to write a postcard to the Finance Ministry (who is the entity responsible for issuing stamps in Germany) asking for the stamp. Every year since, he renewed the campaign with the same enthusiasm and as a result, the Ministry received thousands of postcards from all over the world in the last decade, asking for a Postcrossing stamp to be created… until last year, when they finally relented and said yes. This stamp is truly a work of love from a dedicated postcrosser, and the many others who supported him and believed in this idea.

Sadly, Ralf is no longer with us, having passed away late last year. We lost a friend and passionate postcrosser, and it makes us sad to know that he did not get to see the stamp that he campaigned for… but his legacy will live on, on all the postcards we will mail with this lovely stamp.

Given how many postcards are sent from Germany every day, we expect everyone in Postcrossing will sooner or later hold a postcard with this stamp in their hands. We look forward to it arriving in thousands of mailboxes everywhere, and we hope you are as excited as we are to see it out and about!

(*) Any reproductions of the stamp (on online or offline media) must be authorized first, and requests can be sent to LB5@bmf.bund.de.

Exciting news! Post Luxembourg has been working with Postcrossing to launch a special stamp honoring the project, and today we can finally reveal what it will look like! So, without further ado… Isn’t that brilliant? Different hands, playfully writing and holding postcards — a perfect visual representation of what Postcrossing is!

The stamp is designed by S. Fisch and will have a print run of 100,000 stamps at Luxembourg’s rate for Europe (so don’t forget to add the extra postage to your postcards, if you use this stamp to mail postcards outside of Europe).

There will also be an accompanying first day cancellation mark and envelope, which can be combined with the stamp and cancellation mark to make a neat First Day Cover. Here’s what they will look like:

The new Postcrossing-themed Luxembourg stamp will be out on September 13, and you will be able to order it at the Post Luxembourg webshop.

A meetup is being organized on Saturday, September 17 to celebrate this stamp, and they’ll even have their own special cancellation mark for the meeting, available at a booth on Aldringen’s post office between 1pm and 5pm — how cool is that?!

We’re really looking forward to seeing this stamp make its way across the world on many postcards — let us know what you think of it in the comments below!

Hurray, it’s Postcrossing’s birthday today!! 🎉 Sixteen years of postcards and friendly connections all over the world feels like a long, joyful adventure… one that we cherish immensely.

All these global ties have felt extra meaningful in the past year, and we’ve heard from so many of you, letting us know how much you appreciated having a happy hobby during these rough times. So our big thank you to all of you out there, feeding mailboxes with nice mail and spreading some joy in times of social distancing — you are what keeps Postcrossing going. We hope you’ll have a brilliant day, and treat yourself to an extra nice postcard, or a slice of cake! 🍰

The other good news of the day is that a new Postcrossing-themed stamp from Austria is being issued today! Designed by Theresa Radlingmaier, 165,000 of these have been printed (in sheets of 50) and they should be available in Austrian post offices and their online shop today.

If you’re in Austria and manage to find some of these shiny new stamps on your local post office, do share some photos of them with the rest of us on social media! We’d love to see how they look on your own postcards.

Today is the day the colorful new Postcrossing-themed stamp from Belarus makes its debut! 🎉

The new stamp, designed by Evgeniya Bedonik comes in a sheet with six stamps, and is the third about the project issued by Belpost. Unlike the last one, this one has perforations on it, which we appreciate! It is available from today onwards on post offices throughout Belarus, and hopefully soon on their webshop too.

We haven’t actually seen the physical stamp yet and are super curious about it… So if you’re in Belarus and can take some photos to share with the community, please do so and tag us on social media, so we can re-post them!

Update: Anna (aka ana_karp) posted some photos on the forum already!

We hope to see many of these stamps slowly making their way across the world to lots of happy mailboxes!

The day has finally arrived for this trio of colorful stamps to make their debut, and we couldn’t be more pleased about them! 😍 We got ours just yesterday, and here they are, in all their glory:

Pretty neat, right? The Chance Crab, Herm Puffin and Golden Guernsey Goat illustrations were made by Chris Griffiths from the local design studio Two Degrees North and the stamps look even better in person!

The three stamps, as well as FDCs, maxicards, normal postcards and presentation packs are available on Guernsey Post’s website, which ships internationally. I wish we could go to Guernsey to send a bunch of postcards… but we’ll settle for sending them to all our friends from here. We’ll probably have a few extra, so if you’d like to receive one, do leave a comment below — we’ll be happy to raffle a few postcards. 😊

We’re really looking forward to sending and seeing these fun stamps and postcards pop up in mailboxes all around the world!