Postcrossing Blog

We live in a touristy area, where it isn’t hard to find postcards featuring the local beaches… but it can be quite a challenge to find cards of anything else. This is where postcard boxes come in! These days, it’s easy to find cheap sets of 50 or 100 postcards on all sorts of themes, from children’s books to architecture, food or movies — so now and then, we check out what there is out there and get some diversity into our postcard drawer. It’s been a few years since our last post on the topic… so time to catch up with new things being published in recent years!

But first, a small disclaimer: this post contains affiliate links. This means that if you buy these postcards on Amazon, Postcrossing will receive a small commission for each sale (at no extra cost to you). Feel free to look for these postcard sets and boxes on your favourite bookstores though — supporting local businesses is the best! 💪

So without further ado, here are some of the postcard boxes that caught our eye!

• Wild Animals of the World: 50 Postcards
• Eric Carle’s Box of Wonders: 100 Colorful Postcards
• Sibley Birds of Land, Sea, and Sky: 50 Postcards
• The Disney Animation Postcard Box: 100 Collectible Postcards

• Richard Scarry’s Busy, Busy Box of Postcards: 100 Colorful Postcards
• Studio Ghibli: 100 Collectible Postcards
• The Wild Cards
• Dungeons & Dragons 100 Postcards: Archival Art from Every Edition

• Women in Art: 100 Postcards
• Botanicals: 100 Postcards from the Archives of the New York Botanical Garden
• Garden Fresh, 100 Postcards: A Medley of Vegetables and Fruit
• Clark Little: The Art of Waves Postcards: 50 Postcards

Of all of these, I confess I’m most excited about Richard Scarry’s “Busy Busy Box of Postcards”! My brother and I used to spend hours and hours going through his books, noticing all the details and looking for Lowly Worm… These cards bring back so many good memories, and I can’t wait to send some of them to my niece, and other small postcrossers!

If you’re looking for even more postcard sets, check out this forum wiki where postcrossers have been compiling a list of them. And if you know of other postcard boxes that are not mentioned there, feel free to add them!

It can be tough to find interesting and unique postcards locally—maybe you’ve sent them all before by now, or maybe you just don’t live in a very photogenic area. Don’t worry! Every so often, we do a little roundup of boxes of postcards that you can get online, which is a very cost-effective way to get your hands on some lovely designs.

Here’s another 20 boxes of 50 or 100 postcards that we haven’t featured recently.

• National Parks Postcards: 100 Illustrations That Celebrate America’s Natural Wonders
• Earth and Space: 100 Postcards Featuring Photographs from The Archives of NASA
• The Snooty Bookshop: 50 Literary Postcards by Tom Gauld
• The Disney Villains Postcard Box: 100 Collectible Postcards
• Disney Princess Postcard Box: 100 Collectible Postcards
• 100 Iconic Postcards
• Post-Punk Postcards: 50 Designs Inspired by Influential Albums

• Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat Postcards (50 postcards)
• Button Box: 100 Postcards
• Roald Dahl 100 PHIZZ-WHIZZING POSTCARDS
• Disney Frozen Postcard Box (100 postcards)
• Harry Potter: The Postcard Collection (100 postcards)
• The Night Sky: 50 Postcards
• Bill Cunningham: Details from the Street: 100 Postcards

• This Is My Bookstore: 100 Postcards of Beautiful Shops around the World
• Brave. Black. First.: 100 Postcards Celebrating More Than 50 African American Women Who Changed the World
• Marimekko: 50 Postcards
• The Museum Collection: 50 Postcards in a Box
• LEGO Still Life with Bricks: 100 Collectible Postcards
• Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 50 Postcards

I had no idea that some of my childhood favourites were out there on postcards, so that’s my next stop… though that Button Box set is pretty tempting too (every card has a little bit of history about the significance of the pin it displays!).

As always, we’d love to hear any suggestions you have to share in the comments!

PS: This post contains affiliate links. This means that if you buy these postcards on Amazon, Postcrossing will receive a small commission for each sale (at no extra cost to you). Feel free to look for these postcard sets and boxes on your favourite bookstores though — supporting local businesses is always a good thing. 💪

A while ago, Anu (aka Gummu) from Bangalore 🇮🇳 surprised us by mailing six postcards to Postcrossing’s PO box, each with a quirky illustration, fun stamps and a piece of a postal story! You see, each postcard had a little chapter of the adventure that was searching for these same postcards in her hometown. We’ll let Anu tell the story, as it was written to us on her postcards: 😊

"Dear team Postcrossing, hello from Bangalore!

July 2019. It has been years since I entered a post office. I’d occasionally send a new year greeting or a birthday card. Signing up for Postcrossing brought back to mind all the post office coordinates around where I live, as did the fact that I hadn’t set foot in the gorgeous old GPO (General Post Office, Govt. of India) building in my city forever. So here’s a story in 6 cards…

August 2019. The first visit to GPO revealed a philately desk and a shop. There I found this 20-card booklet, Bangalore in the 70s, illustrated by Paul Fernandes, Bangalore-based artist. Each card is an amazing, nostalgic throwback to a city we loved, loved, loved, but have seen slowly disappear over the last three decades. I picked up two booklets, gifted one and used up mine in no time. Went back for more but it was out of stock everywhere!

November 2019. Got a lead from the GPO that they may be available in one Post Office in another area. I head off on a Friday afternoon. At first, the staff said, no sorry, no stock. I get to speak to a junior branch manager, who, after listening to my quest said, “Let me make some calls…”

Subhash, the junior branch manager, made 6 calls over half an hour. Got phone numbers of staff at other branches and finally, tracked down a PO sales exec who had them at an exhibit at the agricultural university, just outside the city. Told me he would be there until 5pm, set me up with the sales exec’s phone number. Thanking Subhash profusely, I set off. If you know Bangalore traffic, you’d start to get nervous bout me ever getting there on time.

I made it to university by 4:45pm and discovered the beauty of the campus, green sprawling, rows of mango trees. Spied the convention hall where the exhibit was happening. Turned out to be an exhibit by uni students on the lives of insects (fascinating!) and located the young sales executive. He had kept aside 20 card booklets for me!

Happy dance! Learnt from the sales person that India Post is planning to do another run of this card set. I hope they do! They are delighted that Postcrossing is going strong. I’ve spread the joy a bit by sharing the cards with old Bangaloreans, and with postcrossers. So, thank you team, for igniting the love for sending, receiving, reading, writing and connecting with the world.

Love,
  Anu"

Thank you Anu, for sharing your adventure and Paul Fernandes gorgeous postcards with us!

We love the story as much as we love the multi-postcard format — so pleasing! Imagine writing a story like this to a friend or little one, in postcard-sized installments that keep them peeking into the mailbox everyday for more… wouldn’t that be lovely? Pick a story or maybe an adventure you’ve recently lived, an unsuspecting friend and go surprise them with a few postcards! 😊

We first saw Kehvola's cards on a pop-up postcard fair organised by the Finnish Postcrossing Friends Association in Tampere, and I confess I was instantly smitten! It’s no secret I have a sweet spot for illustration, but their playful style and daring colour palette was what got me hooked.

At the time, I sent the postcard on the right to a booklover friend, and stocked on others… though I’ve been very reluctant to part with them!

At the time, we talked a bit with the owners, Veera and Timo, who were staffing their booth at the fair, and Timo agreed to answer a few questions for the blog. So ladies and gentlemen, here he is to tell us more about Kehvola!

How did Kehvola get started? Could you tell us a bit of the story behind it?

Veera (my wife) had previously worked as a store manager in the Finnish National Gallery’s museum shops. There she noticed that there are no nice Helsinki cards available. She started the company and asked the nearest and the cheapest illustrator (me!) to draw a set of Helsinki postcards. This was just four years ago.

We’re fascinated by how coherent your collection is — despite being illustrated by different people. How did this group of illustrators get together? And how do you choose the themes for your pieces?

We are illustration fans and we’ve been very lucky with our artists. So far everybody we’ve asked to join us had said yes. I think our illustrators all have something in common yet they all have their own distinct style. Our illustrators have all illustrated children’s books and are capable of creating narrative pictures with strong sense of atmosphere.

Illustrators are free to offer their own ideas but most of them prefer clear orders from us. I myself think what I would like to draw (this could be an old bike or a rubber boot, a big bookshelves, elvis, tiger or an apple pie) and then consider with Veera would somebody be interested in such a card. If we like the idea enough we print it anyway.

If you could define Kehvola’s style in 3 words, what would they be?

Narrative, colorful, warm.

Are you letter or postcard writers too?

Always when travelling. I love bookshops and museum shops and browsing through their postcard selection. Writing a postcards in a cosy pub or cafe after a long day of walking is an essential part of my traveling.

Could you show us your studio, or the place where the magic happens?

Here’s a picture of Kehvola’s "headquarters”, where I also do the drawing:

Thank you Timo, that was lovely! Besides their shop, you can also find Kehvola on their Instagram and Facebook pages.

Oh! And now for the best part: Timo kindly offered a set of postcards to give away to one lucky postcrosser! For a chance to win it, check out Kehvola’s shop, and leave a comment below, telling us which design or designs were your favourites. We’ll randomly pick a winner by this time next week, and announce it on this post. Good luck! :)

I believe it was my friend Addis (aka sumares) who first brought visual artist Adam J. Kurtz to my attention, and I was immediately hooked. His works are a mix of pep talk and reality check, funny and honest in equal measures. Adam won’t promise you roses and that everything will be ok… I mean, who knows, right? Like the rest of us, it feels like he’s just trying to figure stuff out as he goes along. So whether he’s cheering you on, reflecting all our insecurities, celebrating the little everyday successes or just making a joke at his own expense, his work is candid and mostly optimistic, and never fails to bring a chuckle and a nod of understanding.

Every year, Adam does a Kickstarter campaign to self-publish his popular Unsolicited Advice planners, which helps people get through the year with little drawings and (you guessed it!), a healthy dose of unsolicited advice. This year though, he also launched a series of paper products, including a book of postcards for all occasions. It’s called “What I am trying to say” and as the title implies, inside you’ll find postcards that will help you express your feelings in a more articulate way. They’re as random as it gets, and that’s what we love about them the most!

Some time ago, we got in touch with Adam (who we discovered is also a postcrosser, aka adamjk!) who very generously offered 10 copies of his new postcard book for us to give away. YAY! To snag one of them, leave a comment below telling us one nice random victory that you think should be celebrated on a postcard (but isn’t yet).

Some examples: surviving a babysitting gig, submitting your taxes on time, not forgetting to feed the cat, replying to a difficult email you’ve been postponing, making it to the dentist… Rarely can we find postcards for things like these, and there should be some, don’t you think? 😊  So let us know your random little (or big) victory that deserves cheering!

Good luck everyone! Check back on this post around this time next week, to find out who were the 10 lucky members whose names were picked by Paulo's random number generator. And a huge thank you to Adam and also to Kim at Abrams books, for sponsoring this giveaway!